Children's Needs – Parenting Capacity - Digital Education Resource ...

Child development and parents’ responses – adolescence 187IdentityExpected identityYoung people aged 16 to 18 experience a growing self-awareness and struggle tosort out their own potential and limitations. Their sense of identity is made up of acombination of ‘given’ elements, an understanding and interpretation of past events,and the impact of present incidents and expectations for the future. Many youngpeople experiment with a range of different identities, some of which may come intoconflict with parental expectations.The young person’s sense of identity is linked to a feeling of belonging to theirfamily. Even when young people reject family values and culture, long-lasting riftsare unusual (Rutter et al. 1976).Possible impact on identityThere are two main issues in relation to the impact of parental mental illness, learningdisability, problem alcohol or drug use and domestic violence on young people’ssense of identity: low self-esteem and the consequences of inconsistent parenting.The realisation and acceptance that they are not first in the lives of their parentscontinues, leaving many young people feeling isolated, unwanted and alone –emotions which compound feelings of low self-esteem.That’s how I’d feel all the time: I’d feel alone. Drugs were more important thanme. I didn’t come first in my mother’s life ... she was more worried about drugs.(Felicia aged 17 years, quoted in Howard Thompson 1998, p.34)I would feel like killing myself because I would think it’s my fault, ’cos he drilledit in my head.(Seventeen-year-old woman, quoted in Mullender 2006, p.59)However, research suggests that many children of problem drinkers, drug users,parents with mental illness or learning disability, and those who were raised inviolent households, outgrow their problems....there is no evidence here that offspring [of problems drinkers] would describetheir marriages and their lives overall in more negative terms than comparisons.Nor was there any support for the prediction that offspring would have lower selfesteemthan comparisons.(Velleman and Orford 2001, p.180)