Another aspect of the reading that really spoke to me was the line of text that stated many German parents will just leave their children outside of the grocery store to roam around while the parents shopped. This spoke to me, because when I was a sophomore in high school I was partnered with an exchange student from Germany. She spent three weeks at my house in the fall and I her house in the summer. It was an amazing experience, but I noticed how her parents treated her and it was so different than my more... clingy parents.
Laura (the exchange student) was treated more as a roommate than a fifteen year old; she came home when she wanted and did whatever pleased her. Of course, her parents would get upset if she were to act out or break the law or skipped school, but for the most part she was given a pass to life as opposed to the more controlling atmosphere of the United States where curfews are given and more. It was an interesting cultural experience that I was not expecting to see verified in my developmental psychology class.
The more independent German teenager makes sense given the child rearing practices of more distal parenting as opposed to proximal parenting elsewhere. If the child has more hands off parenting, then the teenager will look less to his or her parents for comfort or dependency.
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