Your Relationship with Your Kids!
- Despite transformations in parent-child relationships across the transition to adolescence, parents remain influential in their children’s lives.”
- “Adolescents look to their friends for advice on fashion or music and they turn to their parents for guidance on moral issues.”
- Adolescents perceive parents as one of the most accurate sources of information about dating, compared to peers or romantic partners.
- Adolescents anticipate parents’ reactions before taking action.
- Parents’ communication of clear expectations regarding appropriate dating behaviors is likely to influence adolescents’ subsequent decisions.
- Most parents (64%) reported using dating rules, which varied by the adolescents and parents’ gender, for their 17-19 year olds. And more than a quarter of the families in this sample reported that establishing supervisory dating rules was a process that jointly involved parents and adolescents.
Why is this research and information?
- Healthy parent-child communications and inter-personal relationships can continue through the late teen years.
- Parents think it is important to help guide their adolescent into young adulthood.
- Researchers and government agencies have begun to recognize the importance of adolescent romantic relationship as precursors of healthy adult relationships and marriages (which affects the state of the nation).
- This type of research affects relationship and skills building programs such as the Positive Youth Development programs offered through Make a Sound Choice. As we work to create communities in our region that encourage positive, healthy decision making among our youth and young adults, parents are vital to the in this mission to contribute to healthy futures. May you be encouraged in all you do!
Information taken from: “Parents’ Management of Romantic Relationships,” by Stephanie D. Madsen, McDaniel College, www.mcdaniel.edu link to article.
