Discourse asymmetries in adolescent daughters' disputes with mothers

Audiotaped disputes of 101 mother-daughter dyads (daughter ages 11-20) were used to examine discourse asymmetry in parent-child relationships. To gras p the exchange of arguments, an observation instrument was designed. Parall el surveys assessed the extent to which mothers felt they tried to control daughters' behaviour and the extent to which daughters felt they tried to s eparate from and maintain connection with their mothers in their main argum ent. Findings suggest that mothers and daughters displayed dominant behavio ur in different parts of the disputes. Although mothers dominated in the re gulative aspects of discourse, daughters took the lead in the argumentative parts. They dominated in questioning mothers' arguments and adding counter arguments. Sequential analyses showed that daughters were more Likely to fo llow mothers' initiatives and contradict their arguments than vice versa. S ubjective understanding of the discourse was related to specific interactio ns. Mothers' and daughters' verbal behaviour displayed a curvilinear age-de pendent pattern. Subjective data, however, showed no age differences.