Social webs and family nets: cultural differences in adolescents' perceptions and expectations of family life

Abstract

Investigations of adolescents whose parents have divorced (and perhaps remarried) have mainly been concerned with issues typically associated with self-concept, parent-child, sibling, and peer-group relationships, educational pertormancs, psychological disturbance, economic hardship, and socialization. Relatively little is known about the adolescent's own perceptions of and expectations towards marriage and parenting, divorce and remarriage. Little is also known about the extent to which cultural differences impinge upon the adolescent's developing perceptions in these areas. Consequently, the present study is concerned with some cultural differences and similarities in such perceptions of a sample of 332 Scottish and 499 Calitornian adolescents. Specifically, employing both survey methods and a number of 'in-depth' interviews, the cross-cultural study undertook to question how adolescents understand and/or relate to the divorce of their parents, to the concepts of divorce, of marriage and remarriage, and especially of their expectations concerning their own future familial relationships. The expectation - based on the greater incidence of divorce and remarriage in California - that there would be a marked difference in perceptions of marriage between the two cultures was not borne cut and adolescents in both cultures were remarkably similar in their outlook. Rather, the more obvious differences in responses to the various issues of marriage investigated, were based on family composition differences, common to both cultures. Specifically, adolescents from single/blended families were less traditional arid conservative in their views than were adolescents from both-parent families. The former more than the latter indicated future expectations of their own divorce and remarriage.