Legitimizing Family Management: The Role of Adolescents' Understandings of Risk

• Date: 01 April 2016
• Published date: 01 April 2016
• Author: Simone Ispa‐Landa
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12280

S I-L Northwestern University

Legitimizing Family Management: The Role

of Adolescents’ Understandings of Risk

Few studies use the kinds of rich qualitative

data that permit the analyst to probe for the

numerous ways that contextual demands could

explain adolescents’ interpretations of the

socialization processes within their families.

Using inductive techniques, the author analyzed

Black adolescents’ (N=64) interpretations of

their parents’ expectations and rules. Several

ndings emerged. First, agreeing with parents’

assessments of risk was critical to participants’

acceptance of family management. Second,

participants legitimized their parents’ practices

as helping them avoid the risks of getting in

trouble with the law, acquiring a disreputable

identity, and failing to ascend the class lad-

der. Third, boys and girls legitimized different

expectations and rules because they experienced

and assessed risks in gender-specic ways. The

author argues that adolescents bring an under-

standing of risk to bear on their interpretations

of family life and uses these ndings to develop

a grounded concept of legitimizing parents’

controlling practices.

Adolescents and their parents differ in their

views about where the limits of parental author-

ity should be drawn. Indeed, across ethnicities,

Department of Human Development & Social Policy,

Northwestern University,Evanston, IL 60208

(s-ispa-landa@northwestern.edu).

This article was edited by Kevin M. Roy.

Key Words: adolescents, African Americans, families and

individuals in societal contexts, gender, parent–child rela-

tionships, qualitative research.

adolescents describe more issues as outside the

bounds of legitimate parental authority than do

parents (Smetana & Daddis, 2002). Researchers

suggest that adolescents’ concerns for autonomy

drive their views about the spheres that parents

have a right to oversee (Smetana, 2002). For

instance, scholars argue that, because it threat-

ens their growing independence, middle-class

African American adolescents regard parental

authority over the personal domain—their

friendships, activities, and bodies—as excessive

(Smetana, Campione-Barr, & Daddis, 2004).

Such ndings raise the question of how adoles-

cents from nondominant groups, whose parents

often exercise strenuous control over their per-

sonal choices (Burton & Jarrett, 2000; Elliott &

Aseltine, 2013; Ferguson, 2000; Furstenberg,

Cook, Eccles, Elder, & Sameroff, 1999; Jarrett,

1997), perceive their parents’ expectations and

rules. Yet few studies use the kinds of rich

qualitative data that permit an investigation into

how everyday experiences of risk pertain to

adolescents’ interpretations of the socialization

processes within their families. This paucity

hampers efforts to understand how contextual

demands, in addition to concerns for personal

autonomy, relate to adolescents’ perceptions of

their parents’ family management practices. It

also corresponds to a more general gap: Despite

growing attention to how children inuence their

parents, there remains a dearth of family science

research that places the child’s interpretations

at the center (Corsaro, 2005; James, Jenks, &

Prout, 1998; Parkin & Kuczynski, 2012; Stattin

& Kerr, 2000; Toki´

c&Pe

´

cnik, 2011).

In this study, I analyzed how Black adoles-

cents (N=64), living in disadvantaged urban

516 Journal of Marriage and Family 78 (April 2016): 516–530

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12280