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Pubertal maturation creates dynamic changes in parent-child relationships. For many parents, transitioning from parenting a child to parenting an adolescent can create stress, uncertainty, and vulnerability. In this article, we use a developmental science lens to examine the unique opportunities created by this period of dynamic growth, development, and change. We provide a brief overview of emerging research in social and affective neuroscience that examines how pubertal maturation initiates a cascade of adaptive and transformative neurodevelopmental transitions. We consider both challenges and opportunities in the parent-child relationship created by these transitions, highlight how effective parenting during this key developmental window can help establish positive trajectories throughout adolescence, and offer recommendations for both further understanding this transition and improving the precision and scope of resources intended to enhance parents' skills in the context of this transition.
Key Words: adolescent, neurodevelopment, parenting, puberty.
Kids don't stay with you if you do it right. It's the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won't be needed in the long run.
-Barbara Kingsolver, Pigs in Heaven
Each stage of active parenting-infancy, toddlerhood, childhood, and adolescence-can entail what feels like a demanding level of work and responsibility. It is not surprising that in describing parenting, many people co-opt the motto of the U.S. Peace Corps: "The toughest job you'll ever love." Empirical evidence documents the substantial costs associated with parenting, with several reviews concluding that the costs outweigh the perceived rewards, although more nuanced analysis suggests an overall net benefit (Nomaguchi & Milkie, 2003). Regardless of the magnitude of immense effort required for successful parenting, a long-standing and well-established body of literature in child development has documented the importance of the parent-child relationship throughout childhood and adolescence. The parent-child relationship undergoes substantial transitions at various stages of the life course, and parenting different age and stage children requires different skills and strategies and offers varying levels of strife and reward. Many inflection points in the developmental trajectory of a child's life present new challenges and opportunities for successful parenting. Here we explore the shifts in the parent-child relationship during early adolescence (10-14 years old).
ADOLESCENCE: CHANGE AND OPPORTUNITY
There are several reasons to scrutinize the transition from childhood into adolescence as a window of vulnerability...