Parents and Adolescents Making Time Choices: “Choosing a Relationship”

Abstract

Drawing on 20 qualitative family interviews with mothers, fathers, and adolescents (aged 16 to 19 years), this study explores the time choices of parents and adolescents. Adolescents and their parents talk about having varying degrees of control over their time in response to external demands. They identify that they initiate time together and apart from each other to meet specific individual and relational needs. Time choices are made within the context of a future-orientation and shifting hierarchy in the relationship. Exercising personal agency with respect to time appears to serve as a means of enhancing individual development for both parents and adolescents, as well as influencing relationship change. A model of dialogic interaction, emergent meaning making, and a context of dialectical tensions and contradictions is demonstrated in this exploration of time choices and intention.