7/30/2019 Talking About Conflict With Parents

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Talking about conflict with parents

Adolescence is frequently portrayed as a time of increasing parent child conflict, thanks in large partsto the roles played by G. Stanley Hall and Anna Freud. As adolescents and their parents activelynegotiate new roles, responsibilities, values, and expectations on the way to adulthood, parents also

tend to disclose more personal information with their soon-to-be-adult adolescents than with youngerchildren. However, parent-adolescent conflict, even in small doses, can be distressing to children andis associated with emotional distress and unhappiness.

While the majority of the extant research has focused on the antecedents and consequences of parent-adolescent conflict, considerably less attention has been paid to the strategies adolescentsemploy to manage conflict between themselves and their parents. Through a careful read of thecoping literature, it is clear that adolescents can reduce conflict with parents by behaving in ways thatparents approve (primary coping) or by changing the way they respond to conflict with parents(secondary coping). However, based on some research we recently produced, I would like to suggestanother way that adolescents cope with conflict with their parents: namely, by talking with others

about the conflict. In a paper we published earlier this year in New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development , we offer a hypothetical model of guided cognitive reframing to explainwho adolescents talk to about conflict with their fathers1. Adolescents do talk about their relationships with their parents. In our study we asked 7th grade adolescents who they talk to when the y are upset orbothered by their relationship with their co -resident fathers. (In our study, half of the co-residentfathers were stepparents.) Specifically, we probed whether they talk to their mothers, their fathers,and also asked whether they talk to anyone else. Over 75% of adolescents said they talked to theirmothers, 43% said they talked directly to dad, and 52% said they talked to someone else. While itmay seem surprising that only 43% spoke directly to dad, recall that almost half of our fathers werestepparents and were less likely to be sought out than biological parents. If adolescents talked toothers, they overwhelmingly talked to age-mates (e.g., siblings, friends) but adults were also soughtout (e.g., aunts, uncles, grandparents, birthfathers). Thus, contrary to stereotypes of brooding,distant adolescents, our results suggest they are willing to talk with parents and other sources abouttheir relationships with their fathers.2. Adolescents talk to parents who listen . Just as the classic book reminds us, there is an art togetting children to talk. We predicted whether mothers and fathers were sought out by their childrento discuss the father-child relationship, and to make these predictions we used a bevy of constructsthat assessed qualities of the parent-child relationship, the quality of the marital relationship,individual differences in the parents and children, and cultural value orientations. A clear storyemerged: adolescents talked to mom about dad when she was a warm and accepting parent and theytalked to dad about their relationship with him when he was a warm and accepting parent. Apparently,adolescents are willing to talk to parents about the sensitive topic of conflict with a parent when thatconversation is likely to be met with an open ear and accepting mind.Reference:by Jeffrey Cookston, San Francisco State University http://www.s-r-a.org/announcements/online-newsletter/2012-10-25-talking-about-conflict-parents-five-observations-and-two-

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