need to be asked and answered within their small minds. The tendency
to fight for every liberty and against every restriction might be best
understood as a quest for information. By testing severely the limits of
their freedoms (and coincidentally, the patience of their parents), the
children are discovering where in their worlds they can expect to be
controlled and where they can expect to be in control. As we will see
later, the wise parent provides highly consistent information.
Although the terrible twos may be the most noticeable age of psycho-
logical reactance, we show the strong tendency to react against restric-
tions on our freedoms of action throughout our lives. One other age
does stand out, however, as a time when this tendency takes an espe-
cially rebellious form: teenage. Like the twos, this is a period character-
ized by an emerging sense of individuality. For teenagers, the emergence
is from the role of child, with all of its attendant parental control, and
toward the role of adult, with all of its attendant rights and duties. Not
surprisingly, adolescents tend to focus less on the duties than on the
rights they feel they have as young adults. Not surprisingly, again,
imposing traditional parental authority at these times is often counter-
productive; the teenager will sneak, scheme, and fight to resist such
attempts at control.
Nothing illustrates the boomerang quality of parental pressure on
adolescent behavior quite so clearly as a phenomenon known as the
“Romeo and Juliet effect.” As we know, Romeo Montague and Juliet
Capulet were the ill-fated Shakespearean characters whose love was
doomed by a feud between their families. Defying all parental attempts
to keep them apart, the teenagers won a lasting union in their tragic act
of twin suicide, an ultimate assertion of free will.
The intensity of the couple’s feelings and actions has always been a
source of wonderment and puzzlement to observers of the play. How
could such inordinate devotion develop so quickly in a pair so young?
A romantic might suggest rare and perfect love. A social scientist,
though, might point to the role of parental interference and the psycho-
logical reactance it can produce. Perhaps the passion of Romeo and Juliet
was not initially so consuming that it transcended the extensive barriers
erected by the families. Perhaps, instead, it was fueled to a white heat
by the placement of those barriers. Could it be that had the youngsters
been left to their own devices, their inflamed devotion would have
amounted to no more than a flicker of puppy love?
Because the story is fiction, such questions are, of course, hypothetical,
and any answers to them are speculative. However, it is possible to ask
and answer with more certainty similar questions about modern-day
Romeos and Juliets. Do couples suffering parental interference react by
186 / Influence