Mind your own business! Longitudinal relations between perceived privacy invasion and adolescent-parent conflict

Skyler T Hawk, Loes Keijsers, William W Hale, Wim Meeus

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

77 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Privacy coordination between adolescents and their parents is difficult, as adolescents' changing roles require adjustments to expectations about family boundaries. Adolescents' perceptions of privacy invasion likely provoke conflicts with parents, but higher levels of conflict may also foster invasion perceptions. This longitudinal study assessed relations between privacy invasion and conflict frequency among adolescents, mothers, and fathers (N = 309). Bidirectional relations were present; all reports showed that invasion provoked conflict in later adolescence, but the timing and direction of conflict-to-invasion relations differed between respondents and measurement waves. The findings suggest a functional role for conflict in adolescent-parent privacy negotiations, in that it both draws attention to discrepant expectations and provides youths with a means of directly managing perceived boundary violations.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)511-520
JournalJournal of Family Psychology
Volume23
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2009
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Adolescent
  • Child
  • Communication
  • Expressed Emotion
  • Family Conflict/psychology
  • Female
  • Gender Identity
  • Humans
  • Individuation
  • Longitudinal Studies
  • Male
  • Models, Psychological
  • Negotiating
  • Parenting/psychology
  • Personal Space

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