Abstract
Family is the basic social unit of the society that keeps the nation strong by harmonious and growing relationships. Parent–adolescent relationship is one that comes with abrupt changes, at times, stressful yet blissful as both parties learn to negotiate the path to adulthood for the fast-growing adolescent. Numerous studies have been conducted looking into the nature of family conflict and resolution in Western families. Some empirical studies with this interest have just begun among Asian families; however, fewer research have concentrated on the Chinese-Filipino families, said to be quite conservative but now undergoing cultural and global changes.
This chapter is part of the three-series article presentation given during the 42nd, the 43rd, and the 44th annual convention of the Psychological Association of the Philippines, respectively. The whole study comes from the writer’s culminating dissertation on Chinese-Filipino Adolescents’ Developing Autonomy in the Parent–Adolescent Conflict and Family Cohesion. This first series focused on the univariate analysis of all the variables in this study. It attempted to distinguish dimensions of conflict, particularly, conflict frequency, and resolution style, family cohesion, and adolescents’ two orientation of autonomy, across adolescent age and gender. Another important objective for this study was to see whether the two orientations of individuating and relating autonomy do exist among the Chinese-Filipino adolescents.
Various statistical procedures were applied to answer the different research problems. All data were analyzed at an alpha level of 0.05. Univariate analyses of variances for each variable in the study were done to determine its descriptive statistics, test of between-subjects and also its age and gender interaction effects. Paired-sample t-test was done to determine adolescents’ conflict dimensions, both frequency and resolution styles, with each parent. Significant differences among the four conflict resolution styles were established using paired-sample t-test of within-subjects repeated measures. A paired-sample t-test for within-subjects analysis was also made to determine the significant differences between adolescents’ individuating and relating autonomy.
Findings indicated that the Chinese-Filipino adolescents’ strong sense of family cohesion could be inferred with the outcome of their low conflict frequency level, and also their frequent use of two significant conflict resolution styles, positive problem solving and withdrawal from parents. It is interesting to note that despite the minimal occurrence of parent–adolescent conflict among the Chinese-Filipino adolescents in this study, the two orientations of individuating and relating autonomy do exist among the Chinese-Filipino adolescents.
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Shao, R.C. (2013). Age and Gender Differences in Chinese-Filipino Parent-Adolescent Conflict, Family Cohesion and Autonomy. In: Kwok-bun, C. (eds) International Handbook of Chinese Families. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0266-4_28
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