When Family Values and Popular Culture Lock Horns

Jimmy had two parents, but they didn’t seem to matter to him as much as his friends. Since grade school, kids had been coming over and disappearing into his room, where they would listen to CDs, play video games or read comic books. Now at 13, he was smoking pot and planning to pierce his ear, eyebrow and lip.

To Ron Taffel, the New York psychotherapist brought in to counsel the family, Jimmy was typical of today’s troubled teens. He had what Taffel called a “first family� of parents, but he also had a “second family�--his friends--who were now exerting the more powerful pull.

“I’ve heard it thousands of times--it’s me against the whole pop culture,� said Taffel, who has given hundreds of parenting talks around the country. Taffel said parents are repeatedly asking the same question: How can they have as much influence as the peer group and popular culture?

It’s not a new question, but one that appears increasingly urgent as more kids are growing up without the understanding and guidance of adults. One recent study, the Who’s Who Among American High School Students, surveyed thousands of high-achieving teenagers and parents and found that parents consistently underestimated their children’s cheating, sexual activity, drunk driving, friends’ drug activity, pregnancy and suicide worries.

“It’s the usual suspects,� said Laurence Steinberg, professor of psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia. “Changes in the nature of family life, work, changes in the sense of community that people have.�

Steinberg said parental influence normally starts a permanent decline in about the fifth grade. Peer influence, on the other hand, forms an upside down U shape. “It’s low in elementary school, peaks at the end of junior high, then declines,� he said.

“Certainly by the time kids have reached eighth grade, peers are more influential than parents for day-to-day kinds of things like how to spend free time, how to dress, even how much time you devote to your homework and how you behave in school,� Steinberg said. “On the other hand, if you look at more fundamental issues of values, whether they’re going on to higher education, whether you have strong religious beliefs and basic issues of morality, kids are going to be more influenced by parents than peers.�

The issue is more complex than simply asking who has more influence, researchers said. “The newest research shows that what goes on in peer groups is not accidental,� said Jay Belsky, professor of human development at Pennsylvania State University in State College, Pa. “The peers a child hangs out with are chosen by the child and that is very much influenced by what goes on in the family.�

In some cases, peers offer positive support, reinforcing the family’s values. Kids who wind up in the worst peer groups typically come from families where parents are either indifferent and neglectful or harshly punitive, researchers said. “The myth of a good kid gone bad because of the influence of a bad peer group is pretty much of a myth,� Steinberg said.

Taffel said he persuaded Jimmy’s father, who had felt rejected by his son, to give up an authoritarian parenting style and try to enter his world. Over time, both parents won back their authority, he said.

As counselors try to reconnect parents with their children, Taffel believes it is crucial to reach out to the “second family� of peers. Always remembering to follow local parental consent laws, he urges his colleagues to bring peers into counseling sessions with the most troubled teens.

“It helps me get a real feel for what’s truly important in this child’s life besides the family,� Taffel said. And the process of entering their child’s world helps resolve parents’ alienation from each other as well as from their children.

* Lynn Smith’s column appears on Sundays. Readers may write to her at the Los Angeles Times, Life & Style, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053 or via e-mail at [email protected]. Please include a telephone number.