Both my daughter and I were the same: we neither conformed nor rebelled, but rather marched to our own tune.
My parents were at varying stages of strictness, religiosity, and coolness during the teenage years of their 3 kids. My older brother has been pretty straight laced his whole life, my older sister got them right when they were in the craziest of bible-thumpers and had a bit of a rebellious thing, and I got them when they were their most relaxed and was able to skate right past.
When I was 15 or so I could feel myself getting pissed off about everything they did, and wanting to be as far away as possible from them at times. I could tell it was just a teenager angst thing for me, so I tried to deal with it rationally and not try to run away from home or something.
What’s strange is that my aunt with 13 kids is very religious, very conservative (girls aren’t allowed to wear shorts or pants until they’re 18… just skirts and “skorts”, for one thing), but not a damn one of the kids has had any kind of rebellious streak as a reaction to that. You’d think at least one of them would want to listen to rock music or something. Maybe since there’s so many kids and they all help raise eachother, it’s like they all have 14 parents instead of 2, so they’ve got no room to move at all.
Neither myself or my sister really rebelled. I always just assumed it was because my parents raised us right, as almost everyone else I know rebelled.
hmmm, parents were missionaries and my father a minister. Father is also a WW2 and Korean War combat vet. Let’s just say that I’m an athiest with some Tibetan buddhist leanings (mainly from backpacking in Tibet for 6 months than anything), and I’ve lived in Asia for 25 years. My wife is mainland chinese and my kids speak better chinese than english.
Rebel - who me?
Externally, I was the polar opposite of rebellious. I was a straight-A student, heavily involved in church activities, and took life as seriously as a heart attack. I was obsessed with Christianity and doing the moral thing. I was wound so tight that I would actually tell on myself when I did something wrong. For example, we had a rule that I wasn’t allowed to adjust the thermostat, and one day, when I was 14 or 15, I did, and the guilt was so intense that I promptly called my parents and told them what I’d done, and they grounded me.
Part of the reason I was so compulsively ‘‘good’’ is that my parents were ridiculously strict people capable of terrific cruelty. I conformed because I was scared shitless not to.
Ideologically, though, I did rebel. My parents were more or less conservative and my stepDad was a pretty strong atheist, so in a weird way, becoming a devout Christian was rebelling. I also started hanging out with predominantly gays and lesbians, which was an awkward adjustment for my parents (fortunately, my best friend is so awesome they couldn’t help but like her.) They disapproved of all the time I spent with my Aunt because she treated me ‘‘as her equal’’ when I was just a mere child. She was putting all kinds of crazy ideas in my head that my feelings mattered and shit.
I used to get into political discussions with my StepDad about war and imperialism and he kept saying you have to make decisions with your head, not your heart. He would tell me the privileges I have today are stained by the blood of innocents, and that’s okay because in the end, you’ve gotta make sure you get yours. I would tell him he’s so wrong and life is all about helping others. I had no idea I was a ‘‘liberal,’’ or that my opposition to his values could be framed as political dissent. I just knew his perspective didn’t seem right to me.
So I guess in the end, the biggest thing I did to rebel was to build relationships based on love and mutual respect rather than using and oppressing people.
Rebellious? God no. My parents either were completely uninterested in what I did, or they had a *lot *of confidence in me. So I did what I wanted to do, but that was pretty tame. No smoking, drinking, spending or sexing. And my grades were not as well as they could have been ( i never made homework) but I still passed, if only barely.
My brother wasn’t rebellious either. He did spend his last highschool year mostly living at a friend’s house though, because our home was’t a really warm or friendly place.
Once, when I was 15, the police came to our home to ask me about something. (Okay then; we had found a bunch of public transport coupons that were supposed to have been destroyed, but that had just been dumped somewhere. We gave them out among friends, who used them to get free public transport. Once the police made sure that we hadn’t stolen the coupons, they were no longer interested.) They came home, when I wasn’t there, asked my dad about it, he asked me later to go the police sation to issue a statement, and that was that.
I remember once being at a party when I was 14 (a party was a rare thing for me) and I decided to spend the night there, and as an afterthought, I remembered to call my mom and tell her I wouldn’t come home that night. She said “have fun” and that she was glad I had called to inform her. I was surprised, I thought she wouldn’t have noticed if I hadnt come home that night.
I certainly rebelled against my father. He was a dictator, pure and simple; the most controlling man I’ve ever known. He was a smoker who forbade me to smoke; I smoked. He was a Southern Baptist who did not drink; I drank and dropped all pretense of religion. He demanded that I be home and in bed by 10:30PM; I wasn’t. He had been a notorious fist fighter as a kid and young adult; I fought anyone who crossed me, even though my father forbade me to fight. He was an out and out racist; I refused to accept racism, (he cut me out of his will because of this) Curiously, because he had had his own car at an early age, he allowed me to have my own car at fourteen—one could do that back in the 1950s. I despised my father; if he was for it then I was against it, pure and simple.
I gave birth when I was in my late 30’s and knew zero about babies, kids, or the raising of. There is just me, husband, and daughter, we are it and all get along to get along. We have been blessed with a beautiful, smart daughter who knows EVERYTHING. We all get along like friends, or roommates, and always have. There was never, ever any rebellion on daughter’s part, in fact quite the opposite, she is now 22, living at home, and does everything I say. She always has and this is a bit worrisome, I wish she DID have a little more spine. But that’s her personality. We went through the Goth period with my full approval. She is (for now) an avowed atheist, ferociously anti-smoking, anti-drug, though she does like a good beer. (She was living in a college dorm at age 17 with older students who were into the beer.) She is very sensitive, somewhat bitter, somewhat nerdy. Think ‘Daria’ from MTV. No, there were never any big arguments or rebellion in our house when she was growing up. I don’t know, all I ever hear from friends and relatives are tales of woe about their messed up kids, and I don’t have any horror stories to share. We aren’t a cheery shiny happy family by any means, depression and anxiety run in our genes. But there wasn’t any rebellion. Conformity? We’ll see. Daughter does NOT suffer fools gladly and has no problem separating herself from screwed up, mean, or abusive boyfriends.
I often wonder if we had been meaner parents, barking out commands, setting curfews, blah blah blah, if that would have toughened her up for real life? Though she seems to have an awful lot of self-esteem, I don’t know for sure what’s roiling beneath the surface.
I have a sister three years younger. She was the rebellious one. While I set an example for my peers (I’d get shit from my friends for it), Eagle Scout, great GPA and had my first job at 12 (paper boy), sis just told my mom to fuck off and made a disastrous first marriage (to get out of the house). She got custody of their one child when they divorced. I don’t think the guy ever made a support payment.
Finally, she met a great guy and several months into the relationship withheld sex until they married. He held out for six months, capitulated and they’ve been happy (2 more kids), as near as I can tell, ever since. Recently self-sold their palatial home and moved into a smaller one in the same town a block from the beach, six weeks from the time they put a sign on their lawn with an email address.
I’ll spare you the details but I bailed on college after my sophomore year, married and divorced, got into drugs and dropped out in '67. I’ve been on the road ever since, have had a variety of jobs and always worked under the table when I could. I got SS in spite of myself and live in a HUD apt (albeit in a sweet little town) in central CO.
My son was raised as a hippie kid (my ex dropped out too), smoking dope at age four and hitch hiking to rock concerts at twelve. Today he’s a hard core fundie, owns a successful GM dealership and has two daughters in (bible) college.
Go fucking figure,
Later than most of the other kids my age. The mean was around 14-15 years old. Lots of backtalk, misbehavior, flouting of authority, the relevant parents would shut that down and hence be cast as the Blue Meanies, lather rinse repeat.
I did it around 17-18 and not so much backtalk as ceasing to obey and calmly doing what I wanted to, parents sputter, threaten, lecture, I ignored them, lather rinse repeat.
I thought everyone did it at some point, it’s part of becoming an adult. Maybe if one had parents who did not have to be pried loose in order to let go it would not be necessary?
My parents were relatively mellow and completely non-religious. They both smoked and I took it up in HS. Neither drank much and neither did I (nor do I). They were fairly conservative, but Democrats, while I was more liberal, but not radical.
Pretty much the same with my kids. They never smoked (I had stopped by then and my wife never started). Two of them still drink very little. The third was a moderate social drinker but hasn’t had a drink since she became pregnant about 27 months ago and is still nursing once a day. I assume she will take it up again some day. None of the them did drugs, they all did well in school with no pushing from us and are all involved in substantial careers.
B O R I N G
Shit, I can’t believe I responded to this thread without even acknowledging that I did what may be considered the ultimate act of rebellion against your parents. All that struggle to conform was never actually effective at preventing the abuse, so eventually I gave up. When I was 17, I ran away from home and legally emancipated. There was a period of time there where pretty much anything my mother said was received with a resounding, ‘‘Fuck you! I hope you burn in hell!’’
If that sounds harsh, I promise it can’t even begin to compare to what she did and said to me. We get along fine now, but yeah, there was that year where I was nothing but a seething ball of rage.
Honestly, though, I didn’t do it to piss anyone off. I did it for survival. And I don’t regret it.
I dressed goth, dated white boys, smoked, pursued an over-piercing policy and had a haphazard GPA.
I was also president of several clubs, obsessed with winning awards, tested out of my freshman year of college due to my plethora of AP exams, and basically did almost exactly what my parents wanted in terms of my career, and lord almighty, I was secretly extremely religious and abstinent (oh wasted opportunity!).
I wouldn’t call myself a rebel in any real sense-I just wanted to annoy the sh*t out of my parents. To their credit, and this is enormous because they are your typical pushy Indian parents, they mostly rolled with it until I grew out of it. The only thing they got angry about was the smoking and that’s because smoking contributed to my grandfathers’ deaths from heart disease. Well, that and they probably think it’s immoral.
QFT. One of my biggest regrets in high school is not putting out. 
I didn’t rebel against my parents nearly as much as I rebelled against my peers.
I’d have to ask my mom how rebellious she thought I was. I mean, I did well all through school, excelled at music, went to all my classes (ok, almost), didn’t get wasted during the day, didn’t get into any trouble with the police, my friends all did well in school too, so there wasn’t any of that “why are you hanging around with…”. At least on my parents’ side. Can’t speak for my friends’ parents.
But after school we were raging potheads. My parents knew - at least my mother did because I found one of my pot pipes on the drier. I played in a rock band all through HS in our basement (ok with them, since they knew where I was). From around 16-17 on I started boozing on the occasional weekend, coming home late, but it never led to a huge schism with the folks. I never thought “this will annoy them”. Although I suppose “wow it’s 2am already?” can’t be too far off.
Would she tell you? Because my mom is always in denial. For example, she once told me, when I was 23, “Honey, no matter what anyone tells me, I know in my heart that you are still a virgin.”
She didn’t ask me. She told me. And who am I to disagree with my very wrong mother?
Self: Neither rebel nor conform, pre se. The term I use is gently iconoclastic. I was very independent from a young age.
My parents were very hands off, go with the flow types. I think I inherited it mostly from my mothers side of the family. She did not rebel, but did marry when she was 16, back in the mid-1950’s, and no, she was not pregnant. Her much younger brother was the first “hippie” in his school during the late sixties. I was a high achiever academically, but hung out with the creative types. There was much partying and consumption, but it was not in reaction to my upbringing. After all, my father grew pot in the sunroom. So, I guess I rebel against the notion of rebelling but conform to the rebelling notion.
Step-Children: Just as an observation, not really pertinent to the OP…these kids are strict conformists and relentlessly mainstream. I makes me a little nuts sometimes because I wish they had a little more texture to their personalities. Forgive me for saying so, but they’re kinda boring. They get it from their fathers side of the family.
My mom certainly had a rosier image of me than I deserved - which drove my sister crazy. I figured it was half denial and half maybe not putting her foot down unless things started really getting out of control.
Neither I nor my kids did.
I mean, my parents were catholic and I didn’t believe in God, but as long as I lived at home I went to church with my parents. Just didn’t see a benefit in making it the big fight I knew it would be. Things were pretty comfortable so long as I complied with a pretty limited number of rules. My parents told me they didn’t want to have to pick me up from a hospital or a police station, and I complied. But I was the 4th kid, and they they were pretty lax as I ignored their curfews. Heck, they’d usually be asleep when I got home anyway. And I don’t know how much they suspected about my drinking and drug use. But I got decent grades, got accepted to a decent college, and graduated from law school. So whatever “rebellion” I did was pretty minor.
Probably pretty similar for my 3 kids (now 18-21). My wife and I are pretty liberal pretty much across the board, and have been surprised that our kids were pretty consistenly less “adventurous” than we had been. If any of them drank, smoked, or had sex in HS, they kept it very well hidden. When they wanted to pierce their ears we said fine - we said we’d just as soon they not get more than 2 holes per ear and no tats, and they had no problem with that (tho my youngest just cme home from college with an industrial, which her mom isn’t too thrilled with.) Our bottomline was pretty much exercise good judgment and don’t do something you know will piss us off, and we’ll pretty much stay out of your hair. Don’t make really stupid decisions and we’ll give you a lot of latitude and independence.
They all got better grades in HS than I did, and so far have been doing well in college. None of them dated any extremely objectionable people. And they all share their mom’s and dad’s atheism and social liberalism. We never forced our beliefs on them, but from a very early age when any topic came up we would readily say what we felt/believed and explain why.
So I guess for them to rebel would be for them to find God and register Republican!