Parents’ educational styles and adolescent autonomy

The purpose of this paper is to explore, by means of semi-structured interviews, how families of adolescents perceive and describe their educational styles and the development of adolescent autonomy. Specifically, the results of two different studies will be discussed: the first was conducted with a group of 83 parents (fathers and mothers) of 15- to 18-year-old adolescents, male and female, from different cultural backgrounds (medium-low and medium-high). The second study involved both adolescents and their parents of three age-groups (10 families with 13-, 15- and 17-year-old adolescents, for a total of 90 interviews), half male and half female. In the first study fathers and mothers were asked to describe the educational style they adopted in raising their children, its consistency across situations and similarities and differences with their partner’s style; moreover, parents’ beliefs about the process of separation/ /individuation of the adolescent were assessed. The second study focused on family members’ (father, mother, adolescent) perceptions and beliefs about the nature of autonomy and its development and on their degree of congruence or incongruence within the family; moreover, the inclusion of a group of younger subjects (13-year-olds) was intended to provide a picture of a larger age span. Results of content analysis conducted on subjects’ answers showed the presence of different “models” or “styles” of education adopted by fathers and mothers, as well as different conceptions of “autonomy” and patterns of autonomy development, which appear to differ according to the sociodemographic variables considered.