What parents say? A qualitative description on parents' perspective about family conflict and communication during emerging adulthood in Spain and Portugal

WHAT PARENTS SAY? A QUALITATIVE DESCRIPTION ON PARENTS’ PERSPECTIVE ABOUT FAMILY CONFLICT AND COMMUNICATION DURING EMERGING ADULTHOOD IN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL García-Mendoza, M. C1., Parra, A1., Coimbra, S2., & Sánchez-Queija, I1. 1Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology. Universidad de Sevilla, España 2Department of Psychology. Universidade do Porto, Portugal The funding was provided by the project Factores de Riesgo y Protección en la Adultez Emergente. Un Estudio Longitudinal-Secuencial supported by grant from the Junta de Andalucía (PROYEXCEL_00766). This work also was supported by grant from the Spanish Ministry of Universities, Spain's recovery and resilience plan and European Regional Development Fund –NextGenerationEU. 1. INTRODUCTION FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS DURING EMERGING ADULTHOOD EMERGING ADULTHOOD: new stage of development situated between adolescence and adulthood -18 to 29 years oldin Western, postindustrial societies (Arnett, 2000, 2014). oBy definition, emerging adults are no longer adolescents but have not yet completely reached adulthood because of the delay in the assumption of adult roles (e.g., being a parent or mother, financial or housing independence) (Arnett, 2007). o This period of life is characterized by feeling “in-between”, instability and possibilities (Arnett, 2014). oThis stage is defined by the socio-cultural characteristics of the context in which it takes place (Arnett & Padilla-Walker, 2015; Zhong & Arnett, 2014). 1. INTRODUCTION FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS DURING EMERGING ADULTHOOD CONFLICT: negative interactions (e.g., disagreements or disputes) between parents and children (Laursen & Collins, 2009). oPrevious research has found a low-medium level of family conflict reported by emerging adults (Kumar & Mattanah, 2018) and their parents (Fang et al., 2021). oMoreover, during this stage, there is a decrease in conflictual parentchild relationships perceived by both, parents (Whiteman et al., 2011) and offspring (Parra et al., 2015), compared with adolescents. oNeverthless, some topics usually still provoke conflict such as family issues (Yao et al., 2020), making decisions and accepting responsibility (Riesch et al., 2003; Renk et al., 2007), household rules, peer issues or school issues (Renk et al., 2007). 1. INTRODUCTION FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS DURING EMERGING ADULTHOOD COMMUNICATION: verbal and nonverbal interaction between parents and children within a family system (Munz, 2015). oSome authors found a lower level of communication reported by emerging adult offspring in comparison with younger children (Parra et al., 2015). oHowever, other studies indicated an increase in general closeness, including communication, in parent-child relationships during this stage. Specifically, the conversational quality between parents and offspring emerging adults is marked by openness, comfort, affection (Morgan, 2008), and appreciation/respect for parents (Lefkowitz, 2005). oEmpirical results suggest that communication between emerging adults and their parents tends to include themes such as romantic relationships (Morgan et al., 2010) or sexuality (Pariera & Brody, 2018). 1. INTRODUCTION SOUTH EUROPEAN FAMILY CONTEXT oFamily conflict and communication patterns and themes differ in function of socio-cultural context: ▪Most studies focused on these family processes during this life stage were implemented in the United States and Northern Europe. ▪Southern European countries, such as Spain and Portugal, may present quite different patterns, considering some of its specific features such as close family ties and late offspring emancipation, generally around 30 years old, to marry or to live with a romantic partner (Alesina & Giuliano, 2013). 1. INTRODUCTION ➢AIMS: The main aim of this study was to qualitatively describe family conflict and communication during emerging adulthood, from the perspective of parents, mothers and fathers, from two southern European countries, Spain and Portugal. QUALITATIVE STUDY PARENTS’ PERSPECTIVE 2. METHOD This study is part of a transcultural project between Spain and Portugal called “Transição para a adultez e relações familiares em Portugal e ajustamento psicológico: Investigação intercultural entre Espanha e Portugal”. The Project was approved by the relevant institutional ethics committee: “A Comissão de Ética (CE) da Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação da Universidade do Porto” ( Ref.ª 2017/10-02c and Ref.ª 2017/10-02c). 2. METHOD ➢PARTICIPANTS: n = 58 (60.3% mothers) n = 30 (73.3% mothers) TOTAL SAMPLE N = 88 parents (64.8% mothers) ▪The total sample was comprised of 88 parents (64.8% mothers) of emerging adults who studied at two universities from Southern Europe and who formed part of the transnational project between Spain and Portugal. ▪Data was collected from April 2022 to November 2022. 2. METHOD ➢PROCEDURE OF DATA COLLECTION AND INSTRUMENT : ▪All participants signed an informed consent form and anonymously and voluntarily answered online to a qualitative open-ended questions in Spanish or in Portuguese languages (~10min). ▪The survey included a close-ended question about the parents’ gender. Then, parents were asked about their relations with their offspring in terms of conflict and communication by four open-ended questions: (1) Could you think about the last conflict situation with your son/daughter?, Why did it happen? (1b) This type of parent-child conflict situations happen often?, Why? (2) Could you think about the last good communication situation with your son/daughter?, What was the topic? (2b) This type of situations of good parent-child communication happen often?, Why?. 4. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS ▪The findings indicate that parent perceived a low rate of conflict in the relationships with their offspring: 1) Low frequency of conflict reported by parents 2) The second more frequent response (family conflict themes) was that they do not have conflicts with their offspring Furthermore… ▪The most frequent topics of conflict with emerging adult offspring concerned differences in opinions or interests and life experiences and setting limits and rules. Moreover, other frequent topics are household chores and everyday household issues, family issues and temperament and/or personality. Previous work 4. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS Already found medium or low levels of conflict in the parent-child relationships during emerging adulthood (e.g., Fang et al., 2021). ▪During emerging adulthood, parent-child relationships become more symmetrical than before (Arnett, 2018). In this sense, parents do not see their children as adolescents although they do not still view them as fully grown-up people (Nelson et al., 2007). Therefore, during these years maybe they give more freedom to their children and interfere to a lesser degree in issues that they believe are no longer their business. As a consequence, the number of conflicts between them would be reduced. •Parents also indicate that the topic labeled differences in opinions or interests and life experiences is the topic that stimulate most conflict with their children, precisely, the one regarding different generational perspectives in beliefs, attitudes, and values between parents and children. A possible explanation… Moreover 4. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS The majority of Spanish and Portuguese emerging adults are residentially dependent on their parents (e.g, Eurostat, 2023) ▪Taking this into account, it is not a surprise that some of the most frequent topics of discrepancies with their emerging adults children mentioned by parents are regarding issues of cohabitation that only happen because of the residence in the family home (e. g., setting limits and rules or household chores and everyday household issues). 4. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS ▪The findings also revealed a high rate of communication and a wide range of topics conversations perceived by parents in the relationships with their emerging adult offspring. ▪Specifically, parents revealed that work and/or study and current topics such as arts and lazer occupations and plans are the most frequent topics in the conversations with their children following by romantic/friendship relations, life in general/everyday events, family issues and less frequently assumption of responsibility and maturity and drug use. The high level and quality communication that parent noted in their relationships with their offspring (high frequency conversations, diverse topics conversations) is consistent with previous studies (e.g., Morgan, 2008). Moreover 4. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS ▪It is unusual for parents to talk to their children about a wide variety of topics (e.g., work or studies, literature or film, what is going on in their daily lives, romantic and friendship relations) and even about other traditionally taboo issues (e. g., drug use). ▪So, the fact that family relations find a new equilibrium and become more symmetrical during emerging adulthood is reflected not only in the low conflict rate between parents and children, but also in the high level and quality communication between them and their mothers and fathers, at least according to the latter. These results point that, certainly, it is seems that a new pattern of interaction appears and helps to forge a more equal relationship between two adults generations. Family role in Spain and Portugal is characterized by strong family bonds and greater family closeness and family support comparing with other socio-cultural context (Parra et al., 2019). In this context… 4. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS The present study is groundbreaking because it analyses family relationships during emerging adulthood from the parents’ perspective. Research focused on parent’s perspective has been globally understudied and even less in Southern Europe. These findings offer a starting point for gaining insight about how parents understand the relationships with their children during this stage and helps to obtain a more complete picture of parent-child relationships during emerging adulthood in Spain and Portugal. REFERENCES Alesina, A. and P. Giuliano, 2014, “Family Ties” in Aghion, P. and S. Durlauf (eds.), Handbook of Economic Growth, Vol. 2A, The Netherlands: North Holland, 177-215 Arnett, J. J. (2000). Emerging adulthood: A theory of development from the late teens through the twenties. American Psychologist, 55(5), 469–480. https://doi.org/469.10.1037/0003- 066X.55.5.469 Arnett, J. J. (2007). Suffering, selfish, slackers? Myths and reality about emerging adults. 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Mari Carmen García Mendoza, P.h.D E-mail: [email protected] Web: http://grupos.us.es/transadultez/index.php?page=index-ing Twitter: @adultezemergen