Longitudinal development of family decision making: Defining healthy behavioral autonomy for middleclass African American adolescents

The development of decision-making autonomy was examined in 76 middle-class African American early adolescents (M5 13 years) and their mothers, who were followed longitudinally for 5 years. Adolescent deci-sion-making autonomy over conventional, prudential, multifaceted, and personal issues increased over time but at different rates. Mothers viewed prudential and conventional issues as parent decisions, but adolescents in-creasingly viewed them as joint. Adolescents viewed multifaceted and personal issues as increasingly decided by adolescents (with parental input), whereas mothers viewed them as joint. Greater autonomy over multi-faceted issues in early adolescence was associated with poorer adjustment. Controlling for background variables and earlier adjustment, increased autonomy over personal and multifaceted issues predicted less depression and better self-worth in late adolescence. A great deal of theorizing and research on adolescent development has focused on the development of autonomy, or the process of becoming a self-gov-erning person (Steinberg, 1990, 2002; Zimmer-Gem-beck & Collins, 2003). Although different aspects of autonomy have been identified, the development of behavioral autonomy, or the ability to make inde-pendent decisions, has been of particular interes