“Clean your Room!”

Abstract

Middle-class African American adolescents' and parents' (n = 82 families) everyday conflicts were examined longitudinally over 2 years. The number and frequency of conflicts did not change from early to middle adolescence, but mothers rated conflicts as less intense and adolescents rated conflicts as more intense over time. Conflicts over home-work increased and conflicts over the adolescents' rooms declined from early to middle adolescence. African American adolescents primarily justified conflicts on the basis of personal jurisdiction, and personal reasoning increased significantly with age. Mothers' pragmatic justifications for conflicts increased and their social-conventional justifications decreased over time. Across ages, nearly all conflicts were resolved by adolescents' giving in to parents. Compromise was relatively infrequent but increased with age, whereas reported use of punishment decreased. Although conflict may reflect normative developmental processes of individuation, the cultural and ecological context of middle-class African American families influences its expression and resolution.

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