Influence of Parents Vs Peers: Essay

Adolescents look for a way of identity or a way of personal identity through a search and interrogation of personal values and beliefs and goals. Adolescent identity plays a vital role because it's the primary time when physical development, cognitive skills, and social expectations coincide that enable adolescents to know childhood identifications so as to construct a viable pathway toward their adulthood. Adolescence is the period that observes the feeling of personality or identity.

Erikson believes that every individual experiences different crises or conflicts throughout their lifetime. The particular stage which every adolescent passes through is called “Identity versus Role Confusion.' Personal identity is an individual's own sense of personal attributes whereas social identity on the other hand consists of social definitions of who you are. Adolescence leads to change and expectations of one’s own self and the society around oneself.

According to the study, personal identity processes can be intertwined with social identification. The way that commitment and exploration are processed might be positively associated and reconsideration of commitment would be negatively associated with identification with one’s own group. However, this study focuses on identity domains such as educational and interpersonal domains and social groups classmates, and friends that are very salient for an individual adolescent.

Erikson projected his work as a tool to think and not as a factual analysis, hence the given study highlights that identity development in educational and personal domains are highly intertwined. The study provides a well-defined understanding of Erikson's idea as success in this stage called Adolescence will lead to the virtue of fidelity which actually refers to committing oneself to others despite ideological differences.

Smoking among teens has now become common worldwide. Adolescents spend more amount of their time in school; therefore, the school environment is very important for child health practices and outcomes. The study investigates the impact of smoking behavior in the school environment and with peers and also the personal characteristics of male teenage students attending schools in Pakistan, considering the survey sampling structure.

A two-stage cluster sampling with stratification was employed, and the study interviewed 772 male secondary school students. The study adopted random effect and generalizing estimating equation models. The study interviewed an average of 20 to 25 students from each school and a total of 26 schools were sampled. According to the study, Peer pressure had a strong influence on adolescents' smoking; those whose friends smoked were up to 6 times more likely to smoke.

Family smoking was also significantly associated with adolescent smoking, but those students whose mother was educated were 50% less likely to smoke. A random coefficient model resulted that the variability among schools was not significantly different for public and private schools. The study results were consistent with the findings.

However, the study could not make any biomedical validation of self-reported current smoking status due to economic constraints. But studies of adolescents have shown that self-reported substance use by adolescents provides highly reliable data.

To enhance the understanding of the school effect on teenage smoking, it is necessary to consider a multilevel analysis approach since an ordinary logistic regression model does not allow cluster variability. Peer pressure is a significant cause of smoking in adolescents, Public health campaigns for smoking should target not only the individual but also the families of adolescents attending schools.

Parents influence their children during each stage of life. “Throughout development from childhood to adolescence, parents play an important role in the formation of their child ‘s regulation of emotions and behaviors, as well as their child ‘s self-esteem and identity” (Shaffer & Kipp, 2010)

The most important stage of an individual is the age of adolescence where the person identifies himself for who he is or who he is going to be. Identity is how we make sense of ourselves. It is a type of individuation that relates to the development of an individual’s personality. Generally, we construct our own identities through experience, emotions, connection, rejection, peers, and parents. The process of identity formation in adolescents can be processed by cognitive influence, scholastic influence, and sociocultural influence but parenting play an important role.

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Adolescents explore their parent’s values before they commit themselves to a particular value system. Parents can influence identity formation in adolescents both directly and indirectly, few teach their children their values. The other way is when an individual adolescent makes choices and determines right and wrong for themselves, and this impacts how they develop their moral self. The relationship between adolescents and parents paves the way for Identity Formation as a key perspective.

When there is a positive relationship between parents and adolescents, they are more likely to feel freedom in exploring their own identity options for themselves. Many studies provide evidence that for adolescents, identity formation is positively influenced by parental involvement. In contrast, when adolescents’ relationship with their parents isn’t positive enough or whole negative it may affect their child's self-confidence and lead to confusion. parenting and identity formation are dynamically interlinked, also parents keep being an important source of socialization for developing their children at adolescence.

Identity is expressed through self-realizing activities which a person feels as self-defining or fitting, engaging, energizing, purposeful, and helpful in fulfilling his/her goals in life. During adolescence, generally, children engage in a negotiation with their parents to develop independence or a state of freedom. They socialize more with peer groups rather than parents.

Parents do play a role in influencing adolescents' identity formation but this is not the only factor. There are several other factors that influence identity formation. One of the major factors that influence the formation of a person's identity during adolescence is his or her peers, which have the strongest influence than parents

Adolescents spend more time with peers than parents, despite parental influence on identity development peers influence the higher aspect as the age adolescents spent with peers and more thoughts are shared among peer groups without fear of being rejected. However, this may negatively influence identity formation in adolescents as the pressure of fitting in or conformity to just belong to a certain system is more likely to have an impact under peer pressure.

But with studies, more results show that peers provide normative regulation, and that provides a staging ground for the practice of social behaviors. This allows adolescents to experiment with roles and discover their identities. Peers serve as important social support and companionship during adolescence. Adolescents' identity formation is positively related to their relationships with peers. Belonging to a particular peer group and having good relationships with peers based on mutual respect are positively related to adolescent identity formation.

The age of adolescence determines our identity of who we are or who we are going to be. There are many influencing factors yet, peers and parental attachment play a significant role.

The research was conducted to find out the relationship between parental and peer attachment bonds during late adolescents with a sample of 100 students 50 boys and 50 girls were taken for the study age between 14 to 19 years and during the age of Adolescence, the way we see ourselves changes in response to peers and parents. Our personal identities shape our perception of our belongings.

The conflict for parents is how much freedom to actually grant and how much to assume. Parental attachment can influence identity formation in Adolescents both positively and negatively. Interaction with peers encourages adolescents to explore values and role possibilities. Peer attachment also has a positive and negative influence.

Thus, the given article provides evidence that parents have a strong influence on Adolescents' identity formation, and also states that peer group attachment may also have an influence. But The study results indicated that there is a significant positive relationship between parental attachment and identity development and also indicated that there is an insignificant relationship between peer attachment bonds and identity development.

The study has good Face validity. It is a descriptive overview of human social and emotional development that does not explain how this development occurs. However, the study has made an attempt to explore how various social contexts influence the process of identity development of adolescents with respect to peer and parental attachment.