The American Dependency Conflict: Continuities and Discontinuities in Behavior and Values of Countercultural Parents and Their Children

Abstract

Beatrice Whiting recognized the American "dependency conflict": parental training for independence and selfreliance values, while at the same time rewarding dominantdependence and seeking attention in parent‐child interaction. The countercultural youth of the 1960s and 1970s valued interdependence and questioned authority and dominance. A study of 150 countercultural parents and their childen, and a comparison sample of 50 two‐parent married parents, show remarkably high rates of seeking attention and verbal interactions across countercultural and comparison‐sample families alike. This parenting and child behavioral style, which encourages dependency conflict, did not change, although countercultural values were transmitted. Change processes require the study of the intimate, cultural‐emotional worlds of children and families, as well as broader forces of political economy and social movements.