This review examines self-family-culture links from a cultural and global perspective utilizing Kagitcibasi's Family Change Theory and Self Theory as general frameworks. These theories have the "autonomous-related self" at their point of intersection. Autonomy and relatedness dynamics is the key to understanding the self, and family is the main developmental niche for the self. Adolescence is an important phase of development where environmental demands and social-cultural norms impinge on the conceptions of what is valued and what is not. Both a contextual and a universalistic perspective are used here, the former in order to understand why certain patterns of self emerge in certain contexts, and the latter to develop insights into what might be "optimal" in adolescent development. (Contains 2 figures.)