ABSTRACT
Being an adolescent is confusing. One can hear a fourteen-yearold saying, “I can decide my own life, thank you.” This mind-set often leads to a debate between parent and child and inevitably a power struggle. Parents face a new batch of problems when their previously accepted authority is questioned by a child who is becoming more independent. Families are unsure what is normal. I recall friends who had a daughter and their family seemed very amiable, so much so that a researcher studying types of families wanted to classify them as a normal family. When the time came to test the family, the mother refused to be interviewed. She said, “We don’t have a normal family. Our daughter is registering for college and the whole family is upset.” This anecdote illustrates the idea that families can be viewed not as being of one type or another, but as having different reactions to the stages of the life cycle. Another consideration is ethnicity. Often the child and the parents were born in different countries. For example, an Italian family had a mother and a fifteen-year-old daughter who argued at length because the daughter wanted to date like the other American girls in school did. The mother debated the daughter at length on this issue, with the daughter saying “Everyone dates at fifteen in America,” and the mother opposing this practice. The mother sought to support her position by taking her daughter to visit her own mother in Italy. She told her mother the circumstances. Instead of supporting her, the grandmother said “I think it’s wonder-
ful that fifteen-year-olds can date. We never could date when I was young.” Angry, the mother took her daughter back to America and gave in on the dating issue. Both young people and parents can have trouble adapting to changing times.
