Resources that determine power in families are

“Treat Me with Respect and Give Me a Say”

Inhaltsverzeichnis Show

Actions That Share Power
How Well Are We Sharing Power?
Learning Ways to Share Power in Your Family
MeSH terms
LinkOut - more resources

Sharing power is the way we influence, learn from, and work with each other in our family relationships. Sharing power with kids helps prepare them to be responsible adults.

As our kids grow older, they develop increased capacity for thinking critically and making responsible decisions, so it’s good for them to have a voice within the family and in other parts of their life.

How we share power changes as kids become older. Sometimes power struggles are part of the process, but they are a normal and healthy aspect of the shifting power dynamic between growing kids and their parents.

Families grow stronger when they become intentional in how they share power and influence each other.

Search Institute has identified these four actions that share power:

Respect me: Take me seriously and treat me fairly
Include me: Involve me in decisions that affect me
Collaborate: Work with me to solve problems and reach goals
Let me lead: Create opportunities for me to take action and lead.

Watch this short video to learn more about sharing power in families:

According to Search Institute’s research, more U.S. parents say they respect their children (88%) and include them in decisions (78%), than say they collaborate (52%) or give kids chances to lead (49%).

Take this quiz to see how power is being shared within your family

On our Keep Connected website, you’ll find lots of ways to share power in your family. There you can find:

Check out all the free resources on our Keep Connected site. Find more in-depth research on family relationships on Search Institute’s research on families section.

This is part of a five-part series on developmental relationships in families. To read other posts in the series, visit Express Care, Challenge Growth, Provide Support, and Expand Possibilities.

Clipboard, Search History, and several other advanced features are temporarily unavailable.

Display options

Format AbstractPubMedPMID

We begin our discussion by outlining the usefulness of "resource theory" as a theoretical framework for the study of family power. This framework is then used to analyze changes in the balance of power between elderly parents and their middle-age children. With respect to intergenerational power relationships, we argue that the autonomy of elderly parents has increased, but their power and influence over adult children has decreased. This trend is likely to continue in coming decades. Resource theory is then utilized to analyze changes in marital power relationships as couples age. Most studies of power relationships between elderly spouses have an important limitation--they tend to reflect yesterday's definitions of male and female roles. Recent changes in these roles may significantly alter the social meanings of aging for both men and women in coming years.

Asthma, power, and the therapeutic conversation.
Towns A. Towns A. Fam Process. 1994 Jun;33(2):161-74. doi: 10.1111/j.1545-5300.1994.00161.x. Fam Process. 1994. PMID: 7925926
Changing perceptions of family cohesion and power across adolescence.
Feldman SS, Gehring TM. Feldman SS, et al. Child Dev. 1988 Aug;59(4):1034-45. Child Dev. 1988. PMID: 3168612
Power relationships in families: a social-exchange perspective.
Beckman-Brindley S, Tavormina JB. Beckman-Brindley S, et al. Fam Process. 1978 Dec;17(4):423-36. doi: 10.1111/j.1545-5300.1978.00423.x. Fam Process. 1978. PMID: 751812
Beyond the Binary: Trans-Negotiations in Couple and Family Therapy.
Giammattei SV. Giammattei SV. Fam Process. 2015 Sep;54(3):418-34. doi: 10.1111/famp.12167. Epub 2015 Aug 7. Fam Process. 2015. PMID: 26250935 Review.
[Counseling male adolescents with homosexual orientation and their parents].
Rauchfleisch U. Rauchfleisch U. Prax Kinderpsychol Kinderpsychiatr. 1996 May-Jun;45(5):166-70. Prax Kinderpsychol Kinderpsychiatr. 1996. PMID: 8737511 Review. German.