Value System behind Interpersonal Conflict---To Tap the Generation Gap from the Dialogues between Adolescent and Their Parents

The author made a series of survey-and-interview to about 200 families for several times. Anticipants are invited from a first phase survey as a basis, which included about 1100 families with two members for each family (a adolescent child and one of the parents). A special design for this study is that the anticipants instead of the researcher will do the interviews.

The author invited the parent-child dyads to report their opinions about interpersonal conflict at first and then discuss with each other on the issues provided in the questionnaires. Besides filling up the questionnaires about their discussion, some of the anticipants were also asked to record their conversations. Similar procedures as above were conducted for three times, with intervals of 3 to 4 months between each.

The results regarding generation gap upon value orientations are consistent with that found in previous studies. Yet the differences are not so obvious and absolute as some people may imagine. The author argued that the change of value orientation among generations is slow, in a sense back and forth, but all the way toward individualism.

New generation still emphasize social or interpersonal harmony a lot, while they are less and less willing to regard self-restrain or self-sacrifice as a virtue of that importance. It is hoped that parent-child dialogues upon the issues of interpersonal conflicts will not only reveal their value systems, but also be beneficial to adolescents’ development of social self-identity and to their parent-child relationship as well.

The results show that the beneficial effect is partly evident. Most of the anticipants give positive feedbacks in terms of parent-child communication and self-perceived personal growth. Yet to the dismay of the author, part of the adolescents attended in the study get lower scores on self-confidence on social competence after attending these activities.