Relationships with Parents of Teenagers from Full/Incomplete Families and Status among Classmates

Abstract

Objective. Identification of meaningful features of the ratio of adolescents' self-esteem of status among classmates and stylistic aspects of interactions with parents among students from full and incomplete families.Background. Family and school are the most important institutions of a teenager's socialization. In the course of the social relationships developing here, value orientations are formed, norms of social role behavior are mastered, fundamental changes related to the development of personality occur. It is clear that, from a socio-psychological point of view, a teenager's involvement in these institutions does not exist in isolation; meaningful life contexts intersect, often acquiring a conflict character. In connection with the general trend of increasing single-parent families, a comparative study of indicators characterizing the features of socialization of adolescents from full and single-parent families is of particular relevance for the organization of the educational process among primary and high school students.Study design. The paper studied the opinions of adolescents with different self-assessment of their status in the classroom ("leaders" and "outcasts") regarding a number of indicators that characterize the stylistic features of their interaction with parents: "significant other" in the immediate environment; parents' acceptance of the personal position ("opinions") of a teenager; forms of punishment of parents and reaction to them a teenager. A comparison of the stylistic features of the relationship between students and parents in full and single-parent families is carried out, depending on the self-assessment of the status ("leader" or "outcast") among classmates.Participants. 40575 students in grades 7-11 from 17 regions of the Russian Federation. Subsamples: from full families – 73,7%; from incomplete families – 26,3%; in a full family: "leaders" in the class – 7,0%, "outcasts" in the class – 4,7%; in a single-parent family, respectively: 6,5% and 5,8%.Measurements. Anonymous survey using an author's questionnaire containing closed questions. The processing of the research materials was carried out using the statistical software package SPSS 21 and StatSoft Statistica 7.0. To compare the proportions observed in two independent samples and expressed as percentages, the chi-square criterion was used in the module "Basic statistics – Difference tests" of the StatSoft Statistica 7.0 package. Factor analysis using the method of selecting the Main components with rotation according to the criterion Kaiser's Verimax.Results. The analysis of the characteristics of the frequency of distribution of students' responses regarding various aspects of their relationship with parents showed that such social parameters as completeness/incompleteness of the family in which the teenager is brought up and his self-assessment of status among classmates differentiate the opinion of schoolchildren about the stylistic features of child-parent relations. The results of the factor analysis allowed us to identify four factors that characterize the peculiarity of the relationships between different aspects of the relationship of adolescents with their parents: "authoritarianism — democracy"; "upholding independence in relations with parents"; "seeking consent — limiting the child's social contacts"; "striving to defend their position — prohibition of interpersonal contacts with friends". The interrelation of the features of the socio-psychological interaction of a teenager with his parents and his well-being in the class team is revealed.Conclusions. The results obtained indicate a kind of mutual projection of the socio-psychological relationships of a teenager with his parents and his interactions with classmates. In this regard, school educational programs should take into account the types of child-parent relationships that develop in full and incomplete families. The problem of the socio-psychological well-being of a teenager requires coordination of the efforts of the family and the school, taking into account the age-specific features of development.