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C 2002), pp. 411–425 Journal of Child and Family Studies, Vol. 11, No. 4, December 2002 (°

How Parents Experience a Transition to Adolescence: A Qualitative Study Beth Spring, M.S.,1 Karen H. Rosen, Ed.D.,2,4 and Jennifer L. Matheson, M.A.3

We investigated how parents who considered themselves “normally stressed” experienced their first child’s transition to adolescence. Family systems theory provided a theoretical starting point for this qualitative study, which identified intrapersonal, interpersonal, and contextual themes in parents’ stories about their experiences. Based on the findings, a theoretical model was developed that illustrates how components of parental experiences seem to interrelate. From the parents’ perspective, the transition to parenting an adolescent began with a specific, noticeable change in their teenager, which led to a process of adjustment on their part. Participants viewed themselves as experiencing the normal ups and downs of parenting so their descriptions were of a relatively smooth “rebalancing” process. However, the information they provided suggests several potential interventions for parents who may be experiencing severe challenges in adjusting to parenting teenagers. KEY WORDS: adolescence; family life cycle; transition; qualitative research; adult development.

While severe levels of conflict and stress may not be inevitable, the transition to adolescence is nonetheless considered a challenging period of family adjustment for which there is often little preparation. Parents-to-be can find a wealth of literature on the transition to parenthood and the adjustments they can anticipate during their child’s infancy and toddler years. Parents can also find a growing literature on the “empty nest” transition when children leave home. In between, however, few resources address what parents can expect to experience when they 1 Family

Clinician, Northern Virginia Family Service, Falls Church, VA. Professor, Marriage and Family Therapy Program, Department of Human Development, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, Falls Church, VA. 3 Graduate Research Assistant, Marriage and Family Therapy Program, Department of Human Development, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, Falls Church, VA. 4 Correspondence should be directed to Karen H. Rosen, Marriage and Family Therapy Program, Department of Human Development, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, 7054 Haycock Road, Falls Church, VA, 22043; e-mail: [email protected]. 2 Associate

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have a young adolescent in the home (Lindahl, Malik, & Bradbury, 1997; Ryff, Lee, Essex, & Schmutte, 1994). Steinberg (1994) noted that, “to focus on these extremes and ignore everything in the middle is to assume a constancy in adult development and family life that is mythical” (p. 251). A result of this gap in the literature is that parents are sometimes taken by surprise when the teen years arrive for their oldest child (Brooks, 1987). They are confronted by pubertal changes that are weighted with social significance for children as well as parents regarding sexual activity, peer pressure, body image, and role expectations (Boxer & Petersen, 1986). The value society places on youthfulness in general, and on standards of attractiveness that more frequently characterize adolescents than their parents, can provoke envy and mark a profound shift in a parent’s self-image. Further, a changing cultural context is reshaping family expectations and interactions, and often mitigates against increasing autonomy for the adolescent. Behaviors that test limits are potentially more hazardous today, for example, the threat of contracting HIV/AIDS. Cultural coarsening, such as explicit violence and graphic sex in music, entertainment media, and on the Internet, challenges parents to a greater extent now than in the very recent past (Larson & Richards, 1994). Changes in family structure (including more one-parent and dual-earner families) and a deterioration in community are seen as factors that potentially place today’s adolescents at greater risk and tend to make their parents more vulnerable to stress than in past generations (Cornwell, Eggebeen, & Meschke, 1996). Recently, research has begun to explore parental characteristics and relational factors that make a difference in how parents weather this stage of life. For example, Steinberg (1994) identified four parent-related factors that increase the risk of psychological turmoil: being the same sex as the child; being divorced or remarried (especially for women); having few sources of satisfaction outside the parental role; and having negative expectations about adolescence. Bogenschneider, Small, and Tsay (1997) asserted that parents who are able to adapt to the changing demands of adolescence are those who tend to view themselves as competent and who are viewed by their teens as responsive and vigilant without being controlling. Although a body of knowledge related to parenting adolescents is growing, what happens to parents in the process of raising adolescent children remains largely unexplored. Why do some families break down during the adolescent stage while other families emerge strengthened? Family scholars suggest that investigating this transition from the parent’s perspective using a process-oriented approach would contribute significantly to this field (Ohannessian, Lerner, Lerner, & von Eye, 1995; Sanders, Nicholson, & Floyd, 1997; Thornton, Orbuch, & Axinn, 1995). Our study was designed to fill a gap in existing research by exploring how parents experience their oldest child’s transition to adolescence. We examine how parents’ experiences compare to what they expected, how they assign meaning to this transition as well as how other factors, such as midlife issues, intersect

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with parenting at this stage. By exploring this transition with parents who view themselves as “normally stressed,” this study goes beyond normalizing. It offers insight into adaptive parenting strategies and may suggest possibilities for clinical intervention or prevention efforts. With widespread concern about family breakdown, families who successfully weather difficult periods have much to teach us about the processes that allow them to rebound from potentially disruptive life challenges. METHOD Our qualitative study used a grounded theory approach to data collection and analysis (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) and was informed by a systemic theoretical perspective which tended to direct our focus on interactional processes of family life rather than on individuals in isolation (Whitchurch & Constantine, 1993).

Participants and Recruitment Process Participants were recruited by contacting youth-group leaders at two metropolitan-area churches and one synagogue to ask for recommendations of families who met the criteria and might be interested in volunteering. We also recruited families by running a classified advertisement in the newspaper. Since we wanted to study resilient families, we selected families who perceived themselves as experiencing the normal ups and downs of a transition to adolescence and who did not have concrete signs of stress, such as needing mental health assistance, being court involved, or dealing with adolescents who abused drugs or alcohol. Demographic criteria called for the oldest child in the household to be between the ages of 13 and 16. Following a brief telephone screening interview, parents who fit the selection criteria and who agreed to participate were asked to attend a focus group, lasting approximately two hours. Of the 23 families who were screened, 10 families met the screening criteria. Four of the 10 families had one child; one family had three children; and the remaining five each had two children. There were two single mothers in the sample, one of whom had a teenaged daughter and a younger son, and the other, one teenaged son. The single mother of the only son was the youngest parent in the sample (age 33) and had the lowest income range ($20,000–$40,000). All other participants reported annual incomes over $80,000. All participants except one, who was from Central America, were born in the United States, of European descent. Both single mothers were divorced from their children’s fathers and were not currently in a relationship. One of the married participants had been married previously, and the other seven were in their first marriages. All participants were well educated, with 11 having master’s degrees or higher; three with bachelor’s

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degrees, and one with a high school diploma. Four of the mothers worked part time, and the remainder of the participants worked full time, most in professional careers. The fathers from three of the families were unable to attend a focus group, so a total of 15 individuals participated in focus group interviews. We selected five families to study in more depth during in-home interviews. The selection process for in-home, in-depth interviews was guided by our decision to balance gender of children, and only children versus teens with siblings. Data Collection and Analysis Procedures Data were collected during two focus group sessions (approximately two hours each) and five semi-structured, in-depth interviews that were conducted in participants’ homes and also lasted about two hours each (all interviews and focus groups were conducted by the first author). Focus groups included parents from eight participant families. Three of those eight families were selected for an in-home interview. Another two families were selected as participants but could not attend either focus group due to schedule conflicts. Narrowing the sample for in-depth interviewing is consistent with case study approaches to family research (Moon & Trepper, 1996). Focus group interviews were used to begin developing theoretical sensitivity from participants’ points of view rather than our own (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Through open-ended questions, group members were guided to discuss how the transition to adolescence was affecting them as individuals and/or as couples. Interviews were partially guided by the following predetermined topics: (a) changes in teens, (b) connections and comparisons parents were making to their own adolescent experiences, (c) parents’ experience of this transition as a source of stress, (d) coping strategies and resources parents drew upon, and (e) how parents were assigning meaning, to their experiences at this time. Interview questions used at home with participants who had attended one of our focus groups followed up on the previous conversation and explored family dynamics in more depth. All interviews and focus groups were audiotaped and transcribed. After all interviews were conducted and data were analyzed, the first author sent a summary of results to all parents who participated in in-home interviews. Followup telephone calls were completed with a parent from four of these families to obtain feedback about the accuracy of the findings from the participants’ point of view, a method of establishing trustworthiness (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). We were not able to make contact with the fifth family. No participants we contacted offered corrections. Data collection and analysis occurred recursively, consistent with the constant comparative method of conducting qualitative research (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss & Corbin, 1990). After each point of data collection (focus group and in-home interview), audiotapes were transcribed and coded so that our developing

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theoretical sensitivity guided the questions asked during the next interview. During the open-coding process, each phrase or significant group of words received a label or code. Initial codes were then organized into concepts and categories. Both the first and second authors coded the data and discussed interpretations during weekly meetings to ensure agreement. Finally, axial coding provided a structured way to understand how categories related to each other and facilitated the process of identifying core categories. Throughout the process of data analysis, our findings were compared with those of other studies in the literature. The Ethnograph v4.0 computer program (Seidel, Friese, & Leonard, 1995) was used to facilitate the data analysis process. Theoretical memos prepared during the coding process helped to organize the process and facilitated conceptualizing from a broader perspective. RESULTS The 10 mothers and five fathers who participated in this study seemed to have in common a strong commitment to parenting, to hold their children in high regard, and to take an engaged, authoritative stance with their teens. They had a wide range of personal reactions to the process of raising an adolescent, described by one father as “a walk through the jungle at twilight” and by one mother as “hanging out there over uncharted water.” We called the transition parents described a Rebalancing Process, which seemed to begin with what one parent described as an AppleCart Experience (an event parents perceived as an important marker of change in the child). For some families, the beginning of the rebalancing process was relatively gentle; for others it was sudden, but all 10 families readily recalled an incident that seemed to signal that they had entered new territory. Following the apple-cart experience, most parents felt thrown off balance at first. Yet they seem to have a similar Response of moving with, not against, what they saw as the teen’s appropriate bids for independence and individuation, and their actions were guided more by cognitive strategies than by emotional reactivity. This cognitively based way of responding seemed to occur whether or not developmental changes evoked high anxiety or other unpleasant feelings. With a few exceptions, parents thought before they acted, even when changes took them by surprise. Further, parents seemed to respond to and interpret their teen’s changes in ways that were shaped by past and current family Contextual Factors. Current family context factors included expectations, individual characteristics of the parent and the child, and family dynamics (including emotional process and structure). Past family context included family of origin influences, what the parent was like as a teen, and what life was like (sociocultural factors) when the parent grew up. The initial parental response seemed to interact with what we called Reorientation, defined as a process of incorporating new realities into a changing family narrative and assigning meaning to events and interactions in their families. This interpretive part

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of the process seemed to orient the parents toward their next anticipated “apple-cart experience”—a future change, such as when starting to drive, date, or leave home.

Apple-Cart Experience The process of transition to adolescence seems to begin for these parents when they experience changes in children as a sudden disequilibrium. As one mother said, “It’s like the apple cart has been upset and you’re trying to put things back the way they were.” These apple-cart experiences varied in intensity, frequency, and consequences for the parents in this study. This experience of disequilibrium was not always a one-time occurrence; for several families, there were multiple events with the adolescent that evoked a sense of being thrown off balance. These events related to changes in the adolescent that were physical, social/emotional, or relational. In terms of physical changes, one mom described how she felt when her son shaved for the first time when she was not home, and how this served as a declaration of his emerging independence. A dad spoke with deep feeling about his 13-year-old daughter’s advanced physical maturity, and how he wanted to “stop time” when he saw older boys and men eyeing her. Several parents commented on how their teen’s physical changes evoked disequilibrium for the child as well as the parents. One mom described watching her 13-year-old daughter, an accomplished diver, tumble awkwardly off the board into the pool one day. As she surfaced, the daughter burst into tears and said, “I hit my hips. Make them stop growing.” At a focus group session, this girl’s mother said, “It was a very big demarcation . . . . She wasn’t a little kid anymore, and she realized it.” Social and emotional development precipitated a number of apple-cart experiences, particularly because of heightened peer influence that evoked considerable parental anxiety. Several parents spoke of a sudden “escalation” of their teen’s interest in the opposite sex, requests to go to the mall with friends, and “parties” at homes unknown to the parents. Increased time on the telephone with friends, and telling parents that a friend is allowed to have more independence, seemed to reflect new social awareness for young teens. “With girls, the telephone is surgically implanted,” is how one mom spoke about her daughter’s need to be in contact with friends. Another mother said she found it disconcerting when “aggressive girls” telephoned her son. She described her reaction to his new request for independence: All of a sudden he was asking to go to the mall on the weekend, and I found that a little scary. He was real big on wanting me to drop them off, and I hadn’t done that before. It just happened real fast.

Parents in the study noticed a number of parent-child relational changes that seemed to signal a transition. They reported that their adolescents began to “talk back” and express opinions that opposed their parents’ views. “Ornery, irritable,

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a pest” is how one mom described her son when he did not get his way. A dad observed, “If I give (my son) any suggestions, forget it. It’s like the kiss of death. If somebody else tells him, he might listen, but me? Forget it.” Mood swings and demands for more privacy seemed to shift interactions significantly, often in marked contrast to the adolescent’s younger years. One mother was struck by how her daughter “started keeping her thoughts to herself,” in contrast with how she would “spill her guts at every opportunity” when she was younger. One dad described his son’s room as an “unknown world” where his son retreated for hours on end. Response Responses to “apple-cart experiences” described by parents were affective, cognitive, and behavioral. The desire to “put things back the way they were” was an initial reaction that seemed to reflect a sense of loss but did not seem to last very long. It generally gave way to other affective responses and led to cognitive strategies (e.g., assigning cause and effect) that seemed to inform the parent’s actions. Most of the parents’ responses that we labeled “affective” reflected a sense of worry or uncertainty. Parents spoke of feeling as if they were “on the brink, never knowing what will happen next” or suddenly feeling as if the teen had moved “one step ahead.” Mothers of daughters tended to express a wide range of intense, concerned reactions to apple-cart events, from strong irritation to sadness to shock and surprise. “She just gets me wound up so tight,” one mother commented about her 13-year-old daughter. In contrast, the reactions of most mothers of sons seemed less intense. For example, one mom said of her son, “Even though we butt heads occasionally, he’s a really good kid. I feel like we may get through this.” In general, fathers seemed more reticent to discuss their feelings, but when they did they made insightful remarks about their experience. One father spoke of feeling “knotted up inside” whenever he saw his son performing poorly in school or sports. He explained what this was like and how he made sense of what was happening: You tend to live your life through your kid. So as I see him getting ready for college and struggling, I see myself, and the thing I have to keep in mind is in many ways he’s doing better than I did. It’s hard to keep that in perspective. I still try to urge him on to do more.

Cognitive responses, such as the one described in the quote above, were complex and well articulated. Parents in this study tended to make benign attributions about teen behavior. This was evident in two ways. First, these parents often credited both themselves and their child for positive outcomes. For example, one dad remarked with approval that his son “has a mind of his own.” He also credited his own parenting emphasis, “right from the beginning,” on teaching

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his son to avoid peer pressure. Second, parents tended to attribute negative outcomes to situational, external factors (e.g., passing curiosity or temporary peer influence). They also tended to view themselves as effective parents who influence their children, either directly or indirectly. A single mom who was distressed about difficulties with her daughter acknowledged a perception of indirect influence by saying: I was caught off guard a while back and overheard one of my children using my very words about one of those things that you say over and over again like a broken record. They do hear it. My daughter just is very good about hiding the fact that she knows or understands or could possibly agree with anything I’ve said, but I have evidence that they do hear it.

These parents also were able to thoughtfully regulate their influence over their children as needed. One father expressed this by saying, “We would take a stronger influence if we saw her making bad decisions.” A mom spoke of “worming her way in” to influence her son when she felt it was necessary. For the most part, parents held affective responses in check and overrode them with more measured, cognitively based responses. At times when this did not happen (e.g., when a dad yelled “like I never yelled before” after learning his daughter had lied), it was a marked, memorable occasion that seemed to stand in sharp contrast to more measured responses. The behavioral choices made by parents reflected flexibility and were finetuned over time as they encouraged individuation and participated in their teen’s unpredictable movement toward independence. These early teens may be changing rapidly, but their parents seemed to make concerted efforts to keep in step with these changes. One mother’s description of herself seemed to capture this process: I do this dance, it seems. I don’t rush in and rescue, but I rush in and I harangue when I see things falling apart. . . . I’ll do that, and then alternately I’ll back off and say, “She needs to learn this for herself. She’s stubborn; it may just take a long time.”

Behavioral responses included identifying and accessing sources of support. For two-parent families, spousal support was particularly important, and participants acknowledged gratefully how partners balanced one another. One man said of his wife, “she drags me over to the feelings side.” The wife agreed and pointed out how the husband offers perspective that calms her anxiety down. Networking with other parents to get information and manage anxiety was another key source of support that parents, particularly mothers, used. When asked how she was managing, one mother immediately responded, “I formed a network.” Several participants saw their participation in our focus groups as an opportunity to network with other parents. Parents in this study appeared to have access to a wide range of ways to understand and stay attuned to their teens’ often abrupt changes. One of these was to use good parenting skills, such as communication. For example, one dad said, “I sat her down and we had a talk” when his daughter broke a key family rule. He

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generalized about how he approached similar incidents: “You have to deal with it. . . . Get it out in the open and talk about it. I think that’s where a lot of parents get in trouble, they don’t talk about things.” Another practice involved monitoring children (knowing where they are, whom they are with, and what they are doing). One mother said, “I watch her as closely now at 16 as I did at 6.” Making and enforcing appropriate rules was a pervasive practice described by participants. Parents seemed able to reevaluate and adapt their parenting practices flexibly as their teen continued to change and the relationship began shifting toward more equally shared power. One mother said she thought she needed to “let them express their individual opinions and pick their own clothes” and to shift parenting tactics by being “a lot more cautious about focusing on a few things.” One common theme that illustrated a finely tuned balancing process involved parental encouragement of responsible risk-taking. Many parents described ways they nudged their children to move past their comfort zones to reach a higher level of maturity. In several cases, this involved driving. One mother described her daughter’s reluctance to take the test to get her learner’s permit. She told her daughter they would go the following Saturday, and said her daughter seemed relieved to have the decision made for her. The mom perceived her daughter as needing a little push to be independent: “She was really getting herself into ‘I can’t do this,’ which was not going to be helpful.” Reorientation Reorientation, in this study, refers to the ways parents make meaning of their child’s transition to adolescence and how they adjust their thinking about what the transition means for the future. This interpretive process seemed to include a shift in focus toward an impending launch of their child to independent young adulthood. It also involved changing views of parents’ own goals, priorities, and sense of self. The reorientation process seemed to be influenced by parents’ evaluation of themselves and their teens. One mom said, “I think where I get my strength from is I firmly believe I’m in control. [My children] are not.” Most parents readily catalogued a list of hopes and dreams for their teens, and these future possibilities framed a view of their teens as cherished family members and individuals with unlimited potential, held in high regard by the parents. A reorientation process within a context of connection and positive attribution seemed to point parents toward responding adaptively to future apple-cart experiences. The process seemed to function as a way for them to get used to the idea that their children will increasingly focus on life beyond the home, as they prepare to leave eventually. For example, when one father was asked to describe an image of the transition to adolescence, he said, “Don Quixote, riding off into

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the sunset. I say that because I’m thinking, I’m starting to notice, it’s only a few more years.” The mother of an only son said she finds herself reorienting to the implications the transition to adolescence has for her: Now he’s going off to high school. That means I’m getting older. It’s making me enter a different phase in my life. . . . I feel relieved, well, not relieved but glad that, okay, I’ve done my duty and now I can go live my life that I haven’t lived before.

A father described his mixed feelings about the changes and his struggle to reorient his thinking: There is a void that you can see looming. . . . They’re growing up. They are less dependent on you every day. It’s sort of bittersweet. You certainly want them to become independent, be on their own, but for selfish reasons, you still want them around. . . . Their presence in your life is constant.

One mother’s reorientation included the recognition that her hopes and dreams for her daughter to go to college may not be what her daughter chooses: “What if it’s not the right thing?” So this mother decided to assure her daughter that she and her husband would support her whether or not she goes to college. This mother’s reorientation also included reconciling herself to not knowing exactly what will happen because, as her daughter matures, she will make more and more of her own choices. The meaning another mother made of her son’s entry into adolescence seemed entirely positive: I think the teenage years are neat, exciting years because your kid’s becoming this person, they’re becoming like another adult in your family. They’re taking interesting things at school that they can come home and talk to you about. They have these interesting and scary things that are happening with their friends.

Context A variety of contextual factors influenced how parents responded and reoriented to their teen’s transition to adolescence. Family-of-origin experiences, current family dynamics, and sociocultural influences emerged from our participants’ interviews as moderators that may explain some uniqueness between families in terms of how the transition to adolescence was experienced and managed. Past Family Context Participants’ interviews were sprinkled with stories about how their family-oforigin experiences influenced them during this period of transition. Many identified parts of their family legacies they hoped to convey to their children. Familyof-origin experiences informed their interpretations by affirming their family’s

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uniqueness and giving them a benchmark for evaluating how their current experience appeared to fit with intergenerational themes and values. For several families in this study, family-of-origin factors also influenced cognitive and behavioral responses, as parents intentionally did the opposite, or purposefully repeated, what their parents did. These memories also seemed to have a direct impact on parents’ affective responses. One mother talked about the strength she derived from her family of origin, and how that is reflected in her own childrearing decisions: I realized, and am still realizing, what strength I have in my family and from my parents and siblings and how that strength helps you get through adversity and helps you raise your kids, and how you pass that strength on to your kids even if you don’t think you are. It’s something I feel blessed to have. It’s given me a solid grounding. When I think back on my parents and how they parented, I always thought it was catch-as-catch can, it just seemed that way because it was a really big family. . . . Yet now as I’m older I really see how my parents worked very hard to raise us to be moral, upstanding people.

Another participant, whose parents lied to him, spoke passionately about teaching his children not to lie: “I think one of the reasons I’m so sensitive to lying is that my dad lied . . . so that was the one thing I didn’t want my son to do, because I saw the consequences of that as far as my dad’s relationships.” What the parent was like as a teenager was another key factor for some parents. Parents who perceived themselves as “wild” or rebellious tended to have more tolerance for risk-taking behavior, and even to encourage it. In contrast, parents who recalled themselves as being “perfect” children seemed to struggle intensely when their teens took risks. One mother explained how this contrast affected her: It never occurred to me to misbehave. I was the perfect one. I didn’t give my parents reason to worry or discipline, so I have nothing in the back of my head to tell me what you do when there are problems.

What life was like as a teen, or the sociocultural context in which these parents grew up, also seemed to moderate present-day perceptions, responses, and reorientation, particularly in contrast to the current sociocultural context. Memories and comparisons of “how things used to be” were pervasive in parents’ discussions of raising teenagers. The world is perceived by most of these parents as a more dangerous place for teens today than it was a generation ago and the job of parenting is “thousands of times harder . . . orders of magnitude harder.” Fears centered around ordinary activities such as driving, as well as high-risk behaviors including unprotected sex, substance use, and violence. Two dads independently and spontaneously mentioned “Kansas” as a metaphor for a simpler place and time—a place with “straight roads” where parents don’t have to “stalk” their kids in order to assure their safety. However, several parents noted increased opportunities for adolescents and said they considered life as a teen to be more exciting and rewarding today.

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Current Family Context Parental perceptions, responses, and reorientation also appeared to be influenced by dynamics of the current family context, such as parental expectations. Parents clearly articulated their expectations about adolescence as a life stage and about their children in particular. Networking with other parents and popular media portrayals of adolescence shaped these expectations. Some parents said they expected this transition to be worse than it was, while others believed they were not in for any big surprises. Sometimes expectations were based on past experience with the child. For example, one dad said, “When he wasn’t a ‘terrible two,’ there wasn’t any indication that there were going to be any significant problems.” Parents also tended to have a clear sense about what direction their teen’s life should take. One mother defined her hopes for her son quite specifically: Well, I’m hoping he’s going to stick his nose in his books, definitely. I’ve been thinking about that, because he definitely wants to try out for football . . . . I’m hoping that he will keep up with his assignments and pay attention, get everything right . . . . I really see him maturing and being responsible, and I hope that’s the way it turns out.

Individual characteristics of the parent and the teen also contextualized the experience of this transition. These parents tended to be self-aware, characterizing themselves in such terms as “the heavy” (meaning a strict disciplinarian), or “the emotional barometer of the house.” One father characterized himself as a “blackand-white kind of guy,” who tended to be unusually direct about what he expected of his daughter. He also recognized that his inclination to “do things the same, over and over and over” was not serving him well during his daughter’s adolescence. However, when challenged by his daughter, he realized he needed to “do something different (because) we’re in a different place now.” Another couple categorized themselves based on several apple-cart incidents where they agreed that the mom is a “recovering perfectionist” who has difficulty picking her battles, and the dad is a “peacemaker” who defuses conflict. Their chronological age placed all of our participants in the midlife stage of adult development. Some parents were aware of struggling with midlife transition issues (such as career reassessment) while others did not. However, all parents articulated ways in which they balanced their paid work role with their parenting role, and they appeared to view the parenting role as having equal or greater significance. One father remarked, “My lasting legacy will not be what I do at work; it will be what I leave in a child’s mind.” Another father spent several years being an at-home parent while his wife worked. While fathers may have sacrificed career advancement to spend more time as parents, mothers seemed more likely to have sacrificed career paths. For example, one mother abandoned specialized training opportunities in education and took a job in day care; another got a degree in psychology but is working in retail sales, and said she “made her peace” with that decision because it gave her more time to be with her children.

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Aspects of family organization seemed important as well. Several parents mentioned routines, such as sitting down to dinner together, as a priority for their family. Active participation in the life of a religious community mattered to most of these parents. Six of the 10 participant families structured their schedules so one spouse was at home with the children for some time, and they credit this decision for helping maintain continuity across the transition to adolescence. The four sets of married parents interviewed in their homes contributed insights into how the transition to adolescence may affect marital adjustment. These parents appeared to share a commitment to egalitariarian partnerships that seemed open, trusting, and mutually appreciative. Both spouses in these four families described their relationships as complementary, and credited their spouses with providing “balance” and “perspective” and for making the shared parenting task more manageable. A final aspect of family dynamics that emerged was the degree to which family members are connected. For these families, their sense of connection seemed to operate as a stabilizer throughout the rebalancing process of perceiving, responding, and reorienting. Parents tended to be attentive to what was happening with their children. Consequently, they seemed to become quickly aware when something was different, or wrong. They tended, as one mother said, to be “involved in our kids’ activities, sort of watching them really closely. A lot of our energy has been directed toward them.” DISCUSSION Qualitative data from 15 parents, representing 10 families, cannot yield findings that are generalizable to all parents of adolescents, but our study does provide a thick description of these participants’ experiences and a theoretical perspective of the processes involved in successfully weathering an oldest child’s transition to adolescence. By exploring how parents perceive, respond to, and reorient toward their child’s transition to adolescence, this study confirmed findings, such as Baumrind’s (1991), that particular aspects of teen development (identity formation, cognitive and moral development, and peer influence) challenge parents. Parents in our study cited these factors as they discussed various times when they felt thrown off balance by the ways they saw their young teen changing. Parent characteristics that influenced the experience of this transition emerged in the course of data collection and analysis. Parents spoke openly about self-perceptions in light of family-of-origin memories, sociocultural changes, and intrapsychic traits. They also identified factors that seemed to buffer them from severe anxiety. These “buffering” factors included what Steinberg (1994, p. 231) termed “cognitive set,” or expectations about adolescence. Buffering also seemed due to striking a balance between the parenting role and an investment in other roles, such as career. Parents in our study appeared to fit the “sensitively attuned” criteria Belsky (1984) defined

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in a study on the determinants of parenting. The parents reported making concerted efforts to use affective skills such as empathy, and cognitive strategies such as generous attributions, to guide their responses to unpredictable teen changes. In the empirical literature, healthy family organization and individuation are linked to an ability to establish and maintain accurate, consistent, and generally positive beliefs about each family member (Collins, 1990; Freedman-Doan, Arbreton, Harold, & Eccles, 1993; Joiner & Wagner, 1996). Parents in our study tended to assign cause and effect in ways that affirmed their regard for their teen. For example they tended to attribute success to their teen’s innate, stable traits while attributing negative outcomes to transient, external causes such as peer influence or sociocultural pressures. Parents in our study acknowledged and displayed numerous strengths and resources. They reported a range of feelings about their changing teens, but even when they felt dangerously “unbalanced,” they appeared to recover their footing and to maintain connections with their children despite the depth of their worry, concern, confusion, or frustration. Our study’s process approach and core categories suggest a number of directions for future research. Although we were able to collect information about the bidirectional influence of parents and teens from the parents’ perspective, considering the adolescent perspective as well would broaden our understanding of this transition even further. In addition, researchers could build on the findings of this study by examining other subsets of the midlife parenting population. Hispanic, African-American, Asian-American parents; lower-income, urban-dwelling parents; and other groups experiencing what they consider the normal ups and downs of this transition would provide useful data to compare with the current study which was limited to white, middle class participants. Theoretical work also could be pursued in future research. The connection between midlife parenting and a decline in marital satisfaction would lend itself to further scrutiny, because studies differ as to how to explain this phenomenon. Attachment research, which has traditionally been concerned with parents of infants, could be extended to the adolescent years in terms of how parent-child synchrony begins, continues, and informs shared perceptions. REFERENCES Baumrind, D. (1991). Effective parenting during the early adolescent transition. In P. A. Cowan & M. Hetherington (Eds.), Family transitions (pp. 111–163). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Belsky, J. (1984). The determinants of parenting: A process model. Child Development, 55, 83–96. Bogenschneider, K., Small, S. A., & Tsay, J. C. (1997). Child, parent, and contextual influences on perceived parenting competence among parents of adolescents. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 59, 345–362. Boxer, A. M., & Petersen, A. C. (1986). Pubertal change in a family context. In G. K. Leigh & G. W. Peterson (Eds.), Adolescents in families (pp. 73–103). Cincinnati, OH: South-Western. Brooks, J. B. (1987). The process of parenting. (2nd ed.). Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.

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Collins, W. A. (1990). Parent-child relationships in the transition to adolescence: Continuity and change in interaction, affect, and cognition. In R. Montemayor, G. R. Adams, & T. P. Gullotta (Eds.), From childhood to adolescence: A transitional period? (pp. 85–106). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Freedman-Doan, C. R., Arbreton, A. J. A., Harold, R. D., & Eccles, J. S. (1993). Looking forward to adolescence: Mothers’ and fathers’ expectations for affective and behavioral change. Journal of Early Adolescence, 13, 472–502. Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company. Joiner,T. E., Jr., & Wagner, K. D. (1996). Parental, child-centered attributions and outcome: A metaanalytic review with conceptual and methodological implications. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 24, 37–52. Larson, R., & Richards, M. H. (1994). Divergent realities. New York: HarperCollins. Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Lindahl, K. M., Malik, N. M., & Bradbury, T. N. (1997). The developmental course of couples’ relationships. In W. K. Halford & H. J. Markman (Eds.), Clinical handbook of marriage and couples interventions (pp. 203–223). New York: John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Moon, S. M., & Trepper, T. S. (1996). Focus groups in family therapy research. In D. H. Sprenkle & S. M. Moon (Eds.), Research methods in family therapy (pp. 393–410). New York: Guilford. Ohannessian, C. M., Lerner, R. M., Lerner, J. V., & von Eye, A. (1995). Discrepancies in adolescents’ and parents’ perceptions of family functioning and adolescent emotional adjustment. Journal of Early Adolescence, 15, 490–516. Ryff, C. D., Lee, Y. H., Essex, M. J., & Schmutte, P. S. (1994). My children and me: Midlife evaluations of grown children and of self. Psychology and Aging, 9, 195–205. Sanders, M. R., Nicholson, J. M., & Floyd, F. J. (1997). Couples’ relationships and children. In W. K. Halford & H. J. Markman (Eds.), Clinical handbook of marriage and couples interventions (pp. 225–253). New York: John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Seidel, J., Friese, S., & Leonard, D. C. (1995). The Ethnograph v4.0. Amherst, MA: Qualis Research Associates. Steinberg, L. (1994). Crossing paths: How your child’s adolescence triggers your own crisis. New York: Simon & Schuster. Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of qualitative research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Whitchurch, G. G., & Constantine, L. L. (1993). Systems theory. In P. G. Boss, W. J. Doherty, R. LaRossa, W. R. Schumm & S. K. Steinmetz (Eds.), Sourcebook of family theories and methods: A contextual approach (pp. 325–352). New York: Plenum Press.