14 DAY TRIAL // Behavior experts have recently conducted a new scientific investigation on a large group of parents and their grownup children, in an attempt to determine just how much tension really exists between generations, well beyond the age when teenagers are considered to have become adults. During the study, both parents and their adult children were asked to rate the level of tension that they perceived their relationship as having, on a simple scale graded 1 through 5. Several reasons for disagreement were listed in the questionnaires, and results revealed that about 94 percent of respondents experienced at least a small degree of frustration or anger on one or more of the topics.
Parents reportedly felt a lot more tension than their children, and the most obvious reason for fights was their offspring's financial status, as well as their housekeeping. Mothers and fathers proved to care for how their kids cleaned their rooms, even when the latter were in the 22-to-33-year-of-age group. Overall, for this age group, the level of tension was calculated to be of about 1.79, on a scale graded to 5. On the other hand, what surprised researchers was the fact that tensions seemed to accumulate more as children got older, as the tension index increased to 1.96 for the 34-to-49 age group.
In addition, researchers noticed a statistical difference between the level of tension exhibited by parents-sons and parents-daughters relationships. That is to say, on average, mothers and fathers reported more tension between them and their daughters, than as regarded their sons. The psychologists hypothesize that this may be because of the fact that demands exercised by society could force more strain on these relationships, than on those between parents and sons.
Another reason may be the fact that parents tend to communicate more with their daughters than with their sons, especially in the older age groups. And basic psychology teaches us that, the more often you see somebody, the higher the chances you'll get in a conflict with them, regardless of the reasons. Details of the finds will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychology and Aging. The lead author, University of Michigan (UM) expert Kira Birditt, said that the spacial connections between daughters and parents might actually act like a trigger for more fights than between mothers, fathers and sons.
For the research, the investigators analyzed some 158 families, of which one third were African-American. In that respect, the study broke off from the traditional approach of this kind of studies, as most previous researches focused only on white, European-American families. However, Birditt argued that the study was not relevant for the entire population, because all the parents in the study were married to each other. The team added that single-parent families might experience an increased degree of tension, LiveScience reports.