Great Transitions: Preparing Adolescents for a New Century

Chapter Three: Reengaging Families with Their Adolescent Children

Being the parent of an adolescent, no less than of a child, in today's America is a formidable responsibility. Yet families with young adolescents, in contrast to those with young children, have been neglected in professional services, community programs, and public policies. Little attention has been given to strengthening supportive networks for families in either middle-class or low-income communities. Although an industry of books, audio- and videotapes, and seminars has burgeoned for parents with young children, much less information and help is available to those with adolescents.

A social consensus holds that parental knowledge of infant and child development is critical to a child's future; no such consensus yet exists in defining the knowledge that parents should have about the adolescent years or about their roles during the critical transition. To the contrary, many parents are led to believe they should get out of the way when their children reach adolescence! Others feel perplexed and angry as they see their authority weakened and their values challenged; yet they search in vain for counsel in how best to respond.

Despite the conventional wisdom about adolescent rebelliousness, young adolescents moving toward independence are still intimately tied to their families; they still have much to learn and more growing to do. Whatever their ethnicity and economic circumstances, in survey after survey they reveal a yearning for parental attention and guidance in making educational and career decisions, in forming a set of values, and in assuming adult roles. Not only do they want the supportive guidance of their parents, they desire it of other adults as well.

The poignant answer of young people to questions about why they join gangs is that these groups become the families that they never had. This is compelling testimony to young adolescents' fundamental need for close, reliable relationships with a supportive, protective group that confers respect and identity and recognizes competence. Many gangs do just that, although at the price of strict conformity to norms that tend to be antisocial and dangerous.

Parents who strive to remain closely involved in their growing adolescent's life, however, are often prevented from doing so by job and career demands, the rigid boundaries between work and home life, and the frequent claims on their time and resources from aging parents or younger children, among other constraints. Existing school policies and teacher attitudes, in addition, have long discouraged the involvement or accepted the absence of parents in school activities beyond the elementary school years. Schools, businesses, government, religious institutions, and other community organizations must now seek ways to provide opportunities and support for parents in their desire to have a closer relationship with their young adolescent.

STRENGTHENING PARENTS' ROLES DURING THE EARLY ADOLESCENT YEARS

Sustain Parental Involvement in Middle Grade Schools
Parents who want their children to do well in school must remain involved in their education through the middle and high school years. Although more schools are recognizing the importance of such involvement, their numbers are still small. If further progress is to be made, there must be more widespread, meaningful change in the attitudes and practices of teachers and principals. Parents who do participate in the school feel useful, develop confidence in their relations with school staff, and are more likely to attend school activities, which signal to young adolescents the importance of education.

Particularly in low-income neighborhoods, schools can act as family resource centers where parents can meet to learn about normal changes during adolescence and take advantage of educational offerings in computer literacy, employment counseling, English-as-a-second-language, health promotion, and citizenship. Schools, moreover, can inform parents about programs and students' progress on a regular basis; they can provide specific suggestions for ways that parents can assist with homework and other learning activities; and they can involve parents as volunteers in schools and include them in school governance committees.

Create Parent Peer Support Groups
A previous generation of studies of troubled parent-adolescent relationships emphasized the alienation of adolescents from families as inevitable and served to discourage education, health, and youth-development professionals from seeking ways to strengthen families in their critical role during a child's second decade of life. This perspective has begun to change with new findings from studies of adolescent development in nonclinical settings and of a variety of relationships between adolescents and their parents.

The conclusions drawn from research are that young adolescents flourish when they have a family life characterized by warmth and mutual respect and when they have parents who show serious and sustained interest in their lives; who respond to their changing cognitive and social capacities; who communicate high expections for their achievement and ethical behavior; who demonstrate democratic, constructive ways of dealing with conflict; and who provide a consistent basis of discipline and close supervision. Such a family atmosphere can provide powerful protection against the risks of a young person's engaging in unhealthy or antisocial practices or becoming depressed and alienated.

Of course, in real life achieving this ideal is not easy. To assist them in their relationships with their adolescents, parents are turning increasingly to parent support groups. Mutual-aid groups of this kind can reach a large number of families in an efficient way. Participants share information and experience about handling the transition from childhood to adolescence, aspects of normal adolescent development, how to improve their communication skills, ways to renegotiate the parent-adolescent relationship, how to set and enforce limits, where to find resources in the community, and how to deal with the needs of both adolescents and younger siblings. Additionally, they can get help in coping with changes in their own lives, which can sometimes interfere in their relationship with their adolescents. In the few low-income communities where they exist, parent networks can also assist others in gaining access to health care, adult education, including literacy classes, and job training and placement.

Provide Prospective Guidance to Parents on Adolescent Transitions
The Guidelines for Adolescent Preventive Services of the American Medical Association (AMA) recommend that parents or other caregivers of adolescents receive prospective information and guidance on early, middle, and late adolescence as part of adolescents' annual health examinations. The Carnegie Council seconds this advice. During these visits, parents can learn about normal adolescent physical, sexual, and social development; the signs and symptoms of diseases and emotional distress; ways to promote healthy adolescent adjustment; and how to prevent potential problems, such as helping adolescents drive responsibly, monitoring their social and recreational activities, and restricting sexual behavior and the use of tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs.

Reassess Public and Private Policies and Practices
Legislation, public policies, and workplace practices do not yet recognize the ways that institutions still conduct business largely based on outdated assumptions about family structure and functioning. Many parents, as a result, are deeply stressed in their efforts to fulfill their responsibilities toward their children and adolescents as they struggle to earn a living. One way or another, families continue to make the critical difference in the health and educational outcomes of children. To encourage and support parents and other adults in their vital role in the lives of adolescents into the next century, changes in policies, programs, and laws are therefore needed.

• Professionals, such as teachers, nurses, social workers, physicians, psychologists, and youth development specialists who work with adolescents, must be prepared to work not only with individual adolescents, but also with their families.
• Employers, such as corporations and public agencies, should extend to parents of young adolescents the workplace policies now available for those with young children, including flextime, job sharing, telecommuting, and part-time work with benefits. Such family-friendly workplace policies would allow parents to become more involved in middle and high schools, serve as volunteers in community organizations, and spend more time with their teenagers.
• Congress should extend the child care tax credit from its current ceiling of age ten to that of age fourteen, thus providing some financial relief to parents seeking to provide safety and support for their young adolescents in the risky afternoon and early evening hours when work schedules usually require parental absence from home.

When the private world of families and the public spheres of neighborhoods, communities, and workplaces are mutually supportive, we have our best hope for preparing all of our adolescents for a new century.

American Businesses Invest in Young Adolescents

More parents of young adolescents must find ways to balance their work and family responsibilities today than ever before. As the number of dual-earner and single-parent families continues to rise, parents who work outside the home find few safe, high-quality programs to provide structure and adult guidance for their young adolescents after school and during vacations and holidays. Finding quality care is even more difficult for parents who work nontraditional hours, in workplaces that operate twenty-four hours a day. In response to the growing needs of parents, a number of American corporations have begun to diversify their dependent benefits programs to support parents of young adolescents.

REACHING OUT TO FAMILIES

Some major employers have joined forces to provide activities for their employees' young adolescents during the out-of-school hours. The American Business Collaboration for Quality Dependent Care (ABC) is a coalition formed in 1992 by 137 corporations (expanded to 156 by the end of 1994), to assist employees in finding reliable, local care for their dependents. To address the lack of programs for young adolescents when schools are not in session, ABC provided funding for the creation of adventure camps, ropes and challenge courses, and science and technology camps.

"WE HAVE FUN BUILDING THINGS"

To help parents find attractive and educational alternatives for their young adolescents, members of ABC funded the development of summer science and technology (Sci/Tech) camps for ten- to fourteen-year-olds, where campers learn about computer graphics, solar power, and architecture. Members of ABC see the camps as an investment in the future and as a child care solution for their employees with young adolescents.

The camps open early and stay open late to fit parents' work schedules. Attendance at these camps is not limited to the children of the sponsoring corporations--the parents of 64 percent of the campers at STAR (Science and Technology Adventure Researchers) Camp in South Brunswick, New Jersey, work for other companies. The Sci/Tech camps reach out to girls and to minorities, who are traditionally underrepresented in science and math camps. In New Jersey, two new Sci/Tech camps emphasize hands-on science experience for young adolescents, who are challenged to ask questions, make scientific predictions, and plan for their futures.

At the STAR Camp, sponsored by several ABC partners including AT&T, IBM, and Johnson & Johnson, the sessions held at the camp's Liberty Science Center are the highlight of each day. Campers go on field trips to explore the working world of science. They meet scientists, engineers, and technicians at Mobil Research and Development's Water Toxicology Lab and other area companies. There, campers are scientists for a day, wearing lab coats and goggles and preparing real experiments. Such experiences show young adolescents that what they learn in the classroom during the school year and at camp during the summer does apply to the "real world." According to one camper, "STAR Camp is much better than other camps because you get to play computers and go to more field trips than other camps."

BALANCING WORK AND FAMILY LIFE

Other companies, either in addition to or independent of ABC, have their own work and family divisions that develop programs to help employees balance work and family life. IBM, for example, offers its 150,000 employees (60 percent of whom are part of a dual-income couple, 30 percent of whom have children who require supervision, and 5 percent of whom are single parents) several Work and Personal Life Balance Programs. These programs provide flexible leave and telecommuting options to parents.

To develop ways to make flexible schedules available to parents and to reduce absenteeism and tardiness, Marriott International, AT&T, Stride Rite, and Hewlett-Packard formed Flex Group. Flex Group members believe that flexible schedules make good business sense: employees who have schedule flexibility are more productive and are loyal to their companies.

Marriott International's Work-Life Department has developed alternative working arrangements for their employees who are parents of young adolescents. In addition to job sharing, condensed work weeks, and telecommuting, the department offers informational videos and materials on parenting, child care, and other concerns to help parents balance work and family demands. Marriott also established a bilingual and confidential Associate Resource Line (ARL) pilot service. Staffed by master's-level social workers, ARL provides twenty-four-hour counseling and advice to employees about concerns that arise from balancing work and family. ARL currently serves about thirteen of Marriott's units; in 1995, the service is expected to be expanded to include seventy-five more units.

Toyota Motor Manufacturing in Georgetown, Kentucky, operates a twenty-four-hour child development center on site for children whose parents work round-the-clock shifts. The center arranges for school-age children to be picked up at school and dropped off at the center, where they receive assistance with their homework from 4:30 to 6:30, eat dinner, and go to bed at 9:00 on school nights. During the summer, the center runs a full-day summer camp. About 60 percent of the children enrolled in the camp are between the ages of ten and thirteen.

THE FUTURE

The companies of ABC are winning praise for their efforts to respond to the needs of their employees' families. These innovators also are inspiring other companies to follow their lead. As more and more young adolescents are part of families where both parents or guardians work full time outside the home, the availability of flexible work options and quality out-of-school programs becomes increasingly important. These companies demonstrate that the extension of dependent care benefits to parents of young adolescents is a viable way to increase parents' productivity.

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