Abstract: Parent-child relationships are a classical theme in developmental psychology. Particular attention has been paid to the nature and change of parent-child relationships during adolescence in recent years. Although the literature has changed from an emphasis on inevitable estrangement to a view that the family adjusts and maintains its relationship to accommodate the increasingly mature adolescent, researchers have consistently seen that the transition into adolescence introduces certain amount of disruption into the relationship, such as small to moderate increases in conflict and declines in cohesion. Developmental psychologists believe that the changes in parent-child relationships during adolescence are instigated by adolescents’ increased sense of autonomy and independence and declined respect for parental authority. Culture may be involved in this process. Because adolescents’ beliefs about individual autonomy and parental authority vary across cultures, parent-adolescent relationships may reflect specific cultural norms and values. Despite the argument on the importance of culture for human development, however, the majority of the research has been conducted with adolescents and families in Western cultures. Research on adolescents in Mainland China has been very rare. The major purposes of the present study were to examine beliefs about individual autonomy and parental authority, parent-adolescent conflict and cohesion among contemporary urban and rural adolescents in Mainland China, and whether the associations between parent-adolescent relationships and adolescents’ beliefs about parental authority and expectations for autonomy were identical with those found among adolescents in western cultures.
We administered measures of expectations of individual autonomy, beliefs about parental authority and parent-adolescent conflict and cohesion to 704 urban and rural 10th and 12th grade students in Shandong province, the people’s republic of China. The results indicated that despite the radical social and economic reforms in Chinese society, both urban and rural adolescents continued to report strong endorsement of parental authority and expectations for later personal behavioral autonomy. Compared with rural adolescents, urban adolescents possessed greater acceptance of open disagreement with parents, expectations for earlier individual autonomy, and their relationships with parents were characterized by more frequent and intense conflicts as well as lower cohesion. These results suggested that the modernization process taking place in China had a greater impact on urban adolescents than it did on rural adolescents, whereas rural adolescents were more influenced by traditional Chinese norms and values. Significant variations also emerged in adolescents’ attitudes towards parental authority, expectations for behavioral autonomy and parent-adolescent conflict and cohesion as a function of adolescent’s age and gender and parents’ gender. The associations between Chinese adolescents’ beliefs and expectations of parental authority and behavioral autonomy and parent-adolescent relationships appeared somewhat different from the patterns reported among adolescents in western cultures. These findings were discussed in terms of China’s cultural traditions and the ongoing social and economic reforms

Key words: behavioral autonomy, parental authority, parent-adolescent conflict, parent-adolescent cohesion