摘要

作为资本主义发展最完善的国家，美国在享受高度现代化文明给其带来的便利的同时，遭受着前所未有的精神上的折磨。来自社会和家庭的压力，使得家庭成员之间缺乏沟通，缺乏信任，冲突不断，而其中，孩子是最直接的受害者，导致青少年犯罪率居高不下，校园枪击事件频频发生。
本文以电影《美国丽人》为例，阐述了典型的美国城郊中产阶级家庭成员之间的关系，分析了青少年的性格特点。从中可以分析得出美国青少年存在的心理和行为问题的原因。 论文以美国严重的青少年犯罪率开篇，介绍电影《美国丽人》的概况；根据父母与青少年交互影响理论，着重述说了青少年成长过程中父母对其的影响作用；分析电影情节与典型人物，总结各自所具有的特点；讨论出夫妻关系不和，父母与孩子缺乏沟通，父母缺乏对孩子的教育是影响青少年行为和心理偏差的直接原因，但最本质的原因是资本主义社会下，社会竞争压力巨大引起人与人沟通减少，夫妻相互间缺乏信任，感情冷淡，矛盾重重，没有对孩子起到应尽的责任，严重影响了青少年的成长过程。
本文不仅是研究美国家庭关系及发展文献的必要补充，也为我国的家庭教育，以及父母对孩子行为心理上的影响提供参考依据。

关键词：青少年犯罪，父母影响，行为，心理，家庭因素，资本主义

Abstract

As a most developed capitalist country, America is enjoying a highly convenient life brought by the modern civilization while, at the same time, suffering an unprecedented mental torture. The pressures from society and family leading to lack of communication and trust between family members will proceed to family conflicts, in which the children are the most direct victims, keeping a high juvenile delinquency rate and frequent school-shootings.
This thesis takes the movie American Beauty as an example, illustrating the typical American middle class family members’ relationships and analyzing the characters’ personalities, from which the reasons causing American adolescent psychological and behavioral problems can be obtained. Beginning with the serious situation of juvenile delinquency, this thesis introduces an overview of American Beauty and employs Parent-adolescent interaction theory as theoretical foundation to aim at focusing on the parents’ influences to children’s growing period. It adopts content analysis and case study as methods to summarize each character, acquiring that disharmonious marital relationship, lack of communication between family members and lack of family education are direct reasons to cause adolescent behavior and mental deviation. But the essential reason is that, under the capitalist world, people are hard to communicate sincerely with each other. Pursuing power and wealth is being substituted for emotional contact, which makes distrust in marital relationships and no sense of responsibilities to children. This is a serious impact on young people.
The result of this thesis will be a supplement to the literature on American family developments and be able to provide some reference for the Chinese family education, assisting parents to understand the influences on their children.

Key words: juvenile delinquency, parents’ influences, behavior, psychology, family factors, capitalism