Elsevier

Cognitive Development

Volume 21, Issue 3, July–September 2006, Pages 317-331
Cognitive Development

Brazilian adolescents’ conceptions of autonomy and parental authority

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2006.01.001Get rights and content

Abstract

Thirty-two middle class and 32 lower class southern Brazilian pre-adolescent (M = 12.8 years) and adolescent (M = 15.7 years) participants were individually interviewed regarding their perceptions of who (adolescent or parent) should determine the adolescent's actions in cases where the parents and adolescent disagree over the action choice. Participants were also asked to provide views of how the dispute should be resolved. The issues in the interviews entailed conflicts between the personal privacy and autonomy of the adolescent and potential risks the actions posed. Results indicated that Brazilian adolescents make claims to autonomy and privacy, but are also receptive to the role of parental authority. This assertion of autonomy over personal issues increased with age. Negotiation rather than power assertion were preferred forms of resolution. There were social class and sex differences in responses regarding particular action choices.

Section snippets

Settings and participants

The study was conducted in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Porto Alegre is the largest city in southern Brazil and is the capital of the state of Rio Grande do Sul. It has a population of 1,500,000. The southeastern region of Brazil, and the city of Porto Alegre in particular, is highly industrialized. As a corollary of this industrialization, per capita income is higher in the southeastern region than in the northern parts of Brazil (Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (IGBE, 2005). Porto

Results

The design of the study, in which the same four questions were presented across four different stories, suggested that they might elicit replications of the same judgments from participants. If there are no systematic variations in responses across the stories, then responses to each question could be combined for subsequent analyses. For example, if participants tended to respond in the same way to the “Who should decide?” question, subsequent analyses could be conducted on all results to that

Discussion

The results of this study, in conjunction with other studies (Nucci et al., 1996), demonstrate that concerns with autonomy and the prerogative to make decisions independently of parents are part of the thinking of Brazilian adolescents. Whereas prior work done in Brazil (Nucci et al., 1996) had focused on prototypical personal domain issues, the present study explored Brazilian adolescents’ judgments about more complex issues involving potential risks to the adolescent. Results from the present

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Camila Vital Menegaz and Veronica Perez for all their help in collecting and analyzing data, and Kirk Becker for advice on statistical analyses.

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