Developmental Tasks of Adolescence in Relation to the Family

Abstract

This chapter spells out the overall psychosocial tasks the adolescent must engage in to achieve adult societal and psychological status. Most of the chapter is devoted to the topic of the parent-adolescent separation process, which forms an essential knowledge base for the human service professional attempting to help troubled adolescents and their families. This individuation process is viewed from a temporal, life stage perspective, and it is studied in terms of how it is played out in two-parent families, under the special circumstances of divorce, in single-parent families, in stepfamilies, and in relations marred by violence. Finally, in keeping with a system theory perspective, sibling relations are briefly discussed.