Parenting, adolescent-parent relationships, and the personal domain: Implications for identity development.

This chapter explores connections among parenting, children’s construction of the personal domain as defined within social domain theory, and adolescents’ identity development. It begins by describing the framework of social domain theory and its potential links with identity development. It highlights differences among social-cognitive domains (moral, conventional, and personal) in the ways they relate to identity processes and emphasizes the importance of the personal domain, which encompasses matters of personal choice and preference, for adolescent identity processes. Next, the authors focus on parents’ and children’s views of the personal domain and their interactions, drawing special attention to the way parents’ control of the personal domain potentially impacts adolescents’ adjustment and identity. The chapter concludes by focusing on ways social domain theory research, and specifically parenting and domain distinctions, can illuminate research on identity development