Adolescents’ Perception of Their Relation with Their Parents: Impact on Emotional Autonomy

Abstract The present study has been designed to find out adolescents’ perception of their relationship with both the parents and its impact on the emotional autonomy. A sample of 200 adolescents comprising of 100 boys and 100 girls in the age group of 16-18 years was drawn from four Government schools of Ludhiana city. Parent Child Relationship Scale by Nalini Rao and Emotional Autonomy Scale by Steinberg and Silverberg were used to assess parent adolescent relationship and emotional autonomy of the respondents respectively. Results revealed that highly autonomous boys considered their father to be more rejecting and neglecting and less loving than their mother. Highly autonomous girls perceived their father to be demanding and their mother to be less rewarding symbolically and objectively and less loving. Aspects of positive parenting such as protecting, symbolic reward, loving and object reward was associated with decreased emotional autonomy among adolescents.