Adolescent Autonomy and Parental Education Programs to Support It
Adolescent autonomy is important. From their cognitive, emotional, and behavioral development, to exploring their individual identities, beliefs, confidence, and social freedom, gaining autonomy is a gradual milestone that many adolescents crave to exercise. Parents may often be at odds with the shift in their adolescence and become frustrated with their adolescent's desire for freedom to explore and make their own decisions (Steinberg, 2022). For many parents, this is a new developmental milestone and one they aren’t fully prepared for. For immigrant parents, their own cultural beliefs, practices, and expectations may be at odds with those of their children. The balance between autonomy and authority, guidance and control, expectations and obligations is grey for immigrant parents, many of whom want their children to be safe, and successful.
There is a difference between a family's heritage culture and host culture and how they fit together. Between immigrant parents' native cultural beliefs and those of American values and experiences (Distefano et al., 2021). An education program for parents to learn to foster healthy autonomy development for their mid-adolescence would be a beneficial program. The implementation of this program could specifically help immigrant children gain autonomy through educating parents on how to balance their own cultural expectations with that of adolescent autonomy, helping foster their sense of self and cultural identity.
Adolescent autonomy has three parts; emotional, behavioral, and cognitive. Emotional autonomy relates to adolescent's close relationships with parents and how, over time, they may feel emotionally distant from their family, replaced with a newfound closeness with peers, friends, and significant others. Adolescents also start to see their parents as flawed and strip parents of their credibility and distance themselves from their parent's opinions and beliefs. This de-idealization process is suspected to be one of the first steps to emotional autonomy (Steinberg, 2022). Behavioral autonomy involves adolescents being able to make independent decisions and stick with them. They are able to consider the risks and rewards of their actions and use hypothetical thinking and the perspectives of others to come to decisions. Decision-making is linked to self-regulation which, if not properly developed, can lead to anger, sadness, and emotional dysregulation. Lastly, cognitive autonomy includes adolescents developing their own set of opinions, values, and beliefs separate from their parents. Through this, they explore their own ideologies, personal ethics, and religious beliefs (Steinberg, 2022).
Within immigrant families, many may experience conflicts due to the difference in parent and adolescent cultural expectations. Adolescents' expectations for autonomy are modeled after the independence that their peers have, while an immigrant parent’s expectations for autonomy may be based on their heritage culture (Distefano et al., 2021, Steinberg, 2022). A unique struggle of immigrant adolescents is balancing two separate cultures. Immigrant youth acclimate to new environments more quickly than do parents, so adolescents are accustomed to the norms, values, and social milestones of a new culture faster (Steinberg, 2022). The activities adolescents may want to partake in, or the choices they make about their clothing and friends could be a point of dissonance for their parents, who wish to honor their heritage culture, rather than the host culture from where they now live. Studies have shown it’s extremely important, especially for immigrant adolescents, for parents to support their autonomy in order to help them navigate multiple cultures (Distefano et al., 2021).
The fundamental differences in values may create confusing and frustrating situations where adolescents desire the autonomy they see their non-immigrant friends have and desire to piece together parts of their own identity within the different cultures they are exposed to. Internalizing values from their heritage cultures and host culture creates psychological well-being for immigrant youth. Autonomy allows them to explore new cultural contexts and work on gaining friends and participating in their host culture’s adolescent experiences (Distefano et al., 2021). Being unable to do this can build generational dissonance within the adolescent as they reconfigure how they view their parent's values and beliefs. This creates conflict and dissatisfaction within the family. While this program for parents would have to acknowledge and respect the family obligations and family responsibilities that many immigrant families value over individualized autonomy, the program can provide guidance on how to find harmony between parental values of adolescent autonomy and the values of their culture (Distefano et al., 2021).
Another reason a parenting program on healthy autonomy would be helpful is that immigrant children face parentification and role reversals. Adolescents may have a heightened sense of stress with having to financially support their family, be a translator due to a language barrier, or help their parents navigate their surroundings (Oznobishin & Kurman, 2016). Immigrant adolescents may be treated like adults and carry adult-like responsibilities, but this doesn’t mean they have a healthy way to gain autonomy. Instead, they could be more obligated to work within the family for the good of the family. A program aimed at immigrant parents could provide support or partner with advisors and other adult members to navigate different aspects of culture and obligations that are hard for them, freeing adolescents to have more autonomy and take the time to go through the individuation process.
These barriers may be more unique to immigrant adolescents, and while this doesn’t show parents overbearing and monitoring attitudes towards their youth, it does show that immigrant youth in this situation can benefit from a program as well, and parents working towards supporting healthy autonomy could be restricting in for a variety of reasons that should be covered.
In terms of benefits for parent and child, it’s clear parents' values concerning autonomy must be balanced with the values of their culture and the adolescent's new culture they’re also trying to explore and relate to their own identity, creating young adults who are able to step into the world with a positive and confidence sense of self, emotionally, cognitively and in terms of their race, culture, and identity.
References
Distefano, R., Masten, A. S., & Motti-Stefanidi, F. (2021). Autonomy-Supportive Parenting in Immigrant and Non-Immigrant Youth During Early Adolescence. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 30(5), 1171–1183. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-021-01943-1
Jensen, L. A., & Dost-Gözkan, A. (2014). Adolescent-Parent Relations in Asian Indian and Salvadoran Immigrant Families: A Cultural-Developmental Analysis of Autonomy, Authority, Conflict, and Cohesion. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 25(2), 340–351. https://doi.org/10.1111/jora.12116
Oznobishin, O., & Kurman, J. (2016). Family obligations and individuation among immigrant youth: Do generational status and age at immigration matter? Journal of Adolescence, 51, 103–113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2016.05.005
Roche, K. M., Caughy, M. O., Schuster, M. A., Bogart, L. M., Dittus, P. J., & Franzini, L. (2013). Cultural Orientations, Parental Beliefs and Practices, and Latino Adolescents’ Autonomy and Independence. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 43(8), 1389–1403. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-013-9977-6
Steinberg, L. D. (2023). Adolescence. McGraw Hill.
