ABSTRACT
Parent–adolescent conflicts are an important feature of adolescent development. Conflicts have been associated with adolescent psychosocial adjustment, the quality of the parent–adolescent relationship, and the development of adolescent autonomy and interpersonal problem-solving skills. In this chapter, I explore the role of parent–adolescent conflicts in the transformation of the parent–adolescent relationship from the dynamic systems perspective. First, I introduce a model of the parent–adolescent relationship as a temporal interpersonal emotion system (TIES) that consists of two self-regulating individuals within a dyadic system at multiple timescales. Then, I review research on parent–adolescent conflicts that demonstrates parent–adolescent TIES using the dynamic systems concepts of attractors, flexibility and rigidity, and phase transitions. Finally, I discuss the value that the dynamic systems approach brings to understanding parent–adolescent conflicts as an important interpersonal developmental context by pointing to important future directions in research and applied settings.
