Conceptions Of Parental Authority And Its Mechanism Affecting Parent-adolescent Relationship In Adolescence

Parent-adolescent relationship has been considered as one of the key factors in adolescents' behavioral and mental health. There has been a pervasive trend to understand the development of parent-adolescent relationship from a cognitive perspective. As a view of Social Cognitive Development from Smetana (2005), the discrepancies between parents' and adolescents' beliefs on parental authority and personal jurisdiction lead to conflicts in parent-adolescent relationships, however, there has been few empirical research researches to link the discrepancies directly to parent-adolescent relationship. This paper innovatively explored the influence of adolescents' and parents' conceptions of parental authority on their relationship, through comparing the cognitive difference of parents and adolescent with regard to parent authority, which may give a direction to improve the relationship between adolescent and their parents theoretically.The present study has demonstrated that: (1) adolescents' and parents' conceptions of parental authority in different domains; (2) the relation between adolescents' conceptions of parental authority and their self-consciousness. (3) and proposed an effective model of parent-adolescent relationship, self-consciousness and the discrepancies between adolescents' and parents' conceptions of parental authority.Conceptions of parental authority questionnaire, parent-adolescent relationship questionnaire and self-consciousness questionnaire were administrated among 1019 students form Grade 7 to 12, with their parents. The following results were obtained:(1) In general, adolescents and their parents agreed that parents have the legitimate authority and adolescents have the obligation to follow their parents' rules; and it was also accepted that adolescents have the decision-making autonomy on personal issues. Over the course of adolescence, adolescents and their parents' ratings of the legitimacy and obligation to comply of parental authority decreased, as their rating of adolescents' personal jurisdiction increased, especially in personal domain. Female adolescents were more likely to follow parental authority, however demanded more personal jurisdiction.(2) Adolescents' and parents' conceptions of parental authority changed with different conceptual domains. They both agreed that parents have more legitimate authority to regulate moral issues than all of the other domains. Adolescents' and Parents' conceptions of parental authority developed in different pathway with different conceptual domains.(3) Parents regarded themselves as having more legitimate parental authority, and adolescents as more obligated to comply than adolescent did, as well considered adolescents as less personal jurisdiction over their personal issues, especially in friendship domain. Parents' conceptions of parental authority developmentally lagged behind that of adolescents', mainly in personaldomain.(4) The relationship between adolescent and their parents was affected more by the discrepancies emerged between adolescents' and parents' conceptions of parental authority, which led to more conflicts and decreased cohesion.(5) It was found that adolescents' private self-consciousness positively predicted their conception of legitimate parental authority and obedience obligation, and the public self-consciousness predicted their conception of personal jurisdiction as well.(6) An effective model of parent-adolescent relationship with conceptions of parental authority was proposed that the discrepancies emerged between adolescents' and parents' conceptions of parental authority led to increased conflicts and decreased cohesion, which was feebly mediated by adolescents' attention to themselves; however adolescents' attention to private self promoted the cohesion between adolescent and their parents, and their attention to public self intensified their conflict as well.