Parents of adolescents play an important role in building their adolescent's autonomy and teaching them to take responsibility. The way the parent models dealing with stress and emotionally challenging situations plays a factor in how the adolescent learns appropriate ways of coping and managing in their own lives. The relationship that parents have with their adolescents is crucial in this respect, and is also highlighted by the relational family therapy model, which sees parents as one of the most important regulators of their child's emotional state. It is important, of course, that the parent is able to regulate his or her own experiences and psycho-organic states in the first place. Despite the excellent theoretical basis of this model, there is still a lack of research in the area of parenting adolescents and, in particular, parents' experiences of emotionally challenging situations with their adolescents. To this end, the author focuses on strategies for disciplining adolescents, the role of emotions and emotion regulation in parents, communication in family conflict resolution, as well as the nature and intensity of conflict in the parent-adolescent relationship.
The theoretical part of the dissertation provides an overview of the research areas, namely relational contextual models and theories of parenting and child development, the challenges of parenting during adolescence, the process of emotion regulation with a focus on emotion regulation in the parent-adolescent relationship, and a theological perspective on parenting and parenting.
The empirical part of the dissertation comprises two research papers. In the first paper, findings on the associations and differences in parental discipline strategies, communication with the adolescent, emotion regulation, self-esteem and general well-being, and parenting style in the primary family according to the gender of the parent and the family typology are presented on the basis of a quantitative cross-sectional correlational study. Using a sample of 484 parents of adolescents who responded to the PSA, FPSC, RSES, WHO5 and PBI questionnaires, the author found that there were notable differences by parent gender, family type and adolescent order in parenting strategies of discipline, communication, and emotion regulation. Further, there were also differences between mothers and fathers in the experience of self-esteem and overall general well-being. The results also showed that a more effective strategy in disciplining the adolescent, as well as a less permissive and less overactive attitude of the parent in disciplining the adolescent, was associated with better emotion regulation, better communication in resolving family conflicts, as well as better self-esteem and general well-being in the parents of adolescents.
In the second paper, a quasi-experimental study is presented to evaluate the effectiveness of a developed pilot psychoeducational group for parents of adolescents, based on the relational family model. Participants in the study were 10 parents or 8 families who completed the following measurement instruments: parenting scale (PSA), emotion regulation (EAC), psychological well-being (WHO-5), Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES), Conflict Checklist (PIC), Meeting Evaluation Questionnaire (SEQ), final group evaluation questionnaire and demographic questionnaire. The results of the study showed that the group participants demonstrated statistically significant improvements in the way parents used strategies to discipline their adolescent, including, a decrease in the level of conflict in their relationship with their adolescent, improvements in emotional regulation, and improvements in self-esteem. After an analysis of the process of learning to deal effectively with emotions, five stages of appropriate educational approaches were revealed. These stages are: (1) frustration, (2) looking at parents, (3) looking at self, (4)holding back in talking to the adolescent, and (5) redemption.
The doctoral thesis, by means of an extensive quantitative study, as well as by analysing the process of focusing on one's own emotion regulation combined with exploring the intrapsychic dynamics in parents, makes an important contribution to the evaluation of the effectiveness of the relational family therapy model in the context of a psychoeducational group approach.
|
