The Best of Friends The evidence for harmony in the family may not be obvious in some households. But it seems that four out of five young people now get on with their parents, which is the opposite of the popularly-held image of sullen teenagers locked in their room after endless family rows.

An important new study into teenage attitudes surprisingly reveals that their family life is more harmonious than it has even been in the past: more than half of 13 to 18-year-olds get on with their brothers and sisters; and one in three has not argued with their parents during the past 12 months. 85 percent of 13 to 18-year-olds agree with the statement “I am happy with my family life,” while a majority said their lives were “happy”, “fun” and “carefree”. Only one in ten said they definitely did not get on with their parents.

“We were surprised by just how positive today’s young people seem to be about their families,” said one member of the research team. “They are expected to be rebellious and selfish but actually they have other things on their minds; they want a car and material goods, and they worry about whether school is serving them well. There is more negotiation and discussion between parents and children, and children expect to participate in the family decision-making process. They do not want to rock the boat”

So it seems that this generation of parents is much more likely than parents of 30 years ago to treat their children as friends rather than subordinates. There are actual statements to back this up. “My parents are happy to discuss things with me and make compromises,” says 17-year-old Daniel Lazall. “I always tell them when I am going out clubbing, or which girl I am going out with. As long as they know what I am doing, they are fine with it.”

Susan Crome, who is now 21, agrees. “Looking back on the last 10 years, there was a lot of what you could call negotiation... or you might have called it bribery. But as long as I had done all my homework, I could go out on a Saturday night. But I think my grandparents were a lot stricter with my parents than that. I don’t think they were that flexible with their children.” But maybe this positive view of family life should not be unexpected. It is possible that ideas of adolescence being a difficult time are not rooted in real facts. A psychologist comments, “Our surprise that teenagers say they get along well with their parents comes because of a brief period in our social history when teenagers were identified as different beings. But that idea of rebelling and breaking away from their parents really only happened during that one time in the 1960s when everyone rebelled. The normal situation throughout history has been smooth transition from helping out with the family business to taking it over.”

“The present generation has grown up in a period of economic growth, and as a result teenagers appear to believe much more in individualism and self-reliance than in the past. That has contributed to their confidence in the fairness of life, and thus a general peace within the family unit.”

But is life really fair? Nine out of ten young people think “if you work hard enough, you will get just rewards.” However, some recognized that this was not actually inevitable – and not always fair. “If you have fewer opportunities and live in an inner city,” one 15-year-old boy told researchers, “you have got to work 110 percent. Otherwise you can work 50 percent and get away with it.”

But greater family stability has to be a good place for young people to start out in life, and the findings of the study support this. In spite of some gloomy forecasts about the decline of the family, the future looks good!