Teen Relationships

Teen Relationships: Teens and their need for autonomy

One of the most important developmental tasks that a teen faces in their relationships with parents and others, is to achieve a mature and healthy sense of autonomy - the capacity to make ones' own decisions and to manage life tasks without being overly dependent on other people.

If a teen is to make it as an adult, they can't be rushing home for loving hugs after every little setback. Nor can they continue to rely on parental relationships to get them to work on time or to remind them of other duties and obligations.

So what happens within the family system relationships as a teen matures and begins to act more autonomously?

Tension increases and sparks fly!

Teen Relationships: Teen relationship squabbles

In cultures as diverse as in Asia and the United States, conflicts in relationships between parents and the adolescent teen about self-governance issues (who's the boss here!!) become much more common early in adolescence teen years and gradually decline in frequency (though not necessarily in intensity) throughout the later teenage years.

These relationship squabbles, which occur about as often in families that have immigrated from collectivist cultures as in European American homes, are usually neither prolonged nor severe, often centering around such issues the adolescent's physical appearance, her choice of friends, or neglect of schoolwork and household chores. And much of the friction stems from the different perspectives that parents and adolescents adopt.

Teen Relationships: Parent teen relationships

Parents view these teen relationships conflict through a moral or social-conventional lens, feeling they have a responsibility to monitor and regulate the conduct of their teen, whereas the teen, locked in his or her quest for autonomy, often views the nagging parents as infringing on personal rights and choices. As a teen continues to assert themself in the filial relationship and parents slowly loosen the reins, the parent teen relationships gradually evolves from an enterprise in which the parent is dominant to one in which parents and teen are on a equal footing. Yet Chinese and Asian American parents tend to exert their authority in the family relationship far longer than European American parents do, a practice that often bothers and may depress an Asian American teen.

Teen Relationships: Be welcome at home

Researchers once believed that the most adaptive route to establishing autonomy was for a teen to separate from the parents by cutting the emotional cords in the relationship. Indeed, young adolescents who perceive their relation with parents to be very conflictual and nonsupportive, appear to be better adjusted if they as the teen distance themselves a bit from their families relationship and can gain the support of a teacher, a Brother," or another adult mentor from outside the home. Yet if the teen is warmly received at home, they would be ill advised to cut the cords of the relationship, because those who gradually achieve more autonomy while maintaining close relationships to family members display the best overall pattern of psychosocial adjustment

Teen Relationships: Encouraging Autonomy - Be yourself!

Any teen is most likely to become appropriately autonomous, achievement oriented and otherwise well adjusted if their parents within the relationship gradually relinquish control. Parents should consistently enforce a reasonable set of rules while involving their teen in discussions and decisions about self-governance issues, monitoring their comings and goings, and continuing to be warm and supportive in the teen relationships, even in the face of the inevitable conflicts that arise.

Teen Relationships: Healthy Outcomes

Does this parenting style sound familiar with your teen? It should, because this winning combination of parental acceptance and a pattern of flexible control in teen relationships, that is neither too lax nor overly restrictive is an authoritative approach that is consistently associated with healthy developmental outcomes in many, many contexts.

Indeed, a teen treated this way in their relationships with their parents, often interpret parents' questions about their activities and whereabouts as a sign of concern and will volunteer or otherwise disclose this information thereby preventing parents from having to badger them or to snoop in order to know what they are doing.

Teen Relationships: Aim for some form of equality

It is mainly when parents react negatively with the relationships to how their teen is pushing for autonomy and so become overly controlling or overly permissive, that their teen is likely to experience personal distress or to rebel and get into trouble.* Of course, we must remind ourselves that socialization within the family relationships is a matter of reciprocal influence, and that it may be much easier for a parent to respond authoritatively to a responsible, level-headed teen than to one who is hostile and defiant.

To conclude, conflicts and power struggles within the relationships are an almost inevitable consequence of the quest for autonomy by any teen. Yet just about any teen and their parents are able to resolve these differences in the relationships while maintaining positive feelings for one another as they renegotiate their relationship so that it becomes more equal.

As a result, the teen autonomy seeker usually becomes more self-reliant while also developing a more 'friendlike' relationships to with their parents.