Parental Stress and Parent-child Conflict in Adolescents\' Families

Further group interviews of adolescents\' parents then were conducted as well for this part of study. The purpose of this part of study is to explore the contents of parental stress and underlying belief systems and goals of parenting. Quantitatively the study included a survey, based on the conclusion obtained from the first part of this study.

Both parents and their children answered the questionnaires. Parental stresses, parental belief systems, parenting goals were the major variables for parents, and perceptions about parent-child relationship and beliefs about children\'s roles for children, respectively. The purpose of the survey is to examine the relationships among these variables.

About 1100 adolescents (aged 13 to 14), along with 324 mothers and 271 fathers of them, answered the questionnaires. The findings support the idea that parental stresses are good indices for the perceived conflict as well as other perceived relationships of children are not well connected to their parents\' perceptions. They hardly predict one another.

Instead, the common predictors for children\'s and parents\' perceptions are children\'s performance in school, the time parents spent with their children, and the level of education of parents.