Adolescent-Parent Conflict And Parental Awareness In Middle School Students' Families

Adolescent-parent conflict has been a classical topic for researchers interested in developmental psychology. However, in China, existing investigations mainly use adolescent as the only research subject, neglecting that parents and adolescent should be given the same emphasis. Considering interactive nature of conflict, the author try to explore beyond the adolescent side and get a more comprehensive understanding of this issue though focusing on the perception differences between the two sides. Moreover, the concept of "parental awareness" proposed by Sang(2000) has been introduced in this study with a narrow redefinition as "a constellation of the cognition and feelings toward parent-child relationship experienced by parents when taking the parent role". The features of parental awareness of middle school students' parents and the possible links between parental awareness and adolescent-parent conflict are discussed.Three parts are included in this study, mainly using questionnaire method.Part 1 was designed to describe the status quo of adolescent-parent conflict in middle school students' families in Shanghai. Data were collected via a questionnaire battery administered to a sample of adolescents and their parents from grade 7, 8, 10, 11. Not only several indicators were calculated to give a full description on the conflict situation adolescents perceived with their parents, but also the perception difference between parent and adolescent were compared.Part 2 was aimed to develop an assessment tool for the narrowly redefined parental awareness and find out its key features in middle school students' families. Firstly, a draft of parental awareness scale was developed via literature review, in-depth interview, focus group, and expert evaluation. Secondly, the preliminary formal scale was identified through item analysis and explorative factor analysis based on the data from 302 parents from 7^th, 8^th, 10^th, 11^th graders' families using the draft scale developed in step 1. An eventual formal scale was completed through further item selection and reliability & validity test via the data from 836 parent participants using the preliminary formal scale identified in step 2. At last, the status quo of parental awareness in middle school students' family was explored.Part 3 was arranged to examine the relationship between parental awareness and parent-adolescent conflict. Correlation analysis was conducted between the status quo of conflict perceived by the parents and their scores on the seven dimensions of the parental awareness scale. The main findings from the present study are as follows:(1) According to the conflict frequency, intensity and resolution status, the relationship between adolescent and their parents is generally harmonious in most Shanghai middle school students' families, but regretedly, it is still some families suffuring from bitter adolescent-parent conflicts that are worth paying attention to. Study and daily life arrangement are the two domains where adolescent-parent conflicts are centered. In general, there are more conflicts between mother-child dyad than farther-child dyad.(2) Great discrepancy is found on the perception of adolescent-parent conflict between the two participants.Firstly, generally speaking, the adolescent-parent conflict in parents' perception is more frequent and intensive than adolescents, but when it has to do with the adolescent's privacy, parents usually underestimate the level of conflict.Secondly, the conflict resolution is not as pleasing in parents' perception as in adolescents' perception. Significant perception difference is found between parent and adolescent on both the extent and satisfaction of the conflict resolution.Thirdly, although both mothers and fathers are inclined to underestimate the privacy conflict with children, significant perception difference can only be found in mother-child dyad, which manifested that mothers has a stronger inclination under this circumstances. As for other conflicts, once significant discrepancy occurs between father-child perception difference and mother-child perception difference, the perception difference of father-child dyad is usually bigger than the mother-child dyad. However, when it comes to the extent and satisfaction of the conflict solution, there is no significant discrepancy between the perception difference of mother-child dyad and father-child dyad..Fourthly, parents are often inclined to underestimate adolescent's motivation for conflict. The top three motivations underestimated by parents are "maintaining relationship", "striving for self-autonomy", and "fighting for fair treatment", which also happen to be the top three strongest motivations reported by adolescents.Fifthly, clear grade difference can not be found in adolescent-parent conflict in this study, as different family member reported different perception, while different domain and different indicator of conflict showed different trend.Finally, the perception difference of adolescent-parent conflict between boys and girls is not so distinct on most indicators. However, in case the difference happens to be significant, the conflict level perceived by girls is mostly higher than boys. But the result will be reversed when seen from the parents' perception. On condition that significant difference between boys' parents and girls' parents occurs, it's almost certain that boys' parents will perceive more conflict than girl's parents.(3) The 36-item formal Parental Awareness Scale contains 7 dimensions, which are "a sense of anxiety and difficulty", "child-centered cognition", "a sense of hope-building on offspring", "a sense of family hierarchy", "a sense of authority based on empirical thinking", "an urgent need for giving discipline", and "unlimited responsibility bearing". This scale is of high reliability and fair validity, thus can be used as an effective measurement. Affirmative reply inclination appears in parents' response to all these 7 "parental awareness" dimensions. And what' more, "child-centered cognition", "an urgent need for giving discipline", and "a sense of hope-building on offspring" are the most notable aspects of parental awareness for middle school students' parents.(4) In general, there is close relationship between the conflict with adolescent offspring perceived by parents and their parental awareness. Although significant correlations can be found, they are not manifested as linear relationship, which suggest there may be several complex mediate processes existing for further exploration.