I love my parents. They have been very supportive and helpful to me during my life. But I know that not everyone is as lucky as I am.  I have seen my friends fight with their parents and bombard them with complaints. I started to notice a trend.  Or at least I thought I did. I observed that the lesser the age difference between my friends’ parents and them, the more they argued. I decided to put my theory to the test. I wanted to find out if the relationship between a child and his or her parents affected their relationship.

The Test

My guess was that age difference affects the relationship between parent and child. I theorized that the smaller the age difference between a child and his/her parents, the more they will argue. The reverse should be true as well: the greater the age difference, the less they will argue. My reasoning was that children who have younger parents challenge them more often because those children believe their young parents lack wisdom and life experiences.
I tried to test this theory by creating a survey that I distributed to 37 Clayton students. Each respondent had to give their age, the age of their parents, and then rate the relationship they have with each of their parents. Based on the responses, I calculated the correlation of three things: age difference (of child and parent) and relationship, age difference and frequency of conflicts or arguments, as well as conflict and relationship.
Naturally, there was a significant correlation between frequency of conflict and relationship.  The better the relationship the child had with their parents, the fewer number of conflicts they had. That was what I had expected The correlation was much more significant with mothers (40 percent) than with fathers (11 percent). This told me that fathers have  more conflicts with their children, even though their relationship may still be good.
There was also a slight correlation between age difference and frequency of conflicts. As age difference between parent and child increased, the more they fought. The correlation was a bit stronger for mothers (12 percent) than for fathers (nine percent). Logically speaking, this should mean that the greater the age difference, the worse the relationship. This was not the case for mothers, but it was for fathers.
There was a very small correlation between age difference and relationship with mothers. However, with fathers, there was a very substantial correlation of 17 percent. For mothers, no matter what the age difference was between them and their children, their relationship was unaffected. For fathers, the greater the age difference, the worse the relationship between them and their children. In both cases, my hypotheses were wrong, as I had predicted that relationship would improve with a greater age difference.
I also required the respondents to list the issues that they had conflicts about with their parents. Academics was by far the most popular issue, with 27 respondents citing it as an issue. Next was social life, with 18 respondents marking it. There were three marks for ‘drugs/alcohol,’ four for ‘financial issues,’ two for ‘dress code,’ and five marked ‘other.’ The other responses included siblings, athletics, not listening, time management and one even responded, “With my mom? Everything.”
I talked to CHS sophomore, Cleo Benos, about her relationship with her parents, and if she believed age difference was a factor.
“Well, I’m 15, my mom is 51 and my dad is 48,” Benos said. “So there is a 36 year difference between me and my mom and a 33 year difference between me and my dad. I think age difference affects relationships a little bit. For me specifically, because my parents are bit older, there is less of a ‘best friend with your child’ sort of relationship, though it’s still a strong relationship. I do discuss/debate things with my parents a lot, and I don’t consider that negative at all. I think that there is always going to be some arguing in a parent-teenager relationship, but as long as it’s not all the time or terrible, then it’s not necessarily a ‘bad’ thing.”
There are important things to take into account with this data. I had 21 male respondents compared to 16 female respondents, which could have potentially caused a skew in the data. To see if this was the case, I calculated the same statistics, but made them gender specific.

Male Respondents

With their mothers, the correlation between age difference and relationship was fairly significant (15 percent). As the age difference increased, their relationship grew worse. Regarding fathers however, this was even more significant, with a correlation of 36 percent. For males, their relationships with their fathers grew substantially worse if there was a relatively big age difference.
Interestingly enough, the correlation of age difference and conflict was greater for mothers (29 percent) than for fathers (15 percent). Even though the relationships between fathers and their sons declined more significantly than their relationship with their mothers, the amount of conflict mothers had with their sons was greater than the conflicts that sons had with their fathers.
Finally, as the relationship with their fathers got better, sons had fewer conflicts with their fathers (correlation of 57 percent). Though not as substantial (with a correlation of 39 percent), the same applied to mothers.

Female Respondents

With fathers, there was only a slight correlation between the age difference and relationship (7 percent). With mothers, there was a significant positive correlation (26 percent) between age difference and relationship. While
relationship slightly decreased as age difference between fathers and daughters increased, relationship substantially improved as age difference between mothers and daughters increased.
There was practically no correlation between age difference and frequency of conflict for fathers and daughters. However, there was another significant positive correlation (21 percent) for mothers and daughters. As the age difference between mothers and daughters increased, the amount of conflicts decreased substantially.
The correlation of relationship and conflict was somewhat puzzling. The correlation for mothers was 40 percent, so, as relationship improved, conflict went significantly down. I thought the same thing would apply for fathers, yet it did not. As the relationship between fathers and daughters got better, the frequency of conflict went up. Not only did it go up, it went up vastly, with a correlation of 26 percent.

What the Experts Say

I wanted  to get a deeper understanding of this trend. Therefore, I decided to see Dr. Paul Shattuck, a social work professor at Washington University.
“Just because teenagers may argue a lot with their parents, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they have a negative relationship,” Shattuck said. “Teens need guidance from their parents, but their refusal to accept it is generally what causes conflict between them and their parents. At that age, there will inevitably be conflict between teens and parents. However, that doesn’t take away from the fact that their parents may still love them.”

Conclusion

After reviewing all of the data, I concluded that difference in age between parents and children does not have a definite effect on their relationship. However, I did realize that the age difference affects the type of relationship parents and children have.
As Benos said, I have noticed that it is harder for older parents to establish a buddy-buddy relationship with their children. Or vice versa: it is harder for young parents to become a ‘wisdom figure’. However, this does not take away from  the fact that they may still share a strong bond with their children.
Says Benos, “They are slightly older than me, but I feel comfortable around them, I respect them, and I am always thankful for what they have done for me.” 