General Notes on Family Relationships in Middle Childhood and Adolescence.
Reciprocal Socialization seems to be at work throughout parent-child relationships.. This is the process by which children and adolescents socialize parents, just as parents socialize them.
Parents are attempting to purposefully socialize their children, while children are unconsciously socializing their parents. A related term for some of this phenomena is Synchrony - the carefully coordinated interaction between the parent and the child or adolescent in which, often unknowingly, they are attuned to each other’s behavior.

From middle childhood and on through adolescence, children begin to spend more time with peers and less time with parents. They are changing their reference group, or desatelizing. Almost naturally, parents expectations of their children begin to change as children begin to redefine their own place in society.

As children move through our stages of interest, their parents are also continuing to change and develop.
Parental Divorce is a reality for 35-40% of all teenagers indicating that parents may not be as solid and steady as they would like to believe. This gives rise to the idea of nontraditional families, such as single parents, cohabitation of a parent with a non-relative, and so on.
 .
The Marital Satisfaction of parents tends to decrease as children move into adolescence.

• Teenagers are just burdonsome - they have an increased capacity to do damage to themselves or others
  
• Family economic burdens continue to rise as college is added to the list of costs of parenting
• Parents may (be forced) to re-evaluated their work and career. Career reevaluations
  
• Time perspective - parents may be less hopeful about the future as their experience in the real world increases
  
• Health and body concerns

Age of parents at childbearing is a factor in family relationships. In the case of teenage parents, the parent(s) is/are attempting to parenting while still working through the developmental tasks of adolescence and early adulthood. Identity, Occupational commitments, Intimacy issues all exist here.  On the other hand, there is a national trend toward delaying marriage and delaying childrearing until late 20s and early 30s. Largely because of demands to complete educational goals and begin careers, these families have fewer children and tend to be older, more stable, and have more family resources to spend on fewer children.

Sociocultural and Historical Changes
Social events such as war, economic depression, famine and drought, have historically had effects on the family. The Great Depression produced economic turmoil, discontent, emotional depression, marital conflict, inconsistent child rearing, poor hygene, and unhealthy lifestyles.  Such events take place time to time and will certainly continue to occur.  One need only to think about energy costs and consumption, global warming, and terror attacks to see this.

The role of the elderly grandparents began to change as people started living longer and can be of service to grandchildren and their own adult children.  In some cases, gradparents do a far amount of parenting and advice giving, in addition to enormous financial assistance.   This situation works out well for young families until the grandparent becomes unable to live independently and becomes a financial burden on the children.  Firm planning and budgeting long before the time comes to act is the key to successful navigation of this final stage of life.

Technological changes / Media proliferaction and influence.  While always containing elements prone to positive social value, technological changes are almost always used in ways to do ill to society and its members.  Our technologic itself doesn't care what we do with it. Thus, since the 1950s busy parents have found short term solutions to parenting by allowing television to do the babysitting.
Just in the last 30 years, our society has gone from vinyl media, to compact discs and DVD formats, to digital media over the internet.  Consider the difference in environmental influences between, on the one hand, a baby boomer growing up with highly restricted television choices, little or no popular culture outside actually going to the movies or listening to the radio. On the other hand, a child of the 1990s grew  up in an environment brimming with a dizzying array of media formats and content choices, and actually was encouraged by advances in computer related technology to steal media through file sharing.

The boomer would have to make a herculian effort to find inappropriate media content which would be tame by today's standards. The 90s baby has probably stumbled accidentally into inappropriate internet websites Imagine what that child might find if a little effort was put into the project.

Parent Child Dynamics are changing, mostly due to the effets of both parents working full time jobs away from home. Maturity only begins in middle childhood, and the process takes decades to complete. Skills such as native creativity and problem solving require some significant adult supervision. When both parents work 40+ hour jobs (college professors, for example work about 56 hours a week), time for children and family tends to get pushed back behind relaxation after work in front of the television.. Parents, especially mothers, play am indispensible role in the development of a child's values and attitudes. Ensuring that children follow appropriate routine and guidelines.

Family Processes and Parent-Adolescent Relationships
One-way socialization - the social mold perspective - was popular until around the mid 1960's. Here, parents thought themselves to be comepetely responsibile for their child's behavior and were instructed to provide a wholesome environment - restricting information about various issues - sex, drugs, rock 'n roll.

Reciprocal socialization - the two way approach was probably always the actual process that occurred. Here attitudes and behaviors were "negotiated" in mutual influence (Maslow) and mutual regulation (Erikson).. Syncrony refers to coordinated interaction between p-c in which they are attuned to each other's behavior.

The Construction of Relationships is an interpersonal process. Developmental construction views share the belief that as individuals grow up they acquire modes of relating to others. Either a person has continuous, stable relationships and comes to expect these in life, or a person has more discontinuous, changing, unstable relationships and sees this as the normal way relationships develop.

I have a theory that individuals beginto develop relationships at birth through pure Sensory information (i.e., being cuddled, nurtured, fed, kept comfortable). During childhood, these sensory feelings are reinterpreted as Emotions and transferred to Chumships (Toddler friendships, if you will). During preadolescence and teens, formal operations allows us to re-reinterpret Sensory and Emotional feelings Intellectually. That is, we can think about what makes a good friend or a sweetie-pie.

In late adolescence, we begin and maintain friendships through Intellect first, then slowly move towards Emotions as we move through adolescence. Finally, in late adolescence, we allow our Senses to experience being cuddled, nurtured, fed, kept comfortable again - not by Mom or Dad this time, but with our one true love sweetie-pie!

If early attachments are not made for parent and child, the p/c bond is hindered, which makes fchumship, friendship and love relationship much harder. Fathering studies show that Parents must adapt to the developing child.
Failure to do so necessarily means conflict and trouble in the family.

Family & Child Developmental thinkers almost all agree that Authoritative Parenting is the best way to insure child development. The big news in terms of parenting adolescents is that unless parents have been practicing authoritative styles of discipline and control since the child's early years, authoritative parenting will probably not be possible with teenagers.

Punishments versus Discipline -Punishments typically used by Authoritarian Parents

1. Traditional punishments (yelling, spanking, demeaning beavhiors) arouse anger and fears in all of us. Adolescents are particular targets for soliciting these behaviors.
2. Power assertions - regaining control via removal of privileges, striking adolescents, invoking status inequities.
3. Love withdrawal - I don't love you when you behave like this.

Essentially no punishments are necessary with Authoratative parenting. Instead - Inductive forms of control are more effective and positive. They also takes more time to accomplish inductive forms - but increases the quality of the parent/adolescent relationship. Inductive controls put the responsibility for good behavior (and the postive consequences that follow) on the teenager!
• "Let's talk about smoking for a moment - Why do you think teenagers start smoking?""How do you think this room could be kept a little cleaner?.
Limits must be placed on adolescent behaviors - In fact teenagers seek out the limits of their parents - they want limits. Limits allow a measure of rebellion (as kids move out of the parental sphere of influence to assert their autonomy.

Strategies for Reducing Parent Adolescent Conflict:

1. Establish ground rules for conflict resolution:
2. Try to reach a mutual understanding
3. Try Brainstorming
4. Try to come to an agreement about one or more solutions
5. Write down and sign agreements
6. Establish a time for a follow-up conversation to examine progress.

Ausubel's theory of adolescent autonomy:

• Satellization - beginning in childhood, the adolescent may overcome conflict by giving up her sense of self-power and the perception that anything is possible. The result is normal dependence - unconditional love and trust.
• Desatellization - breaking away from parents, which is normal, healthy - the adolescent will view successes and failures as part of life, a learning experience.
• Resatellization - adolescent may seek out and find replacements for parents - reconstruct facsimiles of old family relationships - hippie communes, new crowds at school.

• 69% felt that close contact with parents and siblings is important - secure attachment from infancy leads to higher self esteem.
• 87% felt having 1 meal a day together is important.
• 54% would have the same number of children again.
• 46% on one survey said the wouldn't marry the same person again if they could do it over).