Decision-Making Influence in the Family: A Comparison of Turkish Families in Germany and in Turkey

Abstract

In a longitudinal study including 200 Turkish male adolescents from two regions in Germany and 100 in Turkey, power attributions and power discrepancies in decision-making influence between positions in familial dyads were explored. The power attributions were measured by assessing the children’s ratings of their own and their parents influence in decision-making in four main domains: financial issues, children’s affairs and general family decisions. Discrepancy measures were computed for each familial dyad separately (father-mother; father-child; motherchild). Furthermore, the impact of personal resources and normative social attitudes on the attributions were explored. The results show that the family power structure as perceived by male adolescent children are influenced by the cultural context favoring father dominance in Turkish families independent of cultural context. Furthermore, the attributions of decision-making showed a reversed relationship to father’s resource of education. The more educated the father’s the less powerful they were perceived by their sons. With increasing age the sons attributed more power to themselves in Germany but less power to their parents in Turkey. Thus, during adolescent development sons use two different mechanism for reducing power discrepancies between themselves and their parents depending on cultural context. Turkish mothers seem to profit from fathers’ empathetic parenting style in Germany but not in Turkey. The results were interpreted as favoring a nonnative resource theory that takes into account that with some levels of resources, e.g. education, different social normative attitudes are associated; these attitudes may counterbalance a positive linear resource effect.