Infatuation and love of an adolescent girl: Dynamics of parent child relationship

Abstract

Background: Increased interest in romantic relationship (RR) is central to adolescents’ lives. RR has a significant influence on the emotional well-being of the adolescents and their future life. Objective: The present study aims at understanding the issues and concerns of adolescent girls in RR who come under care and protection issue. Methods: The study adopts a retrospective exploratory research design and analyzed the case reports maintained by psychiatric social workers. Reports elicit the information about the RR, marriage with the romantic partner, reason for run away with the marital partner, etc. Results: Majority of the adolescents run away with their romantic partner to get married and more than three-fourth of the adolescent girls believed that having sexual intercourse with their romantic partner would get their marriage approval and felt that marriage gave them sanction for the sexual relationship. Adolescents were worried about parent’s rejection of their romantic partner and had guilt feeling that they were not able to meet the expectations of parents nor they were able to fulfill the dreams of their parents. Most of the adolescents were also aware that their romantic involvement has been one of the reasons for academic decline; some have to drop out from the schools. Conclusion: It is important to understand the issues of adolescent girls in RR so that it would help us in designing interventions to facilitate developmental needs and for the healthy transition to adulthood.

Adolescents Romantic Relationship: Dynamics of Parent-Child Relationship from India

“…Run away from home was used as the immediate solution to continue in romantic involvement and avoid issues in the family. In a study on dynamics of parent-child relationship in romantic involvement context, lack of parental support for choice marriage, restrictive parenting style were found as major issues [12]. The days spend with romantic partner developed intimacy-initially as a force from romantic partner and also for the social reasons like sex as a means to convince family for the marriage and current marital status as an approval to engage in physical intimacy.…”

“…Adolescent girls and their families those who approached Child Welfare Committee in romantic involvement context were also received psychosocial interventions. The above mentioned areas of interventions were provided to them based on their needs and issues and found to be useful in this set up [12,13,48].…”

“…Janardhana et al, [21] in their reports of proving psycho social interventions for children in difficult circumstances under the care and protection of Child Welfare Committee (annual and six monthly reports) and in their studies Janardhana and Manjula [12,13,21] have mentioned about individual, family and other factors associated with romantic relationship. Adolescent girls in romantic relationship were aged between 13 and 18 years.…”

“…In western context, romantic relationship has gained developmental significance and majority of adolescents involved in romantic relationship. In Indian context, scientific literature on Adolescent girls in romantic relationship is very minimal and studies focused upon sexuality related issues and pre-marital sexual relationship [11][12][13]. Due to social and cultural aspects, few adolescent girls who are involved in romantic relationship run away from home.…”

“…These girls would come under care and protection under many circumstances such as child marriage, teenage pregnancy, sexual abuse, etc. it is important to understand their issues to provide psycho social intervention and facilitate healthy transition to adulthood [11][12][13].…”