This study aims to investigate the psychological phenomenon and the essence of parenting conflicts of mothers with adolescent sons in depth and to find how to deal with it. For this, the study conducted qualitative research by applying Colaizzi’s ph...
This study aims to investigate the psychological phenomenon and the essence of parenting conflicts of mothers with adolescent sons in depth and to find how to deal with it. For this, the study conducted qualitative research by applying Colaizzi’s phenomenological method to 7 mothers who had male adolescents through in-depth interviews, and it resulted in 133 formulated meanings, 37 themes and 13 theme clusters.
In this study, the participants experienced and felt ‘unfamiliar with their sons to act independently’, ‘anxiety about their unpredictable sons’, ‘being crushed by rebellion of the sons’, ‘too much to accept their immature sons’, ‘worrying about the sons’ uncertain futures’, ‘desire for compensation of the sons’ and ‘guilty conscience about limitations of existing parenting methods’, as psychological phenomenon. The participants dealt with the conflicts by ‘finding coping methods through self-reflections’, ‘embracing themselves by changing the focuses of their lives’, ‘attempting to separation individualize themselves from their sons’, ‘accepting the developmental identities of their male sons’, ‘getting relaxed in parenting by trials and errors’ and ‘expanded lives through pains of growth as parents’. Next, the results of the analysis are summarized as follows :
First, the participants were unfamiliar with the independent movements of their sons, who didn’t easily follow the mothers as entering adolescents, and thought their sons were selfish of doing not care at all. The participants felt senses of crisis with the impacts that they were shot by their sons, declaring that they would no longer be overwhelmed by their mothers. The sons, rather than caring for their parents, was trying to reign over their parents and fill their own needs. For that reason, the participants realized that they could not drag their sons forcibly, and they thought it as the worst of their lives. Also, the participants felt anxiety because they could not predict their sons, men who were too different from the participants. When their sons expressing rough angers, they were crumbled and even felt fear.
Second, the participants regarded their sons as inflictors who hurt them, and they felt senses of helplessness when the sons buried daggers in their hearts. These conflicts led to family discord, and even though they were fighting to avoid being ignored, the participants felt only their self-esteem fallen. To make matters worse, the sons’ academic works and uncertain futures made the participants worried, and they were overwhelmed with the sons’ problems. Eventually, the participants felt shame as parents when their sons made troubles without anything to write home about, and felt resentment in front of the fact that they wanted to be compensated by their sons but never fulfilled. The participants realized the limitations of their controlling parenting styles, losing their self-confidence and reaching their own self-defeats.
Third, even though, the participants were looking for coping with it through self-reflection. They thought back their parenting style, which focused on grades of their sons and nagged at it, and tried to get helps from counseling, religion and good examples of other families that had overcome similar situations. Also, they showed wisdoms to participate their husbands, who has same sex with the sons, in parenting and handled these problems together. As turning the focuses of their lives from their sons to their own, they encountered their own family problems, creating the inner power to separate and individualize their sons from themselves. In the process, they were sometimes cried but tried to respect their sons’ opinions, keeping psychological distance so that the sons could find their identities. By doing so, they gradually understood the development of their sons as being men, and realized that it takes a long time to understand sons with hearts. As they controlled their expectations for the sons and saw the growth of the sons, the conflicts got slipped away, and they became comfortable to raise their male adolescents. Finally, the participants were thankful for the sons to help find new directions in their own lives and to make them grow up, and also felt reliable with their sons. When their sons thanked to them, the participants felt joy and received compensations of moving beyond the pain of growing up as parents to extended lives.
Hence, the first significance of this study is that the substance and the meaning of the experiences of parental conflicts of mothers with adolescent sons were revealed as in-depth statements, and the study tried to understand it overall.
Second, this study provided an in-depth analysis of the experiences of parental conflicts of mothers with adolescent sons who were normal and general. In the academia of counseling, it is meaningful that it was the first qualitative research in Korea.
Third, this study revealed that self-reflection was an important turning point in coping with parental conflicts of mothers with adolescent sons.
Fourth, this study suggests that the experiences of parental conflicts of mothers with adolescent sons should be approached by the perspective of crisis counseling, which should be intervened immediately and continuously.
Fifth, this study revealed the experiences of parenting conflicts of mothers who had male adolescents in the context of Korean education which focuses on admission.