Parent-adolescent conflict in early adolescence

Adolescence, Spring, 2004 by Barbara N. Allison, Jerelyn B. Schultz

Adolescence is viewed as a period of transformation and reorganization in family relationships (Grotevant & Cooper, 1986; Steinberg, 1990). Prominent among these changes is the shift that occurs from unilateral authority exercised by parents over their children to mutual authority in which adolescents share in the decision-making process and exercise increasing amounts of personal jurisdiction over their own behavior (Youniss & Smollar, 1985). This shifting and renegotiation of authority and control, along with a host of correlated biological, social, cognitive, and self-definitional/personal identity transitions that occur during this period, results in transformations in the pattern of family interactions and is associated with the emergence and escalation of conflict between adolescents and their parents (Montemayor, 1986; Paikoff & Brooks-Gunn, 1991; Steinberg, 1990).

Research supports the claim that conflict is an integral component of parent-adolescent relationships (Laursen, 1995). Researchers have focused on the normative features of parent-adolescent conflict, including its frequency and intensity, developmental features throughout adolescence, the types of issues creating conflict, and its variation across families (Barber, 1994; Montemayor, 1983; Smetana, 1989; Steinberg, 1981). Specifically, conflict has most often, but not universally (Laursen & Collins, 1994), been reported to be at its highest levels in early adolescence and at its lowest levels in late adolescence (Clark-Lempers, Lempers, & Ho, 1991; Furman & Buhrmester, 1992; Galambos & Almeida, 1992; Montemayor & Hansen, 1985; Montemayor, 1983; Offer, 1969; Paikoff & Brooks-Gunn, 1991; Steinberg, 1990). Conflict has also been linked to puberty or the degree and/or timing of pubertal maturation, as distinguished from age, in a number of studies (Holmbeck & Hill, 1991; Hill, Holmbeck, Marlow, Green, & Lynch, 1985a, 1985b; Steinberg, 1981, 1987, 1988; Steinberg & Hill, 1978), while several other studies have reported little or no association between pubertal status and conflict in the family (e.g., Laursen & Collins, 1994). Parent-adolescent conflict has been found to vary as a function of gender, with conflict more often involving adolescents and their mothers than fathers, and daughter-mother dyads in particular (Hill, 1988; Montemayor, 1986; Paikoff & Brooks-Gunn, 1991; Collins & Russell, 1991; Smetana, 1989; Steinberg, 1981). Finally, changes in parent-adolescent relationships during adolescence, including variation in conflict, have been found to be mediated by family context, family atmosphere, family structure, parental work status, personality characteristics and cognitive attributions of adolescents and parents, parenting styles, family interactional patterns, and ethnic-racial and cultural context of the family (Anderson, Hetherington, & Clingempeel, 1989; Barber, 1994; Collins, 1990; Flanagan, 1990; Hill & Holmbeck, 1987; Jacob, 1974; McLoyd, Cauce, Takeuchi, & Wilson, 2000; Montemayor, 1986; Paikoff & Brooks-Gunn, 1991; Reuter & Conger, 1995; Smetana, 1988; Smetana & Gaines, 1999).

Although much has been learned about the nature of parent-adolescent conflict, the bulk of the research has focused on conflict throughout the pubertal and postpubertal years of adolescence, encompassing ages 12 to 18, or conflict linked to pubertal status per se (Montemayor, 1983; Paikoff & Brooks-Gunn, 1991; Steinberg, 1990). Much less attention has been paid to conflict during early adolescence. This is unfortunate considering that the early years of adolescence have been associated with relational changes in the family, including heightened levels of conflict between young adolescents and their parents. Further, the study of changes in parent-adolescent conflict during adolescence has itself been truncated by the paucity of information on conflict in the prepubertal period of later childhood and the transitional years between late childhood and early adolescence (Paikoff & Brooks-Gunn, 1991; Hill, 1988).

The research that has explored parent-adolescent conflict during the early years of adolescence (approximately 11 to 15 years of age) has been concerned with the impact of puberty on parent-adolescent conflict, age differences in conflict during this period, and the specific issues or topics associated with disagreements, arguments, and negatively charged exchanges between the parties. Steinberg (1981, 1987, 1988) and Steinberg and Hill (1978) conducted a series of studies on pubertal status and parent-adolescent conflict with samples of 11- to 14-year-old boys and 11- to 16-year-old boys and girls, studies which employed cross-sectional and longitudinal designs, a variety of measurement methods, including observations of parent-adolescent interaction, questionnaires, and rating scales, and both behavioral (e.g., interruptions, explanations, deference) and self-report estimates of the frequency and intensity of conflict. Related studies of pubertal maturation and parent-adolescent conflict were conducted with samples of 7th-grade boys (Hill, Holmbeck, Marlow, Green, & Lynch, 1985a) and 7th-grade girls (Hill, Holmbeck, Marlow, Green, & Lynch, 1985b; Holmbeck & Hill, 1991), research which employed both questionnaire and observational measures. Putting aside the question of pubertal maturation per se and its impact on parent-adolescent relationships, the results of the Steinberg and Hill studies revealed heightened levels of conflict, oppositional behavior, and emotional distancing, as well as lower levels of parenting satisfaction, during the early years of adolescence. The parent-son and parent-daughter data also indicated greater volatility and conflict between boys and girls and their mothers, but not fathers, during this time.