Fuligni, A.J. & Eccles, J.S. (1993, July-Nov.). Perceived parent-child relationships and early adolescents' orientation toward peers. Developmental Psychology, 29, 622-32.
The purpose of this study was to examine the connection between the family environment of parental authority and the social support and psychological functioning of adolescents in their peer groups. It was hypothesized that the greater the experience of assertion of parental control in matters touching on their adolescents' social and personal lives, the more likely the adolescents were to identify with their peers' authority and guidance than with their parents'.
The results of the empirical study confirmed these hypotheses. Further, the decisive period in which attitudes and the degree of peer orientation are formed is that of the early adolescence. Children's attitudes toward the degree and kind of parental involvement, or more exactly authority, over their lives that are developed in these years have implications for the degree and kind of interpersonal interaction with peers on one hand, as well as for the mental health of the emerging adolescents over the long term on the other. The transformation of the parent-child relationship is inevitable, and Fuligni and Eccles take the view that there is a difference between parental monitoring of adolescents' behavior and a framework of high parental control of such behavior. That is, the perception of high control on the part of the adolescent is likely to drive a peer-based wedge between parent and child. This differs from parental monitoring, which may be transparent to the adolescent, to the degree the adolescent perceives that he or she has a stake and a role in making life decisions, including those connected to association with peers.
The result of strict parental controls as the deciding factor of parent-child relationships at the very time that an adolescent is seeking to develop his or her own persona...