Intervention And Sports For Adolescent Girls From Complete Families With Social Risk

Abstract

Due to the lack of assurance of adolescents from complete families with social risk of their parents' love for them, there is a discord of family relationships. Specially organized sports activity and measures of intervention for complete families with social risk promote mutual understanding and the improvement of relationships between adolescents and parents. We studied the views of adolescents from complete families with social risk on the relationships with the father and mother. A specially tailored intervention program promotes the improvement of the relationships between the adolescents and their parents. A version of the inventory “Children’s Report of Parental Behavior Inventory” by Wasserman, Gorkovaya and Romitsyna ( 2004 ), as well as a specially designed intervention program for improving the relationships between adolescents and their parents was applied. The voluntary participation of adolescents from complete families with social risk and their parents in the intervention program combined with sports activity improves family relationships in a relatively short time: 44% of the adolescents showed improvement of their perception of the mother’s attitude to them; 20% of the respondents believe that the hostile attitude of the mother to them has changed to positive; 28% of the adolescents believe that their father’s relationship to them has become more positive than inconsistent.

Keywords: AdolescentInterventionSocial risk familiesSports

Introduction

A family experiencing various periods of life can either promote a child’s development or have a

destructive influence on the development of their personality. According to OECD (2011) data, today

there are many incomplete families in the world; parents marry more than once or cohabitate with casual

partners. In the period of global crisis, parents often lose their jobs and become long-term unemployed.

After a long time without a constant sufficient income, the family becomes a low-income family, receives

social housing and thus falls into the social risk group. A family obtains a special form of being with an

adolescent. Therefore the following question becomes important: what is the nature of relationships

between parents and children in social risk families?

The psychological climate in the family, the empathic ability of parents, communication and forms

of interaction of family members acquire a different nature, i.e. the adolescents interpret the role of the

family and their place in the system of relationships, subject the behavior of relatives to a more critical

judgment, give priority to interpersonal relationships (Dunn, 1988; Lerner & Steinberg, 2004).

At the age of adolescence, the social context changes – children have a tendency to spend less time

with family members. Especially when not feeling love from their parents, they try to win a good attitude

of their peers, having a significantly better mood from communication with friends (Larson & Richards,

1991). It is also known that unfavorable relationships in the family create social anxiety and lack of self-

confidence in children (Blote, Duvekot, Schalk, Tuinenburg, & Westenberg, 2010) because of the chance

of rejection by socially more well-off peers in a new situation of social interaction (Blote, Bokhors,

Miers, & Westenberg, 2012; Erath, Flanagan, & Bierman, 2007).

In social risk families, financial trouble can create and transform problems in relationships

between adolescents and parents. Children often externalize these problems onto their behavior (Ponnet,

Van Leeuwen, Wouters, & Mortelmans, 2015), which can lead to discord in relationships with others and

to symptoms of depression (Ehrlich, Cassidy, Lejuez, & Daughters, 2014). Parental stress due to unstable

and low family income and related insufficient care of the children can also increase the risk of cruel

behavior towards the child (Berger, 2004; Ha, Collins, & Martino, 2015; Sidebotham & Heron, 2006).

Nasr, Sivarajasingam, Jones and Shepherd (2010) note that adolescent girls are subjected to especially

high risk of gaining trauma related to violence due to material deprivation.

In school adolescents often fall into a “social risk” group because their relationship problems with

parents influence their learning success and social emotional behavior (Bradly, Corwyn, Burchinal,

McAdoo, & Coll, 2001; Hurellmann, 1990). Grigoryeva and Shamionov (2014) single out emotional

well-being as a stable predictor of academic success of elementary school children – the more positive the

parents’ assessment of the children’s adaptive behavior in school, the better the child feels emotionally.

Even with the presence of learning motivation but with the lack of warm relationships with teachers

(Jungert, Piroddi, & Thornberg, 2016), the lack of parental support and rejection from more successful

classmates creates a feeling of dissatisfaction with oneself and low self-esteem, which can consequently

lead to a bullying-victim status or a reactive-victim status (Cook, Williams, Guerra, Kim, & Sadek, 2010).

Therefore, to form a full understanding of relationships with others, adolescents from complete

families with social risk need psychological support. Supporting an adolescent means believing in their

abilities, seeing their positive traits, encouraging them verbally and non-verbally, and having confidence

in their success. First of all, psychological support from parents improves family relationships and

promotes pro-social behavior of adolescents (Houltberg, Morris, Cui, Henry, & Criss, 2016). With a lack

of adequate support, a child of any age experiences disappointment – from early childhood, development

of mental deprivation is promoted with a tendency to asocial behavior later (Laugmeier & Matejcek,

1984).

Unfortunately, parents in the process of interaction with adolescents do not differentiate between

such concepts as support, praise and reward. Unreasonable demands of adults have a negative impact on

the mood of an adolescent (Tseluiko, 2004). The first reaction of parents to a child’s failure is often

focusing on mistakes, whereas no attention is given to positive actions and reward. Praise is received for

strictly fulfilled demands or requests, but support is given in the form of help in completing a specific

task or with minimal progress in achieving something. Parents do not realize that support has an

enormous importance to adolescents during various types of failures (Levi, 2006).

Unfortunately, many adolescents do not receive timely support and suffer from failures, which is

why relationships with parents do not develop the feeling of confidence in children, a desire to achieve

success and the feeling of own importance. Constant focus on failure leads to lower self-esteem and

decreases the chance of success of the adolescents later in life (Obukhova, 1998). Success creates the

desire to achieve something more and increases self-confidence of adolescents (Maksimov, 2016).

Psychological help improves moral balance in the relationships of parents and adolescents in

families with social risk (Sinyagina, 2003). Thus, one of the ways to help adolescents from families with

social risk can be intervention that promotes awareness of a relationship problem with parents.

Problem Statement

Many families have a relationship dissonance, which can be explained by adolescents’ perceived

lack of assurance of parental love. In the study, we focus on adolescent girls from complete families that

fall into a social risk category where one of the parents has been unemployed for a significant period of

time.

Research Questions

Do organized sports activities and intervention for behavior adjustment foster mutual

understanding and improvement of relationships between adolescents and their parents?

Purpose of the Study

To examine how tailored programs of sports activities and intervention help improve relationships

between adolescent girls and their parents.

Research Methods

Findings

First Stage

According to the research plan, diagnostic work was performed to determine the nature of the

relationships of the adolescent girls and their parents. It is necessary to study the views of the children on

the attitude of both parents to them – the father and mother. Statistical analysis of the obtained data was

performed. For convenience, the results obtained are presented in Table 1.

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As seen from Table 1, a positive significant correlation of the adolescents’ views on their parents’

attitudes to them was found at level p< .01 on the following scales:

§ Hostile attitude of the father (HOSf1) and authoritarian attitude of the mother (DIRm1);

§ Autonomous attitude of the father (AUTf1) and autonomous attitude of the mother

(AUTm1);

§ Inconsistent attitude of the father (NEDf1) and authoritarian attitude of the mother (DIRm1).

Positive significant correlation at level p< .05 exists between the adolescents’ views on their

father’s and mother’s attitude to them on the Hostility scale of the father (HOSf1) and inconsistent

attitude of the mother (NEDm1).

Having analyzed the results, it can be stated that in general adolescent girls describe their mother’s

attitude to them as authoritarian and demonstrative. When an adolescent believes that one of the parents is

hostile to them, then they believe that the other parent has an inconsistent or authoritarian and

demonstrative attitude to them. It can be assumed that, according to the adolescents, autonomous and

independent attitude of one of the parents means less control and more independence from the other

parent. However, inconsistent attitude of the father provokes authoritarian attitude of the mother.

Findings of the Third Stage

At the third stage of the study, the diagnostic procedure to determine the views of the adolescents

on their parents’ attitude to them was repeated. Results were compared before and after the interventional

activities. A dynamics in the views of adolescents from complete families with high social risk on

positive attitude of their parents to them was found. For convenience, the results of statistical processing

obtained after the interventional activities are presented in Table 2.

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A positive significant correlation of the views of adolescent girls’ from complete families on their

parents’ attitude to them is found at the level of p< .05 on the following scales:

§ If the adolescent feels a positive attitude of their father (POSf2), but an authoritarian attitude

from the mother (DIRm2);

§ If the adolescent feels an autonomous attitude of both parents (AUTf2 – AUTm2);

§ If the adolescent feels a positive attitude of their mother (POSm2), but an inconsistent

attitude of their father (NEDf2);

A positive significant correlation at the level p< .01 exists between the views of the adolescents

from complete families with high social risk on their mother’s and father’s attitude to them on the

following scales:

If, according to the adolescents, both parents have an authoritarian attitude to them (DIRf2-

DIRm2);

If the adolescent feels a hostile attitude of their father (HOSf2) and an inconsistent attitude of

their mother (NEDm2).

After studying the views of adolescent girls on their relationship with the mother and father and

summarizing the results obtained after a comparison of data of the first and third stage of the study, it

must be noted that the view of 20% of respondents on their father’s attitude to them became more

positive; 44% of adolescents believe that their father’s attitude to them became less authoritarian. Hostile

attitude of the father to the adolescents, according to the children, has changed to positive for 24% of

respondents. The view of authoritarian attitude of the father has been found for 20% of respondents and

28% of adolescents feel that their father’s attitude to them became more positive rather than inconsistent.

Overall, for 44% of adolescents, the view on the mother’s attitude to them has improved; 32% of

adolescents adequately perceive authoritarian attitude of the mother and consider it positive; 20% of

respondents believe that the hostile attitude of the mother has changed to positive. According to 16% of

respondents, their mother gives them freedom of action and trusts them. The view on inconsistent attitude

of the mother has changed for 40% of adolescents.

Conclusion

When entering adolescence, relationships with parents are very important to children, as well as

the relationship between their parents, which is a basis for stable relationships in the family. Development

of the adolescent’s awareness of their “Self” depends not only on different social contexts to which they

belong, but also on mutual input into the relationship between parents and children (Scabini & Cigoli,

2006). Moreover, parents of anxious and rejected children usually have a negative attitude regarding their

children (Laskey & Cartwright-Hatton, 2009).

Often parents, while having high expectations of their children, are unable to offer them a model

of career growth corresponding to the knowledge obtained. Often, the views of parents and adolescents on

further life prospect do not match, which leads to lack of mutual understanding and harmony in the

family. This is why it was important to perform intervention in social risk families in order to harmonize

internal relationships where, as a result, the adolescent has become the subject of interaction instead of

the object of influence.

In order to create an intervention program, analysis of existing difficulties in the relationships

between children and parents was performed; namely, during individual consultations, interindividual

causes were found, related to the peculiarities of family upbringing and macrosystemic causes, related to

socio-cultural peculiarities of life of the family.

The supportive role of the family as a system for development of a child’s personality is

mentioned by many researchers (Cox & Paley, 2003; Levi, 2006; Obukhova, 1998). Besides, boys and

girls have different emotional reactions to family conflicts – boys react to didactic disturbances, whereas

girls react to disengagement in family relationships in general (Lindahl, Bregman, & Malik, 2012). In the

context of sustainable education, for developing stability of future trusting relationships, apart from taking

into account gender differences, the focus is on the way parents consider the interests and needs of their

children at the beginning of school life (Drelinga, Ilisko, & Zarina, 2015). In this regard, Ryan and Deci

(2000) offer to consider three innate needs – competence, autonomy and relatedness, and satisfying each

can strengthen self-motivation, positively impact mental health and maintain well-being in the family.

The necessary economic income and relationship culture in the family must become a long term

strategy of family upbringing of adolescents (Hurellmann, 1990). Kwon, Janz, Letuchy, Burns and Levy

(2016) state that in families with low economic status, the role of the father is important in supporting the

adolescents’ participation in sports activities. This fact is especially important in our case because in the

most of cases, the fathers were the ones who were unemployed.

The results of our study demonstrate that voluntary participation of adolescent girls and their

parents from complete families with social risk in interventional activities together with sports activity

gives a positive result in the improvement of family relationships in a relatively short period of time.

Thus, stable relationships between adolescents and parents can be considered a predictor of further self-

improvement and family well-being.

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