The Future Orientation Of Adolescents And Parenting Way Relationship

Future orientation is defined as how adolescents anticipate and construct their personal future. Thinking and planning for the future are particularly impotant for adolescents, because adolescence is a transiton period from childhood to adult. The family is the most important micro- environment for adolescents'socialization and development, and parenting can direct affect parent–child interaction process, which has a close relationship with development of adolescent. In the previous research for parenting, two different research orientation were adopted mainly. One research orientation is parenting behavior, which discuss the influence of behavior dimension to the development of children and adolescents. Another approach is parenting style which take parenting stereotype. Less previous reasearch discuss the relationship between parenting and adolescents'future orientation in the two research orientation of parenting. This paper aimed to discuss the the relationship between parenting and adolescents'future orientation in two different research orientation of parenting, parenting behavior and parenting stlye.Many previous reasearch in examing the influence of parenting to adolescents'development usually explore maternal parenting, but seldom explore paternal parenting. As the influence of family system theory, family is regarded as a whole system, which exists complex interaction between father, mother and child. In children and adolescents life, father plays an irreplaceable important role and different from mother. Base on this, this research will respectively discuss the influence of paternal parenting and maternal parenting to adolescents'future orientation. Family system theory also stress adolescent's characteristics can affect parenting. Therefore, this article selects adolescents'gender as a moderator facter between parenting and adolescents'future orientation.2003 Chinese adolescents from five junior high schools and five senior high schools in Jinan City and Yantai City, Shandong Province were employed to complete the questionnaires including Future orientation questionnaire and parenting questionnaire. The indicators of future orientation included exploration, commitment, attribution, and attitudes concerning individual development in three life domains, i.e. future education, occupation and marriage/family. The indicators of parenting included acceptance, autonomy and punishment. The main findings were as follows:1 Acceptance and punishment behavior of parents can positively predict exploration, inner-attribution and attitudes concerning future education, occupation and marriage/family life domains, and negativly predict outer-attribution. Autonomy can positivly predict commitment and inner-attribution concerning future education, occupation life domains, and negativly predict outer-attribution.2 Adolescents in authoritative family will have a better future planning and more actively evaluation. Adolescents in indulgent family have more positive attitude than adolescents in negelectful families. Futher study found, authoritarian style of father has stronger prediction ability for adolescents'exploration for future than negelectful style. Authoritarian style of mother has stronger prediction ability for adolescents'exploration for future than negelectful and indulgent style.3 Paternal parenting behavior and maternal parenting behavior predict boys'future orientation in the same pattern. But for girls, paternal parenting behavior has stronger prediction ability.4 The relationship between parenting and adolescents'future orientation is same in boys and girls.