Changes in Frequency and Intensity Due to Child Age
A large proportion of the communication between parents and preadolescent children typically involves parents’ attempts to regulate their children’s behavior and children initially resisting these attempts, but ultimately complying with the demands of their parents (Laursen, 1993).
That is, a large proportion of the parent-child communication that takes place in families with young children fits most definitions of conflict communication. However, because parental regulation of child behavior is such a normative and expected aspect of the parent-child relationship, neither parents nor children perceive their interactions or their relationships as particularly conflicted (Laursen, Coy, & Collins, 1998).As children grow older and move from other regulation to self-regulation ( Burleson, Delia, & Applegate, 1995), the frequency of parentchild conflict decreases. Simultaneously, parents’ use of physical punishment decreases as children get older (Straus & Gelles, 1990), which indicates that the physical intensity of conflict also decreases. At the same time, however, family members report an increase in the perceived frequency and intensity of family conflict as children reach adolescence (Williams, Conger, & Blozis, 2007). This apparent contradiction can be explained by the changing nature of the parent-child relationship as the child reaches adolescence. Parental influence and guidance, and thus observable conflict behavior, is typical for parents’ interaction with young children. Because it is also normative, however, it is not perceived as conflict by family members on the psychological level. In contrast, adolescence is a time of less frequent conflict behaviors. However, because it is also a time of identity formation and separation from the family for the adolescent, the conflict that occurs during adolescence is more salient to family members and is experienced more intensely emotionally (Laursen & Collins, 2004).
In addition, adolescents are more assertive and aggressive than younger children during family conflict (Williams et al., 2007).In relationships involving younger children, both parents and children understand the parents’ role in the relationship as one that provides guidance and discipline. Both parents and children expect to have these conflicts with one another and see it as an integral and therefore not necessarily salient aspect of their relationship. As a consequence, both parents and children perceive their relationship to be relatively free of intense conflict, even though much of their communication is parents exerting influence over their children’s behavior and could objectively be defined as conflict.
Adolescents, in contrast, tend to see themselves as much more autonomous and independent in their relationships with their parents (Noller, 1995) and increasingly come to resent the regulating behavior of their parents (Smetana, Yau, & Hanson, 1991). For them, resistance to parents often becomes an end in itself (Collins & Luebker, 1994), while parents try to maintain their influence on their children. Thus, the influence that parents exert on their adolescent children itself becomes the underlying relational issue that manifests itself in conflict about ostensibly other topics, making these conflicts more intense and both parents and adolescents more aware that they do experience conflict in their relationships (Laursen et al., 1998).
The relative salience of conflict in the parent-adolescent relationship was recognized by Noller (1995), who argued that for adolescents, family communication serves five functions, all of which are mainly achieved through conflict communication. Specifically, she argues that family communication functions (1) to allow adolescents to renegotiate roles, rules, and relationships; (2) to help them explore their identity; (3) to enhance adolescents’ self-esteem; (4) to model and teach problem-solving behaviors; and (5) to enable adolescents’ decision making.
The three functions most obviously related to conflict communication are the renegotiation of roles, rules, and relationships; the modeling and teaching of problem-solving behaviors; and enabling of decision making. Almost by definition, these functions involve intrafamilial conflict communication. For example, it is hard to imagine that renegotiations of parent-adolescent relationships and the rules that accompany them can be accomplished without conflict. In fact, the renegotiation of roles explicitly involves a change in the power relationship from relative dependence to relative independence of the adolescents. Adolescents usually aim for greater independence, and the parents usually aim to maintain the status quo. Because both parents and children are heavily invested in their respective aims, these conflicts are not easily resolved and are often quite emotional. Similarly, for parents to teach and to model conflict behaviors and to teach decision-making skills requires them to engage in family conflict and decision making. There is an old adage that children learn more from how parents behave than from what parents say, and conflict communication is no exception.Although ostensibly not about conflict, fulfilling the functions of helping adolescents explore their identities and to enhance their self-esteem also are related to family conflict. Exploring identities will almost invariably involve adolescents taking positions and espousing opinions and values that differentiate them from other family members and particularly their parents. According to Harris (1998), during adolescence, children orient themselves toward their peers for their social identities precisely because they allow them to distinguish themselves from their parents. The more different adolescents are from their parents, the clearer are their identities defined for their peers and the greater the social status afforded to them by their peers. As a consequence, the process of identity formation of adolescents often involves their rejection of core values held by parents, which parents cannot help but perceive to involve rejections of them as individuals, setting the stage for often intense conflicts.