The need to be accepted by those around you causes a shift of influence from the parents to their peers. During this time, people begin to form relationships outside of their family circles. These relationships heavily influence a person’s mental growth. According to the authors of How Peers Make a Difference: The Role of Peer Groups and Peer Relationships in Personality Development, (2014) “Adolescents spend an increasing amount of time with peers groups, and they become highly, and more than people of other ages, concerned with obtaining social acceptance in peer groups.” (Reitz, Zimmermann, Hutteman, Specht, Neyer 281) The change that happens in a person’s development upon bonding with their peers is significant. It is impossible to watch a teen drama that does not at some point delve into the worrisome feelings that most adolescents experience about fitting in, and how that desire to fit in can influence changes in their behavior. The deep desire to be part of the group and have friends can cause people to behave in ways that they perceive to be acceptable within their peer group. The foundation that the parents provided can be pushed aside when peer acceptance becomes the focus. The affects of peer influence can become apparent when looking at siblings and how much they can differ, despite having the same …show more content…
In many ways they are responsible for how individuals interact with the world around them. In this way parents are indeed an important influence in an individual’s development as they are the ones who first teach their children how to even communicate with their peers. Through their parents influence children learn how to interact, and how to relate to others. In many ways Parents and peers work in tandem to help individual grow and develop. Parents teach their children how to interact with the world, but it is their peers that open them up, and grow within the world alongside them. Peer groups affect individual development throughout the years, not just early on. Over the years it is an individual’s peers they spend the most time with. Whether these peers are their friends, coworkers, or lovers, their peers are the ones that influence them day to day. Thus despite parental influence prevailing in an individual’s early life, it seems that peers have much more influence in development throughout the life of an