Daddy's Little Angel Mommies Little Devil.

My mom always had to play bad cop when my sister and I were growing up because my dad had to travel alot with work. Although I know it's been a tough position for her to be in we have had many argument because of differences in opinion and all that jazz. My mother is pretty conservative and very controlling on what my sister and I were exposed to (we couldn't even watch power rangers, and I am still yet to see any Austin powers or American Pie movies) additionally she liked to control how we thought about things. It seems now in every area we are opposites, she's pro-life I'm pro-choice, she believes in waiting until marriage I believe it's ok to have premarital sex in committed relationships, she thinks love is between a man and a woman and I believe there shouldn't be any regulations on who people chose to love... I'm sure you get the point. It is possible the passion behind my beliefs began because of psychological reactance, meaning I chose to think the opposite of my mother on many topics because I was reacting to my mother wanting to control how I thought about these topics ( Brehm & Brehm, 1981). An example of my psychological reactance happened on my sixteenth birthday. I had just been ungrounded from a two week grounding after some argument her and I had. In Scotland where I was living at the time you could get body piercings without parent consent at sixteen. Knowing how my mom felt about body piercings I decided to go get a nose ring to show her I was in control of my life and not her and assert my newly regained freedom. It ended up taking her two days to realize but needless to say my freedom didn't last long :s

Brehem, S. S., & Brehem, J. W. (1981). Psychological reactance: A theory of freedom and control. New York: Academic Press.