One of the many goals of parenting is to raise children who become successful adults. Ideally, teens should develop the skills they need in order to become adults who can function in the “real world”. A study shows that your parenting style impacts your teen’s autonomy and the quality of his or her romantic relationships as an adult.
Developmentally speaking, teenagers are at a stage when they are beginning to separate from their family and seek out their own, individual, identity. Little kids typically have a strong desire to seek approval from their parents. Teens, however, are much more interested in gaining approval from their friends and peers. This stage is a “stepping stone” between being a child and reaching adulthood.
Many parents feel anxious about this change that they see in their teenager. This causes some parents to choose a parenting style that they feel will give them the most control over what their teen does (or doesn’t) do. I’m going to presume that these parents are doing this out of love. Teens, after all, are often impulsive, emotional, and apt to make mistakes. Parents tend to want to protect their kids from doing something that could be disastrous.
It turns out that parents who use a psychologically controlling parenting style can end up hindering the autonomy of their teens. The same style can also harm the ability of the teen to develop relationships. In short, controlling parents are trading a short term gain (the power to decide what your teen will or will not do) for long term problems that will affect that teen into adulthood.
A study was done by investigators at the University of Virginia. Barbara A. Oudekerk, PhD., was one of the researchers. The study included 184 “ethnically and socioeconomically diverse teens” who were between the ages of 13 and 18.
The teens were asked to self-report the degree to which their parents used psychological control. It also assessed the teens’ autonomy and relatedness in friendships (at ages 13, 18, and 21) and romantic relationships (at ages 18 and 21).
The results showed that parents who used psychological control, or psychological manipulation, to control their teenager’s behavior hindered the ability of their teen balance autonomy and to obtain closeness in relationships. The key issue seems to be that these teens were not given the opportunity to practice self-directed, independent decision making.
Without that experience, teens are more likely to give in to their friends’ and partners’ decisions. This difficulty did not magically disappear when the teen became an adult. Instead, it lingered from the time the teen was 13 into his or her early adulthood. These teens were at risk for using methods that undermined autonomy in their own relationships. They also experienced depression and loneliness in their close relationships after they became adults.
It may be hard for some parents to let their teens make their any of their own decisions. However, taking away your teen’s ability to make decisions, and learn from the outcome, is going to harm his or her ability to gain autonomy and to have healthy romantic relationships as an adult.
Image by Faramarz Hashemi on Flickr.
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