Adolescent-Parent Relations

Kyunghwa Kwak

The socialization of family consists of two complementary developmental processes: autonomy/independence as sought by adolescents and embeddedness/interdependence as expected by their parents. The compatibility or coexistence of these two processes establishes a common matrix for the adolescent's enculturation as well as for parental efforts to ensure transmission of cultural priorities. Within this matrix, stressful negative tension can be maladaptive for adolescents in the short term, but family disagreements can also promote healthy long-term development. A related challenge is the ability of ethnocultural and immigrant adolescents to maintain their core cultural values amidst the dominant culture of the larger society. For harmonious family relations, these adolescents need to adhere willingly to their family values at home; they thus require coping strategies to deal with discrepancies in these values inside and outside the home. Parents, in turn, require the ability to embrace as well as negotiate the adolescents' developmental changes and demands ...

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