IJFS - Interdisciplinary Journal of Family Studies

The article focuses the analysis on the different children and
adolescents styles of agency in the flow of life: “rational control”, “traditional
control”, “charismatic coping”, “attempts to be Centered and Open”, “on being
at the mercy of…”.We are for ever dealing with two forces (Simmel 1908): a
centripetal one, which brings forms to gather – what might otherwise be called
certainty, stability, order or even structure. Besides there is a centrifugal force that
is the typical flow of life. On the contrary the concept of uncertainty reflects the
regret of mankind’s titanic effort (the western world’s in particular) to avoid
dealing with whatever flows out of predictability, which therefore creates
uncertainty. The data come from a wider (about different aspects of agency some
of which are treated here) longitudinal research: the same 38 children (then turned
adolescents), belonging to two different social backgrounds, and their parents and
teachers have been interviewed four times (in 2005, 2008, 2009, 2013).