ABSTRACT
As we think about parents and adolescents and their interaction, it’s important to recall that the children we glimpse here at ages 14 and 16 were once those babies, and come trailing a very long history of interaction during which, we think, both parents and children have sought to shape each other’s responses. In concert, they have developed a relationship that is now close or distant, harmonious or conflictual. Their family life may be high in verbal interaction and discussion or marked by mutual avoidance. They may have many explicit family rules or relatively few. These rules may have been handed down by the parents or negotiated between parents and children. In short, by age 14 much has already happened, which likely sets the stage for what is to come. This history, unfortunately, remains unknown, as it does in most studies of parents and their adolescent children.
