What do Romanian Parents and Adolescents Have Conflicts About?
What do Romanian Parents and Adolescents Have Conflicts About?

Summary/Abstract: Parent-adolescent (P-A) conflict presents ethno-cultural particularities with regard to its thematic content. The purpose of the present research was to establish the main thematic categories of the P-A conflict within the Romanian culture and understand how various dimensions of conflict relate to the P-A relationship. Concerning methodology, based on the in-depth, semi-structured interviews, 122 adolescents (Mage = 15,4) provided information about conflicting issues with their parents, as well as data about the intensity, frequency, justifications, or stimuli of conflict. The results indicated twelve thematic conflicting categories. “Parental control of adolescents”, “personal activities” or “school and education” categories recorded the most frequent conflicts, a situation which is explainable in Romanian context. What is more, adolescents’ specific preoccupations and age were related to conflict, whereas the conflict actors’ different attributions with regard to accidents or to parents’ behavior proved to elicit conflict, as well. In addition, adolescents reported frequent conflicts as a result of the parents’ use of psychological control related strategies. Overall, this research underlines the necessity of culturafeatured research in deconstructing the P-A conflict.

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