Abstract:
There were controversial research findings about the sources of parent -adolescent conflict especially about the particular gender and sub-stages of adolescents in which frequent parent-adolescent conflict occurs. Hence this research was intended to investigate parent-adolescent conflict as a function of adolescent sex, sub-stages, and parents’ educational level. Moreover, whether adolescent sex and sub-stages influence parent-adolescent conflict was investigated on 150 adolescent participants. Mean, standard deviation, Independent t-test, one-way ANOVA, and Pearson product moment correlation were employed for analyzing data obtained from adolescent participants. In addition to this, data obtained from parents was qualitatively analyzed through narration. The research results demonstrated that, household chores, autonomy, family relationships, academic issues, financial, and curfew were found to be the major issues of conflict between parents and adolescents. Adolescent sex and age difference over domains/issues of conflict showed statistical significance difference in some issues /domains of conflict. For instance, females had more conflict than males over household chores whereas males had more conflict than females over substance use. But, in the rest domains there were no significant difference between male and female adolescents over domains of conflict to parent adolescent conflict. Adolescent sub-stages and domain of conflict demonstrated that early adolescents scored higher in many of the issues/ domains of conflict than middle and late adolescents and this indicates early adolescents frequently conflicting with their parents on the major issues of conflict than middle or late adolescents. There were insignificant positive relation between mother education and domains of conflict where as there were significant positive relation between father education and domains/issues of conflict to parent-adolescent conflict.
Key words: Parent-adolescent conflict, gender, age, level of education.