Cross-gender analysis of Vietnamese adolescents' understanding of parental conflicts and their effects

• Main Author: Tran, Thanh The, O.P.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2009
• Subjects: Teenager-Vietnam; Teenagers; Adolescents; Conflicts; Parent and child; Counseling
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/3825
• Institution: De La Salle University

The study was conducted to investigate the nature and cause of parental conflicts and their effects on Vietnamese adolescents through cross-gender analysis of the adolescents understandings and perceptions of parental conflicts, and their coping strategies. The participants were thirty two (32) Vietnamese adolescents living with their parents. With the focus group discussion method, the participants, with homogeneous groups, discussed the understandings, perceptions of parental conflicts and their effects with each other. Based on the outcomes of the discussions, the adolescents coping strategies related to parental conflicts were described through interviews and open-ended surveys. Relying on the analyzed research data, a psycho-education program was pilot-tested and developed with the participants, three (3) males and three (3) females to help the participants to understand themselves and realize the unavoidable conflicts in life so that they could have the proper interrelationships with others and be able to cope appropriately with parental conflicts. The domestic violence with its related categories was highlighted by all the male and female participants as their understanding and perception of parental conflicts; financial issue and its related categories was mentioned by the female participants, meanwhile, differences in personality and values were emphasized by the male participants as the causes of parental conflicts. The effects of parental conflicts were determined with three facets: cognition, emotion and behavior. The male and female participants had the similar effects on cognitive aspect, the female participants showed their sentiments, meanwhile, the male participants showed aggressive behavior problems. For the coping strategies, all the male and female participants revealed engaging in spiritual and religious activities; the female participants showed the avoidant coping strategies, but the male participants coped with seeking the iv intervention from family and social networks. The implications and the recommendations of the study were made for possible interventions to enhance the adolescents understandings about parental conflicts and related future research.