How Much Freedom Should a Teen Have

Developmental Psychology, 2007

Child Development

New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 2005

There is a considerable body of evidence that an authoritative parenting style (Baumrind, 1971) in which parental control is tempered with a willingness to negotiate with the child promotes psychological adjustment

Viewing autonomy as a process of growing independence from parents during adolescence asks for a longitudinal design. This study examines the effects of growing autonomy and changing parenting quality on various measures of psychosocial adjustment (self-reliance, internal distress, deviant behavior, and school results). Questionnaires were administered two times with a two-year interval to a sample of 288 adolescent boys and girls. Two aspects of adolescent autonomy were studied, emotional autonomy (adaptation of the Steinberg measure) and behavioral autonomy. Authoritativeness was measured as a general index of parenting quality. It comprises high levels of both support or involvement and firm control of the parents, and low levels of psychological control.

PsycEXTRA Dataset

O verview Everyone recognizes that babies and young children need and love their parents. But what about teens? Even an adolescent's own parents can despair and wonder how their loving child has apparently become so rejecting. But "apparently" is a crucial word. Research indicates that not only does parenting continue to be important for adolescents, but also that most adolescents themselves continue to report positive relationships and interactions with their parents. This Research Brief brings together recent results of a nationally representative survey of U.S. teens about the nature of their relationships with their parents and findings from rigorous research studies on the parent-adolescent bond. The evidence presented shows that while the proportion of teens reporting positive relationships with their parents does dip somewhat during the early teen years and while this proportion is lower for parents who live apart from their children, adolescents, in general, respect, admire, and like their parents and enjoy spending time with them. These results from interviews with teens dovetail with research showing the link between the quality of parent-child relationships and a wide range of positive outcomes for teens. Moreover, this research is reinforced by similar findings in industrialized countries elsewhere in the world, which we also report on in this brief.

Studies on Home and Community Science, 2014

The present study has been designed to find out adolescents’ perception of their relationship with both the parents and its impact on the emotional autonomy. A sample of 200 adolescents comprising of 100 boys and 100 girls in the age group of 16-18 years was drawn from four Government schools of Ludhiana city. Parent Child Relationship Scale by Nalini Rao and Emotional Autonomy Scale by Steinberg and Silverberg were used to assess parent adolescent relationship and emotional autonomy of the respondents respectively. Results revealed that highly autonomous boys considered their father to be more rejecting and neglecting and less loving than their mother. Highly autonomous girls perceived their father to be demanding and their mother to be less rewarding symbolically and objectively and less loving. Aspects of positive parenting such as protecting, symbolic reward, loving and object reward was associated with decreased emotional autonomy among adolescents.

In an attempt to explain the different results concerning emotional autonomy , the present study examines the role of both decisional autonomy and emotional autonomy as predictors of psychosocial adjustment. This relation is studied with age and parenting style as moderator variables in a sample of 589 young adolescents. Does the prediction of adjustment by autonomy differs between different age and parenting groups ? Results show that emotional autonomy and cognitive detachment must be distinguished as two different and independent subscales of the Emotional Autonomy Scale . The patterns of prediction of psychosocial adjustment by autonomy differ between different grade levels and between different parenting groups. This differentiation helps clarify the distinction between and the nature of emotional autonomy and cognitive detachment.

New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 2005

Adolescents and parents view parents' regulation of some aspects of adolescents' lives as legitimate, but they disagree as to how much personal freedom adolescents should have. Too much parental control over personal issues in early adolescence leads to feelings of psychological control, but increasing autonomy over personal issues in later adolescence leads to better adjustment.

2012

The concept of autonomy is central to human existence, and has been the subject of much scholarly work. Deriving from the Latin words autos, meaning self, and nomos, meaning law or rule, the word autonomy literally means self-rule. From a psychosocial perspective, the attainment of autonomy as a capacity is considered a primary milestone of psychosocial development. Traditionally conceptualized as individuation from parents and the formation of a coherent self-identify (Blos, 1962), more recent perspectives view autonomy as a fundamental human need for self-regulation, self-governance, and agency (e.g. Ryan & Lynch, 1989, Kagitcibasi, 2005) within the context of positive and supportive relationships with others (e.g. parents, teachers; Allen, Hauser, Bell & O'Connor, 1994). From a cultural standpoint, Markus and Schwartz (2010) argue that "the moral importance of freedom and autonomy is built into [the United State's] founding documents" (p. 344) with cross-cultural studies identifying the need for autonomy as significant to adolescent development among diverse populations including Chinese, Asian-American and Latin-American populations (e.g. Fuligni, Tseng & Lam, 1999; Yau & Smetana, 1996; Nucci, Camino & Sapiro, 1996). In consideration of its centrality both to psychosocial development (e.g. Steinberg & Silverberg, 1986) and the human condition (e.g. Markus & Swartz, 2010), it is therefore not surprising that in Autonomy as Freedom from (External) Control: Autonomy-Granting and Autonomy Support Research concerning autonomy among many educational, mental health, and social science researchers as the construct of autonomy pertains to academic and mental health outcomes typically examines individual autonomy within the context of autonomy-granting by significant adults. Parents and teachers are often portrayed as the gatekeepers to autonomy serving as both barriers to, and access points for, choices and opportunities available to youth in addition to playing a key role in fostering an environment that is either conducive to or restrictive of autonomy. The literature on autonomy-granting is based on the premise that both parents and teachers have an impact on adolescents' sense of autonomy through the behavioral choices they allow adolescents and the extent to which they encourage or permit adolescents the opportunity for selfregulation. Examination of individuation, intrinsic motivation and the autonomy-granting of parents and teachers to the exclusion of examination of control results in a narrow focus on either individual processes involved in self-regulation as it relates to motivation or psychosocial processes involving relationships with parents and teachers. Research on autonomy within the parent and teacher contexts largely examines how the family and school contexts act upon the adolescent and the extent to which parents and teachers grant autonomy to adolescents. Less focus is given to the actions and perceptions of the adolescents themselves and the extent to which adolescents perceive they have control over their environment, their lives and their decisions. Traditional examination of autonomy-granting by parents and teachers also tends to focus on the extent to which

Public Health Nursing, 2004

During the developmental stage of adolescence, young people strive for independence and begin to make decisions that impact them for the rest of their lives. The purpose of this descriptive study was to examine the literature over the past 15 years to analyze the concept of autonomy in adolescence and to identify possible relationships between autonomy and health behavior. The findings indicate that few studies have been carried out that address the issue of autonomy as it relates to adolescent lifestyles or ''ways of living,'' particularly related to health behaviors. Additional study is warranted to develop more defined theoretical and operational definitions of the concept of autonomy, which will be of value for the development of instruments for measurement and continued research. Furthermore, understanding the antecedents and consequences of adolescent autonomy will facilitate the development of more appropriate health-promoting interventions based on developmental needs.