Flirting with resistance: children’s expressions of autonomy during middle childhood

Abstract

Purpose: Developmental research suggests that children's early non-compliance can be understood as "resistance", an agentic response to parental control where children express their autonomy within a close relationship context. Research with toddlers and adolescents suggests that children's resistance strategies can be differentiated using the dimensions of assertiveness, social skill, and overt versus covert expression. This study explores children's strategies for expressing resistance during the neglected period of middle childhood. Method: Forty children, 9-13 years of age, participated for 1 week in a study focused on children's experiences of socialization and parent-child relationships. Procedures included a 5-day event diary, and a 1-hour semi-structured interview about the rules and expectations in their home and their strategies of resistance. Results: Thematic analysis identified a rich repertoire of strategies for resisting unwelcome parental demands. These included overt resistance, such as negotiation, argument, and expressions of non-acceptance and covert resistance such as covert transgressions and cognitive non-acceptance of parental demands when compelled to comply. Conclusion: The findings were interpreted as reflecting children's development of assertiveness and social skill as they expressed their autonomy in the interpersonal context of the interdependent but asymmetrical relationship with their parents.

Jamaican Mothers’ Perceptions of Children’s Strategies for Resisting Parental Rules and Requests

“…Attitude is a subversive often non-verbal expression of agency by which children who have been compelled to comply behaviorally, communicated their disapproval of the parent’s expectation (Kuczynski et al, in press). Although many of the displays of attitude reported for Jamaican children such as eye rolling and dismissive vocalizations are similar to those reported in North American studies, mothers also said, that their children communicated resistance by “hiss-teeth,” a unique form of dismissive expression that may be specific to Afro-Caribbean culture.…”

“…Developmental changes included skillful strategies such as negotiation increasing with age, and unassertive strategies for expressing autonomy such as ignoring decreasing between 18 months and 5 years. During middle childhood (Kuczynski et al, in press) and adolescence (Parkin and Kuczynski, 2012) similar categories of strategies for overtly resisting parental demands have been identified, albeit at greater levels of skill and assertiveness. Also, the use of contextualized qualitative methodologies such as event diaries and critical incident reports have identified covert forms of resistance such as negative cognitive evaluations of parental messages despite behavioral compliance or acquiescence, as well as covert transgressions and evasions of parental demands.…”

Children’s agency in the family, in school and in society: implications for health and well-being

“…The remaining four articles, have a greater focus on family and interpersonal processes, but in relation to applied arenas such as social policy, institutions and services. Kuczynski, Pitman, and Twigger (2019) present a fine grain analysis of school age children's strategies for expressing resistance to unwanted parental requests that suggest a multifaceted approach for clinically assessing an agentic behavior that has traditionally been viewed as problematic and in need of suppression. Bergnehr (2019), with refugee families, and Cheang and Goh (2019) with low-income families, explore the capacity of children to act on behalf of themselves and to contribute positively to their families' well-being.…”

“…First, there is a diversity of contexts where children act as agents. These include the macro level contexts of culture (De Mol et al, 2019) and acculturation (Bergnehr, 2019), poverty (Cheang and Goh (2019), school (Bolin, 2019;Wickström, 2019) and dyadic family relationships Kuczynski et al (2019), Robson and Kuczynski (2019), Gurdal and Sorbring (2019). Nowhere to be found is the individual agent operating devoid of context.…”

“…This is most clearly illustrated by Gurdal and Sorbring (2019) who find that children's sense of efficacy, or belief that they can influence another person and their choice of social influence strategies depended on whether they acted within parent-child relationships, peer-relationships or institutional teacher-pupil relationships. Kuczynski et al (2019) and Robson and Kuczynski (2019) consider unique features of the parent-child relationship that affords children leeway to express their resistance despite their difference in power in an asymmetrical but interdependent close relationship. Cheang and Goh (2019) attribute the ability of children to succeed academically despite living in disadvantaged, low income families, to the fact that they are connected agents rather than isolated agents.…”