The key ideas

Family Matters: The Importance of Mattering to Family in Adolescence

Gregory C. Elliott, 2009

A teenager can live in the same home as their family and feel as if they aren’t there. The sociologist Gregory Elliott surveyed two thousand American families and saw how that feeling is linked to skipping school, fights, drinking and despair. The book explains what the sense of mattering is made of and how parents can give it without smothering their child with overprotection.

Who it is for

For parents who want to understand what lies behind a teenage son’s or daughter’s skipped classes, rudeness and withdrawal. And for teenagers themselves: the book explains why a person needs so badly to feel noticed at home.

Most children need their families as much as their families need them.

A world where no one notices you

Imagine for a minute a world where no one notices you. You walk into a room and no one looks up. No one is glad when you succeed, comforts you when things go wrong or asks your advice. Even at home it’s as if you aren’t there.

The American sociologist Gregory Elliott opens his book with this thought experiment. His teacher Morris Rosenberg was the first to describe the feeling that has gone missing here: the sense that you mean something to other people. Elliott calls it mattering.

The author sees mattering as the main driving force of human behavior. To test how it works in teenagers, he included his questions in a large national survey. In 2000, a phone survey reached 2,004 families in the United States with teenagers aged 11 to 18.

Next you’ll see what this feeling is made of, what a teenager who lacks it does, what the numbers showed and how parents can give it.

Gifts don’t replace time

Parents can point to a pile of toys and gadgets: “Look how much we love you.” And the child may see them as a poor substitute for the hours they could have spent together. Elliott uses this example to make his main point: mattering lives in the head of the one who feels it. If a teenager doesn’t see it, for them it doesn’t exist, however much effort the adults put in.

Following Rosenberg, the author distinguishes three forms of it.

• Awareness. You are noticed, recognized, and people remember that you’re around.

• Importance. Others invest time and effort in you, are proud of you and worry about you.

• Reliance. People count on you and turn to you when they need help.

A teacher who stays after class to work with a student may never say a word about how much that student matters to them. The student will still understand. And one more subtlety: mattering is felt most strongly when, out of many people, you are the one chosen.

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About the author

Gregory Elliott: American sociologist at Brown University who studies self-esteem. He studied under Morris Rosenberg, who was the first to describe the feeling of mattering. Elliott himself created a questionnaire to measure that feeling.

All books by this author: Gregory C. Elliott

Terms from the book

  • Rosenberg
  • Bueller
  • Cameron
  • Self-esteem
  • Mattering: The book’s word for a person’s sense that they mean something to others: they are noticed, others invest in them and count on them.
  • Epigraph: A short quotation at the start of a book or chapter that sets its theme.
  • Damon: William Damon, American psychologist who studies child development. Elliott cites his idea about the value of household chores.
  • Baumrind: Diana Baumrind, American psychologist who described parenting styles: authoritarian, permissive and authoritative.
  • Authoritative style: A parenting style in Baumrind’s terms: high demands together with warmth, explaining the reasons and being willing to hear the child out. Not to be confused with the authoritarian style, which demands obedience without explanations.
  • Egocentrism: The habit of putting yourself at the center of everything and barely noticing other people’s feelings. Small children are egocentric by nature and grow out of it as they learn limits.
  • Helicopter parents: A joking nickname for parents who constantly hover over their grown children and interfere in every little detail of their lives.

All terms

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