Been working with a 30 year old Bosnian woman for a few years, on and off. She works as a psychologist and immigrated to Australia as a 8 year old child with her family. She lives in Australia with her family which has a strong connection to the local Bosnian community.
I think we have come up with quite an eloquent addition to the theory of adolescence. As the chart shows there are 8 major areas that an adolescent needs to solve in order for the successful completion of that stage of development.
Traditional Australian society is a highly individualistic cultural where the nuclear family structure is used by many. Bosnian society typically is a more collectivist society and hence there is a communal style of family structure with the parents and grown up adult children.
Both have the same first 6 areas to resolve but differ in the last two tasks to complete.
Both have positives and negatives. For example, whilst it does certainly have its positives one of the major negatives with the nuclear family structure is child rearing. Psychologically it usually is better to raise children in a communal family system structure.
First, this is better for the parents (which in turn is better for the children) because there is usually more support readily available. Second, from an attachment theory point of view it is better if children are raised in a polymatric family rather than a monomatric family.
It is probably safe to say that many Australian families on the surface look like the nuclear family structure. But when it comes to child rearing (at least) they employ more of a communal family structure (if they can).
