Parent child

Adolescence and
Emerging Adulthood: A
Cultural Approach
Chapter 7
Family Relationships

Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood: A Cultural Approach by Jeffrey Jensen Arnett. Copyright © 2004 by Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Chapter Overview
 Family lives
 Parent’s development at midlife
 Relationships with parents, siblings and
extended family members
 Parenting styles
 Historical contexts of adolescent’s family
lives
 Family problems

Family Systems Approach
 To understand family functioning one must
understand how each relationship within
the family influences the family as a whole
 The family system is composed of a
variety of subsystems

EXAMPLE: The subsystems in a family consisting of
two parents and an adolescent would be:
1. Mother and adolescent
2. Father and adolescent
3. Mother and father


Family Systems Approach
 Based on 2 key ideas:

1. Each subsystem influences every other
subsystem in the family

2. A change in any family member or
family subsystem results in a period of
disequilibrium until the family system
adjusts to the change


Parents’ Development during Midlife
 For most parents, their children's
development during adolescence and
emerging adulthood overlaps with their
own development during midlife

Why is this the case?
Median age of marriage and first childbirth in
industrialized societies is quite high
If adolescence begins about age 10, this means that
most parents are nearly age 40 with their first child
enters adolescence

Is there a “midlife crisis”?
 For most people midlife is in may ways the prime of life
(despite popular beliefs)

• Job satisfaction peaks
• Job status and power peaks
• Earning power increases
• Marital problems decline
• Marital satisfaction increases
• Gender roles become less restrictive
• People’s tend to become more flexible and adaptive
• Adolescents growing autonomy my be welcomed by parents
(e.g. empty nest syndrome)

… but that’s not the whole story


The crisis of midlife .. Two illustrations
 For men in blue-collar professions that
require physical strength and stamina,
such as construction or factory worker, job
performance becomes more difficult to
sustain in middle adulthood and job
satisfaction declines

 Only about one fourth of divorces take
place after age 40 but midlife divorces
tend to be even more emotionally and
financially difficult


Research Focus: The Daily Rhythms
of Adolescents’ Family Lives

Changes in time spent
with others during adolescence


Sibling Relationships
 Five Common Patterns in Adolescents’
Relationships with Their Siblings
1. Caregiver relationship
2. Buddy relationship
3. Critical relationship
4. Rival relationship
5. Casual relationship
In traditional cultures, the caregiver relationship
between siblings is the most common form
Adolescents in traditional cultures often have child-care responsibilities


Extended Family Relationships
 Traditional Cultures
• Young men generally remain in their family home after
marriage and young women move into their new
husband’s home
• This practice has been remarkably resistant to the
influence of globalization
• This pattern is typical in India, China and most
traditional cultures in Asia and Africa
• In these cultures children typically grow up in a house
that includes parents, siblings as well as grandparents
and often uncles, aunts and cousins
• Similar patterns of closeness to grandparents have been
found among adolescents in American minority cultures


Extended Family Relationships
 American Majority Culture
• Adolescents’ contact with extended family members is
relatively infrequent
• Extended family members often live many miles away
• American adolescents have significantly less contact
with their extended family members as compared with
adolescents in European countries because European
extended family are more likely to live in close proximity
• An exception to this pattern occurs among adolescents
in divorced families who tend to have increased contact
with grandparents during adolescence (especially with
their maternal grandfather)


Parenting Styles
 The kinds of practices that parents exhibit in
relation to their children and the effects of
these practices

 Parenting has been described in terms of two
dimensions
1. Demandingness (i.e. control)
• The degree to which parents set down rules and
expectations for behavior and require their children to
comply with them

2. Responsiveness (i.e. warmth)
• The degree to which parents are sensitive to their
children’s needs and the extent to which they express
love, warmth, and concern for their children


The Interaction of Demandingness
and Responsiveness
High
Demandingness

Authoritarian Authoritative

Low High
Responsiveness Responsiveness

Indifferent Indulgent

Low
Demandingness

How parents might sound?
Authoritarian Authoritative

“No you can’t go to the mall
today. You know the family
“Do it my way
made plans to go to see your
because I said so!
sick aunt. How about we drop
Don’t argue with
you off at your friend’s house
me … it’s my house
on the way home. Good
and my rules”
enough compromise?”

Adolescent: “Mom are “Sure you can have a party in
you home … mom {no the house while we’re away –
answer} … I guess I’m the key to the liquor cabinet
in charge of dinner in is you father’s sock
again drawer”

Indifferent Indulgent


American Parenting Styles
Authoritative parenting was
somewhat more common
in middle-class families and
White families

Authoritarian parenting
was more common in
minority families than in
White families


American Parenting Styles
 What beliefs are reflected in the parenting
styles?
• Research on child rearing goals shows that
American parents tend to value independence
highly as a quality they wish to promote in
their children

• Authoritarian parenting clearly discourages
independence but the other three parenting
styles which account for 85% (shown in the
previous graph) reflect parents’ beliefs that it
is good for adolescents to learn autonomy


A More Complex Picture of
Parenting Effects
 Reciprocal or Bidirectional Effects
Adolescents not only are affected by their parents
but also affect their parent in return

 Complexity of Siblings
Most research on the effects of parenting styles
involves only one adolescent per family
The few studies that have included more than
one adolescent per family have shown that
adolescent siblings within the same family often
give very different accounts of what their parents
are like toward them

A More Complex Picture of
Parenting Effects
 Differential Parenting
• Parent’s behavior often differs toward siblings
within the same family

 Non-shared Environmental Influences
• Differential parenting can result in non-shared
environmental influences meaning that the
adolescents experience quite different family
environments and the consequences of these
differences are evident in adolescents’
behaviour and psychological functioning


Parenting in Other Cultures
 The most striking difference in parenting styles is how rare
the authoritative parenting style is in non-Western cultures
 Parents expect that their authority will be obeyed, without
question and without requiring an explanation
 The role of the parent carries greater inherent authority
than it does in the West
 Parents are not supposed to provide reasons why they
should be respected and obeyed

Does this mean that the typical parenting styles
in traditional cultures is authoritarian?

No. The fact is they do not fit very will into the parenting scheme presented.
They are generally closest to authoritative parents because like them they tend
to be high in demandingness and high in responsiveness. However their
demandingness is very different from authoritative parents in American or
Western cultures


Traditional Parenting Style

 This is a term proposed to describe the
kind of parenting typical in traditional
cultures – high in responsiveness and high
in a kind of demandingness that does not
encourage discussion and debate but
rather expects compliance by virtue of
cultural beliefs supporting the inherent
authority of the parental role


Traditional Parenting Style
Two Examples
 Asian Americans  Latino Americans
• Chao (2001) argues that • Latino parents in American
White researchers society have also typically
misunderstand Asian been classified as
American parenting and authoritarian
mislabel it as authoritarian
• The Latino cultural belief
• Asian adolescents show system places emphasis
none of the negative effects on respecto (respect and
typically associated with obedience to parents and
authoritarian parenting elders – especially fathers)

• They have higher • Latino cultural beliefs also
educational achievement, believe is familismo (love,
lower rates of behavioural closeness and mutual
problems and lowers rates obligations of Latino family
of psychological problems life)


Attachment Theory
 Originally developed by John Bowlby (1969, 1973, 1980)
 Attachments between parents and children have an
evolutionary basis in the need for vulnerable young
members of the species to stay in close proximity to
adults who will care for and protect them
 Mary Ainsworth (1967, 1982) described two general types
of attachment:
• Secure attachment
 In which infants use the mother as a ‘secure
base form which to explore’ but seek physical
comfort and consolation from her if frightened
or threatened

• Insecure attachment
 Infants are wary of exploring the environment
and resist or avoid the mother when she attempts
to offer comfort or consolation


Research on the Effects of Secure
Attachment in Adolescence and
Emerging Adulthood
Secure attachment to parents in adolescence is
related to a variety of favorable outcomes

 Effects on Adolescents  Effects on Emerging
• Adolescents’ well being Adults
• Higher self-esteem • Higher educational and
• Better psychological occupational attainment
and physical health • Lower psychological
• Tend to have closer problems
relationships with • Lower drug use
friends and romantic
partners
• More autonomous and
self-reliant


Parent-Adolescent Conflict
• G. Stanley Hall (1904)
• Anna Freud (1946)

• Both researchers made it sound as though it
was universal and inevitable that ALL
adolescents rebel against their parents and that
ALL parents and adolescents experience intense
conflict for many years

How accurate are these early theories?


Parent-Adolescent Conflict
 Few scholars on adolescence believe this anymore!

 Adolescents and their parents agree on many of the
most important aspects of their views of life
 Studies in the 1960’s (which were the first to dispel
the stereotype of ‘storm and stress’) found that
• a great majority of adolescents like their parents, trust and
admire them
• when disagreement does occur it was usually over
seemingly minor issues (e.g. clothes, curfews)


Conflict Details
 Conflict with parents increases sharply in
early adolescence and remains high for
several years

 Conflict in adolescence is especially
frequent and intense between mothers
and daughters

 It is only in late adolescence and emerging
adulthood that conflict with parents
diminishes substantially


Reasons for Conflict in Early Adolescence
 Biological Changes
• Adolescents become bigger and stronger
physically making it more difficult for parents
to impose their authority by virtue of their
greater physical presence

 Cognitive Changes
• Increased abilities for thinking abstracting and
with more complexity make adolescents better
arguers and it becomes more difficult for
parents to prevail quickly in arguments with
their children


Culture and Conflict with Parents
 Conflict is not universal and “natural”
 Biological and cognitive changes take
place among adolescents in all cultures
 Parent-adolescent conflict is not typical in
all cultures

T
H
E
 Culture can take the raw
R materials of nature and shape
E FORE
them in highly diverse ways

Conflict in Traditional Cultures
 It is rare for parents and
adolescents to engage in the kind of
frequent, petty conflicts typical of
parent-adolescent relationship in
the American majority culture

 Reasons:
• Economic: In non-industrialized
traditional cultures, family members
tend to rely a great deal on each other
economically

• Culture: Cultural beliefs about parental
authority and the appropriate degree of
adolescent independence


Parents and Emerging Adults
 Typically relationships between parents and
emerging adults improve once the young person
leaves home
 Emerging adults report greater closeness and
fewer negative feelings toward their parents after
moving
• Those who had moved at least an hour away by car
from their parents reported
 highest levels of closeness to their parents
 valued their parents’ opinions most highly

• Those who remained home
 Poorest relations with their parents in these respects


A Brief Overview of ‘Living at Home’
in the United States
 Most emerging adults move out of their parents’
home in their late teen

 About 30% stay home through their early
twenties

 Staying at home is more common among Latinos,
Blacks and Asian Americans than among White
Americans

 About 40% of American emerging adults “return
to the nest” to live at least once after they leave


A Brief Overview of ‘Living at Home’
in Europe
 Emerging adults tend to live with their parents longer than
in the U.S.

 European university students are more likely than American
students to continue to live at home while they attend
university

 Emerging adults who don’t attend university may have
difficulty finding or affording an apartment of their own

 European cultural vales that emphasize mutual support
within the family while also allowing young people
substantial autonomy


Discussion Stop
 How has your “living
arrangements” with
your parents been the
same or different as
the information
presented in the text?


Historical Change – Patterns over Two Centuries
 Three changes over the past two centuries have
influenced family life

1. Lower birth rate
• In 1800, women in the U.S. had an average of 8 children
• Today the average number of children is 2

2. Longer life expectancy
• Up until 1900, the average life expectancy was about 45
• Now the average human life expectancy is over 70

3. Movement from rural to urban residence
• As recently at 1830, 70% of children lived in farm families
• By 1930, this figure had dropped to 30%
• Today it is less than 2%


The Changing Functions of the Family
Function Performing Institution, Performing Institution,
1800 2000
Educational Family School
Religious Family Church/Synagogue
Medical Family Medical Profession
Economic Support Family Employer
Recreational Family Entertainment Industry
Affective Family Family

The family in our time has mainly emotional or affective functions
To provide love, nurturance and affection above all else.


Historical Change – The Last 50 years
 The most dramatic changes have been in the following
three areas:

1. Divorce Rate
 The current rate is so high that nearly half of the current
generation of young people are projected to experience their
parents’ divorce by the time they reach their late teens

2. Single Parent Households
 Mothers represent 90% of custodial parents (parents who lives
in the same household as the children)
 Besides divorce there has been a rise in the proportion of
children born outside of marriage

3. Dual-Earner Families
 Employment among women with school-aged children has
increased from about ¼ to over ¾


Changes in Divorce Rate

Americans have the highest
divorce rate of any country
in the world


Single Parenthood


Effects of Divorce
 Young people whose parents have divorced are at
higher risk for a wide variety of negative
outcomes:
• Behavior problems
• Psychological distress
• Lower academic achievement
• Higher rates of drug and alcohol use
• Initiate sexual intercourse at an earlier age
• Depression and withdrawal
• Anxiousness
• Less likely to attend college


Effects of Divorce
 In emerging adulthood, the effects of
parental divorce are evident in:
• Greater problems in forming close romantic relationships

• Wariness of entering marriage

• Their determination to avoid divorce

Interesting Footnote: The risk of divorce is
higher for young people from divorced families


Effects of Divorce – Family Process
 Family process is the quality of family members’ relationships,
how much warmth or hostility there is between them, and so on

 Three factors of family process with regard to the effects of
children and adolescents of divorce

1. Exposure to conflict between parents
• Exposure to parents’ conflicts, more than the specific event of divorce
is especially damaging

2. Affects on parenting practices
• Divorce is stressful and painful to most of the adults who experience
it and it affects their role as parents

3. Increases in economic stress
• Money is tight in mother-headed households
• Income in mother-headed households decreases by an average of
40% to 50%


Effects of Remarriage
 Adolescents typically take a turn for the worse when their
mothers remarry

 Adolescents in stepfamilies have a greater likelihood for a
variety of problems:
• Depression Girls tend to have an
especially negative
• Anxiety reaction to their
mothers’ remarriage
• Conduct disorders
• Lower academic achievement
• More likely to engage in delinquent activities
• More problems adjusting to the remarriage


Effects of Single Parenthood
 Just as in divorced families, adolescents in never-
married, single-parent households are at greater
risk for a variety of problems
• Low school achievement
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Substance use
• Early initiation of sexual activity

Interesting Footnote: African American families
have a long tradition of extended family household and
an extended family structure has been found to
provide important assistance to single parent families


Effects of Dual-Earner Families
The effects of dual-earner families depend on the
gender of the adolescent

 Effects on Girls  Effects on Boys
• Often quite positive • More negative than the
• Tend to become more effects on girls
confident • Have more arguments
• Have higher career with their mothers and
aspirations siblings
• Poorer school performance
for boys in middle-class
and upper-middle-class
families


Family Abuses
 Factors related to Physical Abuse
 Sexual Abusers
• Abusive parents are more • Feel inadequate in their
likely to have been abused relationships with adults
themselves as children • They prefer to seek sexual
• Family stresses or problems in satisfaction from children, who
parents’ lives are easier to control

• Parents tend to be poorly
skilled at parenting  Sexually abused adolescents
• Have difficulty trusting others
and forming intimate
 Abused adolescents relationships
• Tend to be more aggressive in
their interactions with peers • Experience depression, high
anxiety and social withdrawal
• More likely to engage in
antisocial behavior and • May become either highly
substance use avoidant of sexual contact or
highly promiscuous
• More likely to be depressed
and anxious • Substance abuse

• Perform more poorly in school • Suicidal thoughts and behaviors
• Higher risk for psychological
disorder


Running Away from Home
 About 1 million adolescents run
away from home each year in the
U.S.
 About ¼ of these adolescents are Characteristics of
“throwaways” – their parents have adolescents who
forced them to leave run away

1. Involved in criminal activity
 Adolescents who run away from 2. Use illicit drugs
home have often experienced high 3. Had problems at school
conflict with their parents 4.
5.
Had psychological difficulties
More likely to be gay or lesbian

 Many have experienced physical or
sexual abuse
 Adolescents who run away tend to
be highly vulnerable to exploitation


“Street Children” around the World
 It is estimated that the total number of street children
worldwide may be as high as 100 million

 Main forces leading to adolescents on the street:
• Family dysfunction
• Poverty
• War
• Family breakdown due to AIDS
• Parental substance abuse
In Brazil estimates of
• Physical and/or sexual abuse the number of street
children range from 7
to 30 million.

In India it is estimated there are 11 Some return home in
million street children. the evening bringing
what they’ve collected.
About ½ Indian street children; of those Others return
who are homeless 4 out of 5 families home rarely.
are homeless.


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