Parent -Adolescent Relationships By: Courtney Dornier

1. Parent -Adolescent RelationshipsBy: Courtney Dornier

2. Research question: How do parent-adolescent relationships affect adolescent development?

3. What can affect the relationship? • Parenting styles • Family structure • Gender of parent and adolescent • Communication

4. Parenting Styles: • Mirror what is communicated toward the child by the parent(s) • Authoritative, Authoritarian, and Permissive • Has a huge effect on emotion regulation; such skills on emotion regulation are acquired through parent-child interactions and relationships • Emotion regulation-the process of initiating, avoiding, inhibiting, maintaining, or modulating the occurrence, form, intensity, or duration of internal feeling states, emotion-related physiological, attentional processes, motivational states, and/or behavioral concomitants of emotion in the service of accomplishing affect-related biological or social adaptation or achieving individual goals

5. Authoritative parenting: • High levels of control and high levels of warmth • Adolescents who have authoritative parents will more than likely have better self-regulation and more control over their emotions

6. Authoritarian parenting: • High levels of control and low levels of warmth • These parents are considered demanding and unresponsive • Demand consequences without explanation- “Because I said so, that’s why!” Children of authoritarian parents may have lower self-esteems or may engage in aggressive behavior

7. Permissive parenting: • High levels of warmth and low levels of control • Adolescents of permissive parents often lack verbal and behavioral control • Adolescent often controls the parent • the parent may try to punish the adolescent & he/she is not taken seriously

8. Parenting styles summed up:

9. Gender of parent and adolescent: • Studies propose that parents do adopt different parenting styles • Fathers typically choose authoritarian • Mothers typically choose authoritative • The way a child perceives a parent’s choice of parenting also differs among boys and girls • Boys view fathers as: authoritarian • Boys view mothers as: authoritative/permissive • Girls view fathers as: authoritative • Girls view mothers as: authoritative/authoritarian

10. Family Structure: • Ordinal position, sibling spacing, sibling gender, family size • Research findings suggest: • Poorer parent-adolescent relationships are more common for middle children when compared to first-borns • Sibling spacing has more of a negative effect on boys rather than girls • Father-closeness is is found to be lower for girls in families of four or more children • Higher level of parental intrusiveness for only children when compared to first-borns

11. Communication: • Includes: • sensitivity and responsiveness toward child • Attunement/being engaged • Creates attachment-secure or insecure • Affects child’s social and cognitive development • Attachment leads to the relationships he/she will have with peers later on, and how he/she will see him/herself • Balance: • Individual competence should be encouraged while still maintaining a tie to keep from engaging in deviant behavior • Over time, parents and adolescents must re-evaluate their relationship

12. Communication continued… • Why should parents and adolescents re-evaluate their relationships? • Eventually they will need to reach middle-ground where there is still control but granting the adolescent freedom at the same time • This will encourage individuality within the adolescent • Slowly granting those freedoms will likely keep the adolescent from engaging in deviant behavior

13. Conclusion • What areas of adolescent development are affected by these parent-adolescent relationships? • Emotion regulation • Sense of self • Individuality • Behavior • Parenting styles and communication have more of an effect on parent-adolescent relationships than gender and family structure, although gender does play a part in parenting styles chosen

14. Recipe for positive relationships and development: • Authoritative parenting style- there is equal balance of warmth and discipline • Respond appropriately to the adolescent’s needs and show much sensitivity; be engaged as much as possible; develop a secure attachment, where the child feels a sense of worth and can feel love by and for others • Maintain a healthy balance between controlling the adolescent and letting him/her have freedom to decide what’s best for them

15. Further research: • Find out more about why fathers are most likely to choose authoritarian and mothers choose authoritative • Limitations for family structure do more research using different variables to see if there is a direct cause and effect between family structure and parent-adolescent relationships • Think beyond parenting styles, family structure, gender and communication. What else?

16. References