Teenagers and Parents
Adolescents are influenced by their parents' career choices. If parents are white-collar workers, the adolescent probably will be too; if parents are blue-collar workers, the adolescent most likely will be, as well. Contrary to stereotypes, parents still play an important role. Rules should be a reciprocal give-and-take processāadolescents need rules that are firm, but fair, and should be allowed to participate in the decision-making (induction) process. This give and take is characteristic of the authoritative parenting style, and leads to adolescents who are autonomous, but also maintain proper attachments to the family. Reasonable rules represent parental love and concern. By late adolescence, the quality of parent-child interactions improves significantly. Adolescents need to develop autonomy(independence) in three areas: emotional autonomy (capacity to relinquish childlike dependencies on parents), behavioral autonomy (capacity to make independent decisions and follow through), and value autonomy (having a set of principles about right and wrong).
Parent-adolescent conflict exists, but there is not as much of a generation gap as the media would have people believe. Adolescents are very similar to their parents in most values and ethical issues, including religious, political, and economic values, but parents do lose out to an adolescent's peers when it comes to clothing, slang, and musical tastes, those issues which are considered to be personal choice domains. Adolescents may begin to show emotional distance, manifested by privacy seeking (not letting parents listen in on phone calls, closing their door. Although there is a slightly higher level of conflict between parents and adolescents during early adolescence, it is not the time of storm and stress that theorists once believed. Conflict in general seems to be fairly stable (e.g. if there was conflict in childhood there will be conflict in adolescence), and conflict tends to be more about day to day issues (bickering) than outright conflict. Cross-cultural studies of adolescent self-perception indicate that most teenagers feel good about themselves.
Regarding peers, an adolescent who is strongly peer-oriented may be looking for acceptance and attention from others because of a lack at home (compensatory model). In contrast, the developmental construction model states that teens that have healthy, positive relationships with their parents will have stronger peer, dating, and marriage relationships. With best friends, similarity is important (e.g., age, socioeconomic and ethnic status). Most teens want one or two best friends; girls' friendships are deeper and more interdependent. Adolescents typically form peer groups that are based around either friendship/shared activities or reputation. Cliques are small groups of adolescents comprised of 2-12 individuals (the average is 5-6 people) who are roughly the same age and sex, and are often defined by common activities or friendships. Crowds are larger groups of adolescents that are based on reputation (e.g. jocks, brains). We call crowds reference groups because even though the members of a crowd may not know each other, they provide adolescents with an identity in the eyes of other adolescents.