Adolescents' reference groups in the school situation

Abstract

Most researchers who have studied the relationship between the adolescent, his parents and his peers have cast parents and peers as mutually exclusive forces - to follow one is automatically to reject the other. These researchers have turned up inconsistent findings, some finding the adolescent's conformity to his peers so great that they write of a separate youth culture, while others have found that the adolescent is still very much under the thumb of his parents.