The Power of Teenage Girls' Friendships: What We Can Learn from Help-Seeking

By Taylor Decuir

The power of teenage girls’ friendships is widely recognized; this is reflected in buzz terms such as “girl squad'' used to describe female adolescent social networks. As parents, we recognize the increasing importance of friendships in the teen years due to the changing nature of friendships during the transition from childhood to adolescence. Children's friendships are limited to shared activities and interests, components of companionship, while adolescents' friendships become defined by closeness, a component of intimacy (Sears & Mcafee, 2017). An important feature in developing intimate friendships is help-seeking, the process of seeking guidance, advice, or emotional support. While help-seeking is a building block of female adolescent friendships, little research exists on the role of help-seeking in facilitating intimacy. Sears and Mcafee (2017), researchers from the University of New Brunswick, conducted a study to determine if a relationship existed between intentional help-seeking and emotional competence and self-disclosure, or the sharing of personal thoughts and information and if these through the nature of friendships based on companionship or closeness. 

Sears and Mcafee (2017) hypothesized that teen girls would possess strong intentions of engaging in help-seeking. They also predicted that a direct correlation between emotional competence and self-disclosure would be present and that girls’ perceptions of their self-disclosure, emotional competence, and intentions would be indirectly influenced by the nature of their friendships based on whether the friendship is distinguished by closeness or companionship. Two hundred and twenty-two Canadian high school girls in ninth through twelfth grade, between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, were selected to participate in the study. Participants completed multiple surveys that required them to rate perceptions about their capacity for emotional competence and self-disclosure in friendships, perceptions about their closeness to their friends, and the likelihood they would seek help from friends. Based on responses, Sears and Mcafee (2017) concluded that while there was no evidence of a direct relationship between emotional competence and intentional help-seeking, they found a direct correlation between perception of emotional competence and the nature of friendships defined by closeness or merely companionship. Responses from the survey also indicated that girls were motivated to engage in help-seeking. This finding is consistent with previous research that emphasizes the preference of friends over parents as sources of advice and guidance for teens as their social networks expand.  

It can be hard to watch your children rely on their friends for advice more, but this is a healthy sign of effective socialization and competence skills that will benefit your children later in life, regardless of gender.  For example, when contrasted with girls, boys often have larger social networks consisting of companion-based friendships, often at the expense of intimacy. This results in boys having lower levels of self-disclosure when compared to girls. While this is probably unsurprising, considering society's expectations for boys to be less verbally expressive, boys should be encouraged to form intimate friendships the way we expect our daughters to do. Girls welcome help-seeking when they view their friendships as worthy emotional investments they can draw upon for emotional support. It is time boys have this opportunity, too. 

References

Sears, H. & Mcafee, S. (2017). Seeking help from a female friend: Girls’ competencies, friendship features, and intentions. Personal Relationships (24)2, 336-349. https://doi.org/10.1111/pere.12180 

Shutterstock. (2020). [Teen girls at a slumber party] [Photograph] Mom Junction.

            https://www.momjunction.com/arciles/sleepover-party-games-for-teens_00399873

Its Not What You Say, Its How You Say It

By A. Bieri         

    Have you ever heard of the saying, "it is not what you say, it is how you say it"?  This is a phrase that is often used when describing the attitude and tone of voice from someone who says something that usually gets perceived in a wrongfully intended way.  For instance,  if someone were to ask you to do something by saying, "you need to stop what you are doing and go do this now..," you might be hesitant or restrictive to doing what it is they asked.  However, if someone were to ask you the same request but in a different way by saying, "hey, if you don't mind, will you please do this..," you are likely to respond to the second request in a way that is more pleasing and desired.  Many people are very sensitive to the tone of voice in others.  It makes sense that adolescents, in particular, are very sensitive to inflection because this is a time in a young individual’s life when they are learning about autonomy and gaining a sense of independence for themselves.  It is important, especially as parents, to remember this when communicating with adolescents and aiming for a cooperating response that doesn’t have negative effects.  

    There was a recent study done in individuals ages 14-15 with the goal of learning if a mother’s tone of voice plays any sort of role in the outcome of an adolescent’s decision making.  Researchers were interested in learning if being told what to do in a specific tone had any effect on the relationship between the adolescent and the mother.  Researchers Weinstein, Vanseenkiste, and Paulmann (2019) gathered adolescents who were all being raised by either their mother only or their mother and father, and had the adolescents listen to audio recordings of commands regarding school activities from someone posing as their mothers.  These mothers were asked to speak using three different tones: a controlling tone, a neutral tone, and an autonomy-supportive tone.   It was noted in the study that the microphone was positioned in the same spot for each requested tone, signaling that it would not be perceived by the adolescent that the mother was yelling the request.  The goal of this experiment was to identify which tone of voices do adolescents respond to best and how does the tone of voice effect a mother and adolescent’s relationship.  Upon collection of the results, it was found that, as the researchers expected, an autonomy-supportive tone had the most positive outcome among the adolescents, and there actually was not much difference between the controlling tone verses the neutral tone.  

    The findings of this experiment is an essential discovery in aiding a change in the relationships between mothers and adolescents.  This change could have a direct influence on the efficiency of communicating with individuals in this developmental period.  It helps parents identify that adolescents are experiencing conflicting feelings of wanting to be obedient while also feeling a sense of independence and autonomy.  

    Weinstein, N., Vansteenkiste, M., & Paulmann S.  (2019)  Listen to your mother: Motivating tones of voice predict adolescents' reaction to mothers.  Developmental Psychology.  55(12).  1534-2546.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/dev0000827

Will my kid choose to do the right thing and recycle?

By: Catherine Blanchard

Olimpia Zagnoli

When it comes to adolescents, we can often worry about the decisions they are making. Their autonomy is developing in new and exciting ways, but this brings risk and uncertainty for those responsible for the adolescent. One of the biggest worries for parents is whether or not their child will make morally upright decisions. Lucky for us, Tobias Krettenauer at Wilfred Laurier University researched how adolescents’ morality develops in the context of environmental decisions (2017). By looking at and understanding his findings, we can better understand how adolescents approach these specific decisions, apply these findings to other moral decisions adolescents have to make, and thus take some of the mystery out of the mysterious moral musings of minors.

            So, why exactly was Krettenauer trying to research the moral development of adolescents surrounding the environment? For starters, there wasn’t much research about it to begin with! Previously people had studied how adolescents generally approached the topic of environmental concerns, but there wasn’t much information about the differences that occurred as adolescents developed their moral decision-making abilities (2017). Knowing this, Krettenauer got his crew together and preformed a cross-sectional study which gathered 325 Canadian adolescents who ranged from early adolescents to late adolescents and asked them a series of environmental questions. These questions were aimed at having the adolescent engage in imaginative scenarios, some involving their own family and others involving a hypothetical family, and then express their feelings towards these scenarios (2017). With these questions, Krettenauer and his crew were measuring their emotional responses to the scenarios, their moral judgements concerning them, their overall appreciation for nature, and the active steps they would take in engaging in behavior that would benefit the environment (2017). What is interesting about their measurements is that they captured, not only the adolescents’ thoughts and feelings about engaging in pro-environmental behavior, but also their willingness and likelihood to put their money where their mouth is and engage in these behaviors. Now, Krettenauer found that as adolescents aged, they were more likely to fall off the environmental band-wagon. The reason why, ironically enough, was because they saw it as a band-wagon or, in other words, just a social convention that wasn’t actually obligatory. Another reason, Krettenauer found, that caused this dip off in late adolescents was a decrease in appreciation for nature (2017). All that being said, Krettenauer’s research with Canadian adolescents and their feelings towards the environment can tell us a lot about the moral developments of adolescents in general.

            I’ll circle back around to that daunting question all parents ask themselves: Will my child do the right thing? If you’re looking at Krettenauer’s results and feeling hopeless, don’t be! If the reason the adolescents break moral obligations is that they only see them as social conventions, then the solution is written in the problem. As a parent, you can help your adolescent understand that some things aren’t merely social conventions. So, fear not and have hope that they’ll make good decisions!

References

Krettenauer, T. (2017). Pro-environmental behavior and adolescent moral development. Journal of Research on Adolescence (Wiley-Blackwell), 27(3), 581–593. doi: 10.1111/jora.12300

Zagnoli O. (Photographer). (2015, Feb 27). n.d. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/opinion/sunday/is-the-environment-a-moral-cause.html

How your Parents Influenced your Identity

By: Hunter Doiron

            In my angsty adolescence, I would have never admitted that my parents were somehow affecting my own identity. I had found my own friends, listened to my own music, did my own schoolwork, etc., and so I would have told you that I was controlling my own identity for myself.

            Even though I was learning to form my own self-image and act true to myself, research has found that there is a link between one’s family security and satisfaction of psychological needs to one’s true self behavior as an adolescence (Goldner and Berenshtein-Dagan, 2016). This particular study began by hypothesizing that there was indeed a connection between high levels of family security and emotional fulfillment with higher levels of an adolescent experiencing both true-self knowledge and behavior (Goldner and Berenshtein-Dagan, 2016). They gave questionnaires to 302 total Israeli adolescents that asked both about their family life, such as marital status of their parents and meeting emotional needs from family, along with questions pertaining to how they viewed their true-self (Goldner and Berenshtein-Dagan, 2016). The researchers did find that their hypothesis was correct which means that even though I wanted to follow my own path to finding my identity, I should be giving credit to my parents for giving me a secure and stable home life along with allowing me to experience emotional satisfaction whenever necessary.

            Me graduating high school thinking that I was forming my own identity by myself, but now I look back and see that my parents were right there behind me always helping me discover my true-self potential.

 

            The researchers say their goal was, “to shed light on the construct of the true self during early and middle adolescence by exploring the contribution of security within the family and satisfaction of basic psychological needs to these adolescents’ true-self behavior” (Goldner and Berenshtein-Dagan, 2016). Similarly, my goal in this blog is to share their findings so that you reading this can look back on your adolescent days and see where maybe your parents actually did help you find your identity or even where you still wish they would have done better. Regardless, most of us will be parents one day ourselves, or maybe you’re already one, so by having a solid understanding of a parent’s role in helping their children discover themselves, we can all better strive to fulfill that crucial component of our potential or actual children’s lives.

I’m sure if I ever have kids they will hang out with their own friends, listen to their own music, and do their own school work, but that won’t ever stop me from doing my best to give them the safe and secure environment they deserve to foster their own true-self image and behavior just like my parents did for me.

References

Goldner, L., & Berenshtein-Dagan, T. (2016). Adolescents’ true-self behavior and

adjustment: The role of family security and satisfaction of basic psychological needs. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly (1982-), 62(1), 48–73. https://doi.org/10.13110/merrpalmquar1982.62.1.0048