The vicissitudes of autonomy in early adolescence.
A sample of 865 10-16-year-olds from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds completed a questionnaire battery concerning 3 aspects of autonomy: emotional autonomy in relationship with parents, resistance to peer pressure, and the subjective sense of self-reliance. The observed patterns of relations among the measures cast doubt on the notion that autonomy is a unidimensional trait manifested similarly across a variety of situations. For most boys and girls, the transition from childhood into adolescence is marked more by a trading of dependency on parents for dependency on peers, rather than straightforward and unidimensional growth in autonomy. Moreover, contrary to long-standing notions about the greater salience of autonomy to adolescent males than to females, girls score higher than boys on all 3 measures of autonomy at all age levels.
D000293:Adolescent; D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D003858:Dependency, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D010379:Peer Group; D010551:Personality; D000297:Psychology, Adolescent; D012737:Sex Factors; D012923:Social Class; D012925:Social Conformity