Adolescents' Shifting Orientation toward Parents and Peers: A Curvilinear Trend over Recent Decades

This study examines changes that have occurred in the orientation of young people toward parents and peers over the past two decades. In 1963, 1976, and 1982, identical questionnaires were administered to comparable samples of teenagers (570 total) to investigate whose advice they seek regarding 18 social issues. The purpose was to determine which concerns and problems are peer-oriented and which parent-oriented, and how orientations have fluctuated over time. Major findings of the study are as follows: (a) Different issues activate different reference groups; financial, educational, and career concerns are parentoriented, whereas social activities are peer-oriented. (b) Girls were highly parent-oriented and boys highly peer-oriented in the 1960s. By the '80s the pattern was more balanced, even reversed to some extent. (c) The data for the combined boy/girl groups, and especially for the boys, but not the girls, formed a curvilinear pattern over time, reflecting the decline of parent orientation between the '60s and '70s and its partial recovery during the '80s.