THE SOCIOLOGY OF PARENT-YOUTH CONFLICT.

INTERPERSONAL conflict in adolescence; PARENT-child relationships; FAMILY values; WESTERN civilization; TEENAGERS; ADOLESCENT psychology; ATTITUDE (Psychology)

It is sociological terms that this paper attempts to frame and solve the sole question with which it deals, namely: Why does contemporary western civilization manifest an extraordinary amount of parent- adolescent conflict ? In other cultures, the outstanding fact is generally not the rebelliousness of youth, but its docility. There is practically no custom, no matter how tedious or painful, to which youth in primitive tribes or archaic civilizations will not willingly submit. What, then, are the peculiar features of the western society which gives one of the extremest examples of endemic filial friction in human history? The answer to this question makes use of constants and variables, the constants being the universal factors in the parent-youth relation, the variables being the factors which differ from one society to another. Though one's attention, in explaining the parent-youth relations of a given milieu, is focused on the variables, one cannot comprehend the action of the variables without also understanding the constants, for the latter constitute the structural and functional basis of the family as a part of society.