Conflict Management within Family: by Rachel Schumpert

My father and I typically agree on most political and social issues, but one night last semester we entered a true conflict when I expressed a view that he did not support.  While watching the Miss Universe pageant, I loved that Miss USA wanted to use her platform as the possible next Miss Universe to bring equal opportunity to women all over the world.  I believe that from a global standpoint, women are highly discriminated against and do not receive the same opportunities that men do.  My father and I are very open about discussing political issues, so I didn't think anything of bringing up this issue with him and where I stood.  Much to my surprise however, he strongly disagreed with me and it became a huge issue between us.  He accused me of becoming a "radical feminist" and said that the reason women are not given opportunities is because they simply are not capable of doing certain physical job duties that men can.  I raised the point that this is an issue far wider than just physical duties and we went on for about an hour arguing.  This conflict ended up lasting far longer than I expected, and for about a week me and my dad did not talk very much.  I can't say that we ever really resolved the conflict, it pretty much just dissolved away.  In Parents and Adolescents in Conflict by Raymond Montemayor, a generational gap is most often the reason for arising conflict between parents and kids.  This type of conflict is called generational conflict and happens when two different generations disagree on certain things because of common beliefs and values of their generation.  My father is a baby boomer and is very skeptical of feminists, so when I brought up this issue, we definitely had a generational conflict.  

References:

Montemayor, Raymond. "Parents and Adolescents in Conflict: All Families Some of the Time and Some Families Most of the Time." Journal of Early Adolescence 3 (1983): 83-103. Web. 28 Feb. 2016.