Parent- child relationships in the family today

Abstract

This paper examines parent-child relationships in contemporary families in Skopje. The participants were students from one city school, 85 from third grade (nine years old, in middle childhood), and 109 from seventh grade (thirteen years old, in early adolescence). The results show that the students from third grade highly estimate the quality of family interaction, and they also highly estimate the acceptance and emotionality of both parents, while control and rejection of the mother and the father were generally perceived as very low. The results obtained from seventh grade students show similar values to those from third grade. Comparing the two groups of students with regard to perceiving parental behavior results, it could be concluded that third grade students perceived higher quality of family interaction than seventh grade students, and the same is true for parental acceptance and emotionality, but they estimate the parental control and rejection significantly lower than adolescents. All this leads to the conclusion that younger children perceived their parents differently than adolescents. The parents may show more physical and verbal love for the younger children than for adolescents, but because of the process of individuation adolescents experience greater control by parents. Keywords : parents, child, adolescent, family