Affluent Parents’ Behaviour On Adolescents’ Assertiveness In Karen Zone, Nairobi County, Kenya

 This study aimed at investigating affluent parents’ behaviour on assertiveness among adolescents in Karen-Nairobi County, Kenya: The family has extensively remained the foundation of humanity. Visualized as an abode from suffering and pain of daily lifecycle, the family has remained an important haven, a reassuring abode, a dwelling of relief and refreshment. However, within the same family, parents’ contribution, which is the most rewarding work of adult life, is faced with many challenges in the changing world of treasure pursuit and necessity to advance. Adolescents in these families require assertiveness for better personality and skill development for successful achievement of improved individuality. Their movement towards independence can be stressful and therefore require closeness with parents so that they are assertive enough.

 A longitudinal research was carried in London by Holland, (2015), on 183 affluent adolescents whose parents had separated leaving their adolescents unattended. The adolescents from such backgrounds manifested physiological disorders, emotional vulnerability, nonassertive behaviour, behavioral disturbance, delinquency, antisocial behavior, clinging, neuroticism, depression and psychiatric disturbance. A similar study by Lines (2012) found out that adolescents need to see their father and receive his support, approval and loving care to feel very special for development of assertiveness. This means not just seeing him but experiencing genuine interpersonal warmth, love and encouragement in place of sympathetic discipline and punishment. 

                        Another research conducted in the United Kingdom by Olweus, (2016), on parental

presence to adolescents found out that, adolescent neglect is characterized by failure to provide for them basic attachment that they so much long for amidst a period of crisis such as adolescence. He categorized neglect in three ways; physical abandonment, educational abandonment and emotional abandonment. He classified the emotional abandonment as marked by parental inattention to the adolescent’s emotional needs and claimed this is by far the most common form of adolescent maltreatment today that causes serious assertiveness problems.   According to Varghese (2014), assertiveness as a psychological concept covers three major tenets of human expression behavior, cognition, and affect. In assertive behavior, a person can easily vent sentiments, guard against circumstances that are not worthwhile and avoid unrewarding interactive activities.  Generally, to be assertive means being optimistic, confident, self-assured, buoyant, and flexible and being able to deal with undesirable feelings devoid of unwarranted apprehension or anger. Without parental warmth and close emotional attention given to adolescents, assertiveness may be a challenge for adolescents especially in moments of crisis that comes with the stage.  Varghese contended that one who is assertive expresses his or her feelings, desires clearly, without fear, respects the rights, freedoms of others, is positive with individuals everywhere and  can make informed decision whenever possible. 

 However, according to Hinsaw (2014) affluent parents ignore the psychological attention needed by their children to enhance performance in all aspects of their lives including assertiveness. For example, a study conducted in USA by Luthar (2015), found that many youth in affluent families tend to stay with house helps more than they do with parents. Hinsaw believes that fathers and mothers provide inadequate time to the youth thus disadvantaging adolescent’s emotional growth. According to Luthar, the parents’ behaviour contributed greatly to low self-esteem among adolescents. Luthar argued that depressive tendencies led to risky behaviours like teenage pregnancies for adolescent girls. The study concluded that these youth needed to be assertive and to stand up to what was positive with the help of their parents.