Stattin and Kerr 2000

5/26/2018 Stattin and Kerr 2000

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Child Development, July/August 2000, Volume 71, Number 4, Pages 10721085

Parental Monitoring: A Reinterpretation

Hkan Stattin and Margaret Kerr

Monitoring (tracking and surveillance) of childrens behavior is considered an essential parenting skill. Nu-merous studies show that well-monitored youths are less involved in delinquency and other normbreaking be-haviors, and scholars conclude that parents should track their children more carefully. This study questionsthat conclusion. We point out that monitoring measures typically assess parents knowledge but not its source,and parents could get knowledge from their childrens free disclosure of information as well as their own ac-tive surveillance efforts. In our study of 703 14-year-olds in central Sweden and their parents, parental knowl-edge came mainly from child disclosure, and child disclosure was the source of knowledge that was mostclosely linked to broad and narrow measures of delinquency (normbreaking and police contact). These resultsheld for both childrens and parents reports, for both sexes, and were independent of whether the childrenwere exhibiting problem behavior or not. We conclude that tracking and surveillance is not the best prescrip-tion for parental behavior and that a new prescription must rest on an understanding of the factors that deter-mine child disclosure.

INTRODUCTION

Parents often comment on the temptations that teenag-ers today face, and they want to know what they cando to minimize the chances that their child will fallprey to bad influences. What advice can developmen-tal psychology offer them? One clear answer seems tobe that they can keep a close eye on what their childrenare doing, where they are going, and whom they arewiththey can monitor their childrens behavior.

Parental monitoring is conceptualized as a set ofcorrelated parenting behaviors involving attention toand tracking of the childs whereabouts, activities,and adaptations (Dishion & McMahon, 1998, p. 61).This definition of monitoring as parental action

is sim-ilar to the dictionary definition, in which the verb tomonitor means to keep watch over or check as ameans of control (Read et al., 1995, p. 822). Parentalmonitoring figures prominently in theoretical modelsof the development of antisocial behavior. Theoreticalmodels make parenting practices, including inade-quate monitoring, recurring links in a causal chainthat starts with disruptive behavior, leads to hangingout with deviant peers, and results in antisocial be-

havior (Reid & Patterson, 1989; Snyder & Patterson,1987). Indeed, cross-sectional and longitudinalstudies show that poorly monitored adolescents tendto be antisocial, delinquent, or criminal (for a reviewof early work, see Patterson & Stouthamer-Loeber,1984; for empirical examples, see Cernkovich & Gior-dano, 1987; Crouter, MacDermid, McHale, & Perry-Jenkins, 1990; McCord, 1986, Sampson & Laub, 1994;Weintraub & Gold, 1991). Poorly monitored youthsalso tend to use illegal substances (Flannery, Vazs-onyi, Torquati, & Fridrich, 1994) and associate with

peers who approve of drug use (Chassin, Pillow, Cur-ran, Molina, & Barrera, 1993). They are more likely to be-gin using tobacco (Biglan, Duncan, Ary, & Smolkowski,1995) and to increase their drug use over time (Fletcher,Darling, & Steinberg, 1995), and the poor monitoringdisplayed by alcoholic parents seems to explain theirchildrens use of illegal substances (Chassin et al.,1993). Poorly monitored youths do worse in school(Crouter et al., 1990; White & Kaufman, 1997) and en-gage in more risky sexual activity (Metzler, Noell,Biglan, Ary, & Smolkowski, 1994; Romer et al., 1994).

Evidence also suggests that poorly monitored youthshave deviant friends (Dishion, Capaldi, Spracklen, &Li, 1995) and that they may become delinquent becauseof peer pressure (Fridrich & Flannery, 1995). Further-more, longitudinal evidence suggests that childrensdelinquency and drug use are related to poor parentalmonitoring later on, and that poor monitoring is relatedto later delinquency (Aseltine, 1995; Barber, 1996).

The obvious prescription for parental behavior isbetter monitoring active surveillance or tracking ofchildrens behavior. Snyder and Patterson (1987) sug-gest that parents must give children a set of rules

about where they may go, with whom they may asso-ciate, and when they must be home and then checkup or track compliance with those rules, and take ef-fective disciplinary action when the rules are vio-lated (p. 226). Joint monitoring has been suggestedas a final strategy for reducing risky sexual behavior:. . . encourage parents of childrens friends to join to-gether to monitor the behavior of their children(Romer et al., 1994, p. 985). Monitoring has also been

2000 by the Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.All rights reserved. 0009-3920/2000/7104-0023


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Stattin and Kerr 107

suggested for preventing drug use: The overall lessonof this study appears to be that parental monitoring is

an appropriate strategy for parents attempting to deteradolescents from engaging in substance use. Strongparental monitoring helps to deter adolescents fromusing alcohol and drugs themselves and, as a conse-

quence, prevents nonusing adolescents from associat-ing with drug-using peers. Since it is these drug-using peers who are likely to pressure teenagers toinitiate or elevate substance use, strongly monitoredadolescents are, in essence, doubly protected fromsubstance use involvement . . . (Fletcher et al., 1995,pp. 269270). Clearly, the prescription is for parentsto use a firm hand and actively control their chil-drens behavior and associations.

Recommending active control and surveillancemight be reasonable, on the basis of a cursory readingof the findings just reviewed, but it might be wrong.

Why? Because parents who score high on monitoringmight not be exercising control or practicing surveil-lance at all. The most often-used monitoring measuresask about parents knowledge of their childrens activ-ities, but they seldom ask about active tracking andchecking (the definition of monitoring). For example,items such as the following ask adolescents to ratetheir parents knowledge: How much do your par-ents REALLY know . . . Who your friends are? Whereyou go at night? How you spend your money? Whatyou do with your free time? Where you are most af-ternoons after school? (Fletcher et al., 1995, p. 262);Do your parents know where you are when you areaway from home? Do your parents know who you arewith when you are away from home? (Weintraub &Gold, 1991, p. 272); and In my free time away fromhome, my parents know who Im with and where I am.(Cernkovich & Giordano, 1987, p. 303). These measuresdo not ask how

parents came to know these things.Other measures assess knowledge by asking parentsand their children the same set of questions about thechilds activities and then assessing agreement betweenthe two sets of answers (Crouter, Manke, & McHale,1995; Crouter et al., 1990; Patterson & Stouthamer-Loeber, 1984). But again, there is no telling how

the infor-

mation was gained. Even though the term monitoringimplies that the measures represent parents trackingand surveillance efforts, they actually represent an endproduct: parents knowledge. [Hereafter, we use quota-tion marks to distinguish parental knowledge measures(monitoring) from the construct (monitoring)].

In fact, parents could get knowledge of their chil-drens activities in at least three conceivable ways.First, the children could tell them spontaneously,without any prompting (child disclosure). Second,parents could ask their children and their childrens

friends for the information (parental solicitationThird, parents could impose rules and restrictions ontheir childrens activities and associations, therebycontrolling the amount of freedom children have tdo things without telling them (parental control).

Which source of information is really behind th

parental knowledge measures that have been calledmonitoring? Some preexisting findings suggest that might be child disclosure. When several aspects oparenting are examined together, the findings oftesuggest that parentchild communication is morbeneficial than surveillance and control. One studtested the idea that attachment to parents lowers thlikelihood of delinquency (Cernkovich & Giordano1987). The researchers used several indirect measureof attachment, some of which dealt with parentchilcommunication and the closeness of the relationshipThe results suggested that delinquents had poor com

munication with their parents. They were lower thanondelinquents on caring and trust (intimacy in thparentchild relationship), identity support (parentsrespect, acceptance, and support), and instrumentacommunication (discussion of future plans). Many othe measures that were related to delinquency, thendealt directly with parentchild communication. Furthermore, although delinquents were lower on control and supervision, the measure included knowledge of the childs activities rather than active controor supervision efforts, so it might actually have been measure of child disclosure. This study, then, suggests that communication is at least as important acontrol. Others suggest that it is much more important. In one study of parental involvement and schooperformance, parentchild agreement and parentchild discussion predicted higher grade-point averages and achievement test scores, but measures osurveillance did not (Otto & Atkinson, 1997). In factparental monitoring of school work predicted lowernot higher, grades and test scores. In other wordscommunication was linked to good performance; surveillance was linked to bad performance. Further, in anintervention study that attempted to reduce adolescents substance use, parents were trained and encour

aged to exert more active efforts to control their childrens associations with drug- and alcohol-using peerand their access to alcohol (Cohen & Rice, 1995). The intervention had no effect on adolescents substance useNonetheless, parental knowledge of the childs whereabouts, good parentchild rapport, and a respectfuparentchild relationship were all associated with lessubstance use. Again, parentchild communicationwas beneficial; surveillance and control were not.

The present study addresses two major questionabout parental monitoring. The first concerns whethe


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1074 Child Development

parents knowledge of their childrens whereaboutsand activities (monitoring) actually comes from theirown active efforts, as the term monitoring implies.We look at three potential sources of informationchild disclosure, parental solicitation, and parentalcontroland ask which of these explains the largest

portion of the variance in monitoring (parentsknowledge). The second question concerns the nega-tive association between monitoring and normbreak-ing behavior that so many studies have reported.These studies most often conclude that parents con-trol and surveillance efforts prevent adolescents fromgetting into trouble. But is this a valid conclusion? Weanswer this by looking at which of the three potentialsources of parents knowledge is most strongly re-lated to normbreaking behavior. For each of thesequestions, we test for possible moderating effects ofgender and the childs misbehavior to determine

whether our findings are generalizable or apply onlyto children with certain characteristics.

METHOD

Participants

Participants were 14-year-old youths from sevenmid-Sweden communities, and their parents. The reg-istered crime rate for youngsters in these communi-ties is higher than the national average but somewhatlower than for the metropolitan areas in Sweden. Theparticipants represent the whole range of socioeco-nomic backgrounds in the communities. As is the casefor the whole country, 91% of the fathers and 80% ofthe mothers had at least part time employment (6%of the fathers and 7% of the mothers were unem-ployed). Seventy-six percent of the youngsters livedwith both biological parents.

Students in all 32 8th-grade classes in these com-munities were asked to join the study (

N

763). Theytook part in the study unless their parents returned aform stating that they did not want their child to par-ticipate (10 parents returned this form). Neither par-ents nor children were paid for their participation. Of

763 students, 703 (92%) were present on the day of thedata collection and answered the questionnaires.

Another questionnaire was sent home to eachchilds biological parent or legal guardian in thehome where the child lived during the school week.Parents were asked to return the completed question-naire by mail, and 76% did so. In 71.4% of cases,mothers filled out the questionnaire alone, in 14.4% ofcases fathers filled it out alone, in 12.9% of cases,mothers and fathers worked together, and in 1.3% ofcases, a guardian other than a parent filled out the

questionnaire. Recent studies suggest that mothersand fathers can have different levels of knowledgeunder certain conditions (e.g., Crouter, Helms-Erik-son, Updegraff, & McHale, 1999). This is an importantissue, but we cannot address it in this study becausewe cannot compare mothers and fathers in the same

families. In our study, according to both parents andchildrens reports, parental knowledge did not de-pend upon the sex of the parent who responded.

In one of these communities, 14-year-olds from adifferent cohort (

N

36) served as a pilot sample fora subsequent study. They answered the questions thatwere used in this study on two occasions, 2 monthsapart, and their responses were used to calculate thetestretest reliabilities that we report for these measures.

Even though the response rate among parents washigh, those who responded might have been a biasedsample. To examine a possible selection effect, we

compared the children whose parents returned thequestionnaire (

n

539) with those whose parents didnot (

n

164) on all child-reported parental monitor-ing measures and measures of normbreaking and po-lice contact (see following description). The childrenwhose parents returned the questionnaire did not dif-fer from the other children on normbreaking, policecontact, parental solicitation, or child disclosure. Theydid, however, report somewhat lower parental mon-itoring,p

.05, and parental control,p

.01.

Measures

Parental monitoring.

In keeping with the moni-toring literature, we have operationalized monitor-ing as parents knowledge of the childs where-abouts, activities, and associations. Using 5-pointLikert scales, children answered nine questions abouttheir parents knowledge. The questions were, Doyour parents: know what you do during your freetime? know who you have as friends during yourfree time? usually know what type of homework youhave? know what you spend your money on? usuallyknow when you have an exam or paper due at school?know how you do in different subjects at school? know

where you go when you are out with friends at night?normally know where you go and what you do afterschool? and In the last month, have your parentsever had no idea of where you were at night? Par-ents answered the same questions, with only minorchanges in wording where necessary (e.g., Do you:know what your child does during his or her freetime? know who your child has as friends during hisor her free time? . . .). Means were calculated for thechild-report items (

reliability

.86) and parent-report items (

reliability

.89). The testretest reli-


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ability for child-reported monitoring was substan-tial, r

(36)

.83.

Child disclosure.

Our child disclosure measurecomprised five items. The childrens questions were,Do you spontaneously tell your parents about yourfriends (which friends you hang out with and how they

think and feel about various things)? How often doyou usually want to tell your parents about school(how each subject is going; your relationships withteachers)? Do you keep a lot of secrets from yourparents about what you do during your free time?Do you hide a lot from your parents about what youdo during nights and weekends? and Do you liketo tell your parents about what you did and whereyou went during the evening? Parents answered thesame questions, with only minor changes in wordingwhere necessary. The

reliabilities were .84 for par-ents reports and .81 for childrens reports. Child-

reported disclosure was highly reliable, according tothe 2-month testretest correlation, r

(34)

.87.

Parental solicitation.

Five items were averaged toform the parental solicitation measure. The childrensitems were, How often do your parents talk withyour friends when they come over to your house?How often do your parents ask you about what hap-pened during your free time? During the pastmonth, how often have your parents initiated a con-versation with you about your free time? When didyour parents last have extra time to sit down and lis-ten to you when you talk about what happened dur-ing your free time? and How often do your parentsask you to sit and tell them what happened at schoolon a regular school day? Parents answered the samequestions, with slight changes in wording where nec-essary. The

reliabilities were .77 and .75 for youth-reported and parent-reported solicitation, respectively.Child-reported solicitation was highly reliable, accord-ing to the 2-month testretest correlation, r

(35)

.82.

Parental control.

Our parental control measurecomprised six items. Youths answered: Must youhave your parents permission before you go out dur-ing the weeknights? If you go out on a Saturdayevening, must you inform your parents beforehand

about who will be along as well as where you will begoing? If you have been out past curfew, do yourparents require that you explain why and tell whoyou were with? Do your parents demand that theyknow where you are in the evenings, who you aregoing to be with, and what you are going to do?Must you ask your parents before you can makeplans with friends about what you will do on a Satur-day night? and Do your parents require that youtell them how you spend your money? Parents an-swered the same questions, with minor changes in

wording. The

reliabilities were .82 and .77 foyouths reports and parents reports, respectively. Th2-month testretest reliability for child-reported parental control was high, r

(33)

.86.

Normbreaking.

Our normbreaking measure comprised nine items. Youths answered these question

about their behavior over the past year: Have youdrunk beer, liquor, or wine to the point of feelindrunk? Have you tried hashish, cannabis or marijuana? Have you pilfered from school? Have yopurposely vandalized or taken part in vandalizinsomething that did not belong to you such as a windowdisplay, car, telephone booth, bank, or garden? Havyou taken items from a mall, store, or newsstanwithout paying? Have you taken money fromhome? Have you bullied someone or together witothers mobbed or bullied other students (e.g., ignored, made fun of, or teased)? Have you been

part of a physical fight? Have you been caught bythe police? Also, parents reported whether thethought their child had done any of these things. Th

reliabilities for normbreaking were .79 and .62 foyouths and parents reports, respectively. For somof the analyses, the single item asking whether theyhad been caught by the police over the past year waused as a narrower measure of normbreaking.

Parentchild relationships.

Children answered eighquestions about the quality of their relationships withtheir mothers: How often do you feel disappointedwith your mother? How well do you and youmother understand each other? Do you wish thayour mother was different? Do you and your mothequarrel and fight with each other? How often dyou feel proud of your mother? Do you accept youmother the way she is? How often do you feel angry or irritated by your mother? and Does youmother support and encourage you? They answerethe same questions about their fathers. The scalewere reflected, when necessary, so that higher scoreindicated more positive relationships. The variablewere aggregated by parent first and then a totaparentchild relationship variable was formed bytaking the mean of the motherchild and father chil

relationship variables. For children of single parentsthe variable for the one parent was used. The

reliabiity calculated on mother- and father-relations itemscombined, was .89. The testretest correlation wamoderately high, r

(33)

.75.

Family closeness.

Parents completed the SwedishFamily Climate Scale (Hanson, 1989). They were presented with 85 adjectives, which they marked aeither appropriate or inappropriate for describing theiown family climate. We used the closeness scalewhich consists of 18 adjectives: happy, warm, stable


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easy, harmonious, gentle, loving, natural, safe, kind,meaningful, secure, considerate, pleasant, friendly,calm, praising, humble. The psychometric propertiesof this measure have been reported previously (Han-son, 1989).

Skewness of some measures.

Note that the distribu-

tions of parent-reported monitoring and child-reported normbreaking were somewhat skewed,skewness

2.31 and 2.02 for monitoring andnormbreaking, respectively. Our analyses involvingthese measures have been done with the basic, un-transformed data. However, we have also trans-formed these variables by taking the natural loga-rithms. Analyses using the transformed variablesyielded results that were almost identical to the orig-inal analyses. (Small differences appeared only on thethird decimal place.) This result was probably due tothe large sample size.

Procedure

The children filled out the questionnaires duringregular school hours, and they were assured of theconfidentiality of their answers. They were informedthat their parents would answer similar questions.Research assistants administered the questionnairesat the schools. Teachers were not present. Parents re-sponded by filling out and mailing in a questionnaire.They were informed that their children had answeredsimilar questions at school.

RESULTS

Gender Differences

Mean level differences between boys and girls onsome of the variables appear in Table 1 along with

t

-tests of the differences. As shown in the table, thereare no gender differences in parental monitoring asreported by either children or parents. According toboth childrens and parents reports, however, girlsfreely disclose more than boys to their parents. Par-ents solicit more information from girls than boys, ac-

cording to children but not parents, and althoughgirls report being controlled more than boys, parentsreport controlling boys more than girls. But the actualdifferences in control are small. Boys report havingbetter relationships than girls do with their parents.Finally, boys and girls are similar on normbreakingand police contact, but gender differences did appearon some of the individual normbreaking items. Girlswere higher than boys on some and boys were higherthan girls on others. This probably accounts for thegender similarity on the scale as a whole. In particu-

lar, girls were more likely than boys to report takingmoney from home, t

(673.06)

2.1,p

.04, and theywere marginally more likely to report drinking alco-hol, t

(686)

1.7, p

.08. Boys, on the other hand,were more likely to report vandalizing property,

t

(520.47)

5.1, p

.001, and fighting, t

(596.77)

4.0,p

.001.For this study, however, the pertinent question is

not whether parents monitor, control, or solicit infor-mation from girls more than boys, or whether girlsdisclose more than boys. Rather, the question iswhether gender moderates the relations among

thesevariables such that our reinterpretation of monitoringwould apply to one sex more than the other. There-fore, for each of our major findings, we include testsfor gender interactions to determine whether thefindings apply to one sex more than the other.

What Does Monitoring Represent?

To discover what monitoring really represents,we first examined the correlations linking child-

reported and parent-reported monitoring (parentalknowledge) with the three hypothesized sources ofinformation: child disclosure, parental solicitation,and parental control. These relations are reported inTable 2 along with the intercorrelations among thesources of information. According to childrens reports,each of the three sources correlated significantly withmonitoring, r

(692)

.66,p

.001, r

(688)

.42,p

.001, and r

(684)

.41,p

.001 for child disclosure, pa-rental solicitation, and parental control, respectively,but the correlation between child disclosure and

Table 1 Mean Scores as a Function of Gender For All VariablesUsed in the Study

Girls Boys

t

Childrens reportsParental monitoring .04 (.70)

.04 (.67) 1.62

Child disclosure .10 (.76)

.10 (.72) 3.60***Parental solicitation .15 (.71)

.15 (.71) 5.45***Parental control .08 (.74)

.08 (.70) 3.00**Parentchild relationship

.09 (.68) .10 (.54)

3.92***Normbreaking

.03 (.62) .03 (.67)

1.31Police contact 1.09 (.35) 1.12 (.38)

.76

Parents reportsParental monitoring .01 (.79)

.01 (.67) .25Child disclosure .13 (.75)

.11 (.78) 3.74***Parental solicitation .03 (.69)

.02 (.72) .73Parental control

.04 (.67) .08 (.67)

2.11*

Normbreaking

.02 (.49)

.01 (.54)

.73

Note:

Standardized scores, except for police contact, which rangedfrom 1 4. Standard deviations are given in parentheses.*

p

.05; **

p

.01; ***

p

.001.


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monitoring was significantly stronger than the next

largest correlation, z

6.4, p

.001. Using parent-reported measures, the results were almost identical.Again, all of the correlations were statistically signifi-cant, r(574) .63,p .001, r(575) .43,p.001, andr(561).28,p.001 for child disclosure, parental so-licitation, and parental control, respectively, but thecorrelation between child disclosure and monitor-ing was significantly stronger than the next largest cor-relation, z4.8,p.001. Note, further, that these differ-ential links to monitoring are not due to differences inskewness. All measures of disclosure, solicitation, andcontrol had distributions that were close to normal,skewness statistics.23, .18, and .20 for childrens re-ports and .89, .59, and .59 for parents reports ofdisclosure, solicitation, and control, respectively.

As shown in Table 2, in addition to the fact thatthey are all related to monitoring, the informationsources are all significantly, positively intercorrelated.Within parents and childrens reports, child disclosureand parental solicitation were the most highly intercor-related and child disclosure and parental control werethe least. In addition, note that parents and adoles-cents agreed substantially about these aspects of theirrelationships. All correlations between parents andadolescents reports were significant at or below the

.001 level, as shown on the diagonal in Table 2. Par-ents and adolescents agreed most on child disclosure,r(537) .45, less on monitoring, r(537) .38, andparental solicitation, r(526) .33, and least on paren-tal control, r(508) .30. Parents and children agree,then, that parents information comes from spontane-ous child disclosure and parents active efforts butthat more of it comes from child disclosure. However,because these sources of information are all inter-correlated, the question is what they each contributeindependently.

To determine how much of parents knowledg

comes from each of these sources, independent of thothers, we used a multiple regression approach. Wentered the three potential information sources simultaneously in a regression model predicting monitoring. Because we know from Table 1 that girls disclose more information than boys do to their parentswe also included sex in this regression model alonwith Sex Disclosure, Sex Solicitation, and Sex Control interaction terms. The results appear in thupper portion of Table 3.

Which source of information is most predictive oparents knowledge (monitoring)? The answer ichild disclosure. Using childrens reports of all thvariables, child disclosure and parental control bothindependently predict the amount of informatioparents have, but child disclosure is the more important of the two. With these variables controlled, parental solicitation is unrelated to monitoring. Usinparents reports of all the variables, all three independently predict monitoring; however, as with thchildrens reports, child disclosure appears to bmore important than the variables that measure parents active efforts. Parents get most of their information about their childrens activities from their chidrens willing disclosure, rather than from their activ

surveillance and control efforts. Additionally, as showin the table, neither sex nor any of the interaction termapproach significance for childrens or parents reports. (We also performed these analyses by enterinsex before entering all other variables. It was nonsignificant even when entered alone, as one would expecfrom the fact that there was no significant sex difference on monitoring in Table 1.) Despite the meanlevel sex differences in child disclosure, solicitationand control, the relations between these variables anmonitoring are the same for boys and girls.

Table 2 Intercorrelations Among Monitoring (Parents Knowledge) and Three HypothesizedSources of Knowledge

ChildDisclosure

ParentalSolicitation

ParentalControl

ParentalMonitoring

Child disclosure [.45***] .55*** .36*** .66***

(537) (685) (681) (692)Parental solicitation .46*** [.33***] .43*** .42***(571) (526) (682) (688)

Parental control .12** .20*** [.30***] .41***(588) (560) (508) (684)

Parental monitoring .63*** .43*** .28*** [.38***](574) (575) (561) (537)

Note: Degrees of freedom are in parentheses. Childrens reports are above and parents reports belowthe diagonal. Correlations between parents and childrens reports are on the diagonal in brackets.**p.01; ***p.001.


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Once children have freely disclosed informationabout their whereabouts and activities, how much ad-ditional information will parents get from their ownactive efforts? To answer this, we entered child disclo-sure first in a regression model predicting monitor-ing and then added parental solicitation and controlto the model. The results appear in the lower portionof Table 3. By itself, child disclosure explains a substan-tial proportion of the variance in monitoring (44%from the childrens points of view and 38% from the par-ents points of view). Adding the other two sources tothe model produces a statistically significant, but small,increase in the variance explained (3% for childrens re-ports and 5% for parents reports). These results suggestthat children freely tell their parents a large proportionof what their parents know about their whereaboutsand activities. Parents efforts to gain information reli-ably produce more, but only a small amount more. Insummary, then, when monitoring is recognized asknowledge and we ask where parents have gotten that

knowledge, we find that tracking or surveillance efforts,which are implied by the term monitoring and its previ-ous interpretations, are less important than childrensspontaneous sharing of information.

This finding could, conceivably, appear becausedisclosure is highly important among children whohave nothing to hide from their parents, even thoughit may not be among those who have a lot to hide. Inother words, the childs behavior might interact withthese sources to predict parents knowledge (moni-toring). Further analyses, however, suggest not. We

tested for interactions between the informationsources and dichotomized measures of childrensproblem behavior: (1) hanging out on the streets inthe evening (seldom once a month or less, n518;often once a week or more, n168) and (2) norm-breaking (low lower than .5 SD on the normbreak-

ing behavior scale, n553; high.5 SD or higher onthe normbreaking scale, n143). As shown in Table4, each of these possible moderators are indepen-dently linked to parents knowledge (monitoring).However, there is little evidence that they moderatethe relations between child disclosure and monitor-ing. Most of the interaction-term slopes are near zeroand nonsignificant, and child disclosure is the stron-gest predictor in every model, which indicates thatwhether the child is misbehaving or not, parents getmost of their knowledge from the childs free disclo-sure. There is one weakly significant interactionthe

Disclosure Hanging Out interaction for child-reported measures. We plotted the interaction by solv-ing the regression equation for high and low childdisclosure among those who were hanging out oftenand seldom. This plot revealed that for children whooften hung out on the streets in the evening, low dis-closure of information was linked to particularly lowlevels of parental knowledge (monitoring). Buthigh disclosure was still linked to high levels of parentalknowledge (monitoring). Thus, among children whooften hang out on the streets, child disclosure is an evenmore important source of parental knowledge.

Monitoring and Normbreaking

Monitoring has been linked in the literature tolower incidences of delinquency, smoking, drug use,and other normbreaking behaviors, and it is in thisstudy, as well, r(693) .50, p .001 and r(534) .34,p.001 for bivariate correlations linking child-reported normbreaking with child-reported and parent-reported monitoring, respectively. Additionally, eachof the child-reported sources of information corre-lated significantly with normbreaking, r(688) .39,p.001, r(685) .13,p.001, and r(680) .24,

p .001 for disclosure, solicitation, and control, re-spectively. Of the parent-reported sources, only childdisclosure correlated significantly with normbreak-ing, r(530) .27, p .001, r(531) .01, ns, andr(517).06, ns, for disclosure, solicitation, and con-trol, respectively.

The question, however, is which source of informa-tion is most important in predicting normbreaking,independent of the others. As shown in Table 5, theanswer, again, is child disclosure. Higher levels ofchild disclosure correspond to lower levels of norm-

Table 3 Simultaneous and Heirarchical Regression AnalysesPredicting Monitoring (Parental Knowledge) from PotentialInformation Sources and Child Sex

Child Report Parent Report

R2 R2

Simultaneous inclusionDisclosure .64*** .59***Solicitation .03 .15**Control .22*** .19***Sex .04 .05DisclosureSex .07 .07SolicitationSex .01 .00ControlSex .02 .49*** .02 .44***

Stepwise inclusionModel 1

Disclosure .66*** .44*** .62*** .38***Model 2

Solicitation &Control added .03*** .05***

**p.01; ***p.001.


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breaking, independent of parental solicitation andcontrol. The standardized slopes for disclosure inboth child- and parent-report models are more thantwice as large as the next largest slopes. For controland solicitation, on the other hand, the independentconnections to normbreaking are less clear and con-sistent. Independent of disclosure and solicitation,child-reported parental control is linked to lowernormbreaking but parent-reported control is not. Thefindings concerning parental solicitation run counterto expectations. With child disclosure and parentalcontrol held constant, parental solicitation is linked tohigher, not lower, normbreaking. The more parentsask their children about their activities, the morenormbreaking their children tend to do. Note, further,

that these results hold when parent-reported sourcesare used to predict parent-reported normbreaking,which is highly skewed because most parents reportno normbreaking, .37,p.001, .18,p.01,and .00, nsfor disclosure, solicitation, and control,respectively. Because of a skewed distribution of pa-rental reports of childrens normbreaking, we dichot-omized the measure of child normbreaking into twogroups: one in which parents reported no norm viola-tions or just minor ones (75.1%) and another in whichparents reported several norm violations (24.9%). A

logistic regression analysis revealed that child disclosure predicted negatively, b.81, Wald statistic 31.45, p .001, parental solicitation predicted positively, b.41, Wald statistic 5.85,p.05, and parental control was nonsignificant, b.15, Wald statistic 0.99,pns.

The lower portion of Table 5 reveals, further, thathese findings apply to both boys and girls. Sex doenot interact with any of the sources of parental information in predicting normbreaking.

Again, the childs behavior might moderate thesrelations. Perhaps child disclosure is not the most important link to lower normbreaking among childrenwho are hanging out on the streets in the eveningPerhaps, for those children, solicitation or control becomes more important than child disclosure as predictors of lower normbreaking. To test this, we includedthe dichotomized variable for the childs hanging ouon the streets in the evening and its interactions witthe sources of information. These results appear inTable 6. As expected, hanging out on the streets in th

evening is strongly linked to normbreaking. According to childrens reports of disclosure, solicitationand control, shown in the left-hand column of Table 6child disclosure is strongly linked to lower normbreaking, and that link does not depend on whethethe child is hanging out on the streets in the eveningIn this model, there is also a weak ControlHanginOut interaction. A plot of four points predicted by thregression equation (high and low control; hanginout often and seldom) revealed that low control wamainly associated with higher normbreaking amon

Table 4 Simultaneous Regression Analyses Predicting Moni-toring (Parental Knowledge) from Potential InformationSources and Childrens Behavior

Child Report Parent Report

R2 R2

Hanging out on thestreets in the eveninga

Disclosure .49*** .45***Solicitation .07 .16***Control .19*** .13***Hanging out .14*** .15***DisclosureHanging Out .09* .01SolicitationHanging Out .05 .06ControlHanging Out .00 .49*** .08 .45***

Childs normbreakingb

Disclosure .50*** .43***Solicitation .04 .19***Control .15*** .15***Normbreaking .23*** .17***

DisclosureNormbreaking .00 .04SolicitationNormbreaking .02 .00ControlNormbreaking .04 .53*** .06 .45***

aSeldomonce a month or less (n518); oftenonce a week ormore (n168).

bLow lower than .5 SDon the normbreaking scale (n553);high.5 SDor higher on the normbreaking scale (n143).*p.05; **p.01; ***p.001.

Table 5 Simultaneous Regression Analyses Predicting Chidrens Self-Reported Normbreaking from Childs Sex anSources of Parents Information

Child-ReportedSources

Parent-ReporteSources

R

2 R

2

Predictors of normbreakingDisclosure .42*** .38***Solicitation .18*** .19***Control .17*** .19*** .01 .12**

Test of moderating effectsof gender

Disclosure .39*** .43***Solicitation .14* .20**Control .19*** .00Sex .01 .02DisclosureSex .05 .06SolicitationSex .06 .00ControlSex .02 .19*** .02 .13**

*p.05; **p.01; ***p.001.


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children who often hung out on the streets in theevening. For those who seldom did, parental controlwas less linked to normbreaking. However, eventhough parental control is associated with lower norm-breaking under some circumstances, the link betweenthis control interaction and normbreaking is only athird as large as the main effect of child disclosure.

According to parents reports, shown in the right-hand column of Table 6, child disclosure is the sourceof parental information that is most closely linked tonormbreaking, but the interaction shows that the as-sociation is moderated by the childs behavior. A plotof the interaction revealed that child disclosure waseven more strongly connected to normbreaking amongchildren who often hung out on the streets in theevening than among those who seldom did. For chil-dren who hung out often, the less they disclosed totheir parents, the more likely they were to be breakingnorms, and their normbreaking was more extremethan that of those children who seldom hung out onthe streets. In addition, according to parents reportsin Table 6, solicitation interacts with hanging out topredict normbreaking. A plot of this interaction re-vealed that higher levels of solicitation were linked to

higher levels of normbreaking, but this was muchmore true when children often hung out on the streetsin the evening. Among parents of those children, so-licitation is probably a reaction to normbreakingrather than an antecedent (i.e., parents attempts toget information about what their children are doingwhen they are often out in the evenings andgettinginto trouble).

These findings suggest that the link betweenmonitoring and antisocial behavior exists not be-cause surveillance reduces antisocial behavior as has

often been claimed but rather because child disclo-sure is heavily represented in monitoring, and chil-dren who talk openly with their parents tend to com-mit fewer antisocial acts. However, because studiesthat find links between monitoring and antisocialbehavior often conclude that surveillance is the im-

portant parental activity, we asked, finally, whetherparents active efforts added anything substantial tothe prediction of normbreaking, over and above childdisclosure. To answer this, we regressed normbreakingon child disclosure first and then added parental so-licitation and control to the model. The results sug-gested that parents active efforts have a reliable butsmall effect. Child disclosure, by itself, significantlypredicted less normbreaking, R2.15,p.01. Addingparental solicitation and control to the model pro-duced a statistically significant but small increase inthe variance explained, R2change .03,p.01.

Note that the three hypothesized sources of infor-mation together were approximately equal to moni-toring as predictors of normbreaking. For parentsreports, monitoring accounted for 12% of the vari-ance in normbreaking; the three sources accountedfor 10%. The analogous figures for childrens reportswere 25% and 18%. The correlations within thesepairs were not significantly different from each other,z0.88 and 1.72, respectively.

Police contact. Until now, we have used a broadmeasure of normbreaking behavior that includednorm violations at home, at school, and during lei-sure time. We look, now, at a narrower measure: hav-ing been in trouble with the police during the lastyear. According to the self-reports of the 14-year-oldchildren, 8.8% had been caught by the police for someoffense during the past year, and according to the par-ents and the children themselves, parents of thesechildren knew less about their daily activities than theparents of the other children. Child-reported moni-toring was lower among the children who said theyhad been caught by the police, t(692)6.13,p.001.Mean z-scores on monitoring were .50 (SD.71)and .05 (SD.67) for those who had been caught bythe police and those who had not, respectively. Par-

ent-reported monitoring was also lower for thosewho had had police contact, t(533) 2.83, p .01.Mean z-scores were.27 (SD.48) and .05 (SD.73)for those who had been caught by the police andthose who had not, respectively.

Monitoring (parents knowledge) is related topolice contact, but which source of parents knowl-edge is most closely related? The answer is child dis-closure, just as it was for the broader normbreakingmeasure. In a logistic regression analysis predictingpolice contact from the childs reported disclosure,

Table 6 Regression Analyses Predicting Child-Reported Norm-breaking from Sources of Parental Information and the ChildsBehavior

Child-ReportedSources

Parent-ReportedSources

ModelR2 ModelR2

Disclosure .31*** .21***Solicitation .11* .08Control .07 .03Hanging outa .30*** .35***DisclosureHanging Out .03 .16**SolicitationHanging Out .06 .15**ControlHanging Out .11* .29*** .02 .26***

aSeldomonce a month or less (n518); often once a week ormore (n168).*p.05; **p.01; ***p.001.


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parental solicitation, and parental control, child dis-closure was most important, b.62, Wald statis-tic 8.25,p.01. Parental control was also a signifi-cant predictor, b.50, Wald statistic4.82,p.05,but parental solicitation was not, b.18, Wald statis-tic 0.57, ns.

According to parents reports, 5.7 % of the childrenhad been caught by the police during the past year,and again, the parents of these children knew lessabout their activities, according to both sources.Child-reported monitoring was lower among thesechildren, t(27.42) 3.23, p .01. Mean z-scores onmonitoring were.51 (SD.91) and .07 (SD.65)for those who had been caught by the police and thosewho had not, respectively. Parent-reported monitor-ing was also lower, t(573) 2.40, p .05. Meanz-scores were .30 (SD.81) and .02 (SD.72) forthose who had been caught by the police and those

who had not, respectively.Furthermore, when the three sources of informa-tion were used to predict parent-reported police con-tact, child disclosure was the only significant predic-tor, b.80, Wald statistic 11.77,p.01. In short,independent of whether the outcome measure isbroad (normbreaking) or narrow (police contact) orwhether the children or the parents report on policecontact, child disclosure emerges as the most impor-tant predictor.

Is child disclosure just a proxy for good parentchild re-lationships? One could argue that the link betweenchild disclosure and normbreaking is primarily dueto the fact that children who confide in their parentshave close emotional bonds with their parents, and itis the emotional bonds that makes them unlikely to beinvolved in normbreaking. We used two different in-dicators of parentchild relationships: one from thechildrens perspectives (parentchild relationships)and one from the parents perspectives (family close-ness). The family closeness measure was taken on asubset of the sample (n154). These two measureswere positively correlated, r(154) .22,p.01. In ad-dition, childrens reports of motherchild relation-ships were positively correlated with their reports of

father-child relationships, r(662) .47, p .001, andthe pattern of results was the same when mother andfatherchild relationships were examined separately.

Beginning with parentchild relationships, weasked whether any of these variables would still appearas predictors of normbreaking after controlling forchildrens reports of the parentchild relationship.With normbreaking as the dependent variable in a re-gression model, we forced parentchild relationshipsin on the first step and then added child disclosure,parental solicitation, and parental control on the sec-

ond step. Parentchild relationships was a significanpredictor of normbreaking when entered alone, .25, p.001. However, each of the child-reportesources still significantly predicted normbreaking independent of our parentchild relationship measure.35,p.001, .09,p.05, and .25

p .001, for child disclosure, parental solicitationand parental control, respectively. Moreover, when aof the variables were entered simultaneously to tesfor their independent contributions, child disclosurexplained around twice as much variance as solicitation, control, or parentchild relationships, .36p.001, .17,p.001, .19,p.001, and .13,p.001, for disclosure, solicitation, control, andparent child relationships, respectively. We also testefor gender effects by including, simultaneouslyparentchild relationships, the three informationsources, sex, the interaction of parentchild relation

ships with sex, and interactions of the informationsources with sex. Neither sex nor any of the interactions was significant in this model.

Similar results were found using the secondmeasureparents judgments of family closenesswhich were taken for a subset of the sample (n154Family closeness was a significant predictor of normbreaking when entered alone, .23,p.01; however, child disclosure and parental control significantly predicted normbreaking, over and above thfamily closeness measure, .45, p .001, .34,p.001, for child disclosure and parental control, respectively. In this limited sample, parental solicitation was marginally significant, .15, p.08. Again, when all of the variables were entered simultaneously, child disclosure explained more thantwice as much variance as solicitation, control, ofamily closeness, .47,p.001, .21,p.02.24,p.01, and .15,p.05, for disclosuresolicitation, control, and family closeness, respectivelyWe find no evidence, then, that child disclosure andnormbreaking are related only because adolescentwho are emotionally close to their parents will shartheir experiences and also refrain from normbreaking

DISCUSSION

In this study we argued that parental monitoring ireally knowledge that parents have about their chidrens activities outside the home and that this knowledge comes partly from the parents own efforts to findout what their children are doing (solicitation andcontrol) and partly from the childs spontaneous anwilling divulgence of information (child disclosureThese three knowledge sources accounted for close t


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half of the variance in our monitoring measure forboth childrens and parents reports.

In contrast to the parenting skills or direct supervi-sion interpretation of monitoring that dominates theliterature (Dishion & McMahon, 1998; Snyder &Patterson, 1987), however, this study suggests that

monitoring is not what the term implies: a parentalactivity. It is more a childs activity. Both childrensand parents reports of monitoring were best ex-plained as childrens voluntary descriptions of theirfree-time activities.

Parents want to prevent antisocial behavior in theirchildren or to stop it if it has begun. In the criminolog-ical literature, parents of delinquents have been char-acterized as poor and inconsistent monitors of theirchildrens activities (Patterson & Stouthamer-Loeber,1984; Snyder & Patterson, 1987). In this study, as inprevious studies, poor parental monitoring was

linked to more normbreaking behavior. However,when we asked which of the three potential sourcesof information best explained the childs normbreak-ing behavior, we found that child disclosure was thestrongest predictor. This was true both for childrensand parents reports and for the broad normbreakingmeasure as well as for police contact.

Parental monitoring, defined as direct control of thechilds behavior, was rejected early on by criminolo-gists as an effective proactive strategy for parents (seeWells & Rankin, 1988, for a review). The argument wasthat adolescents spend so much of their free time atplaces where parents are not present that parents can-not control their childrens behavior directly (Nye,1958). Thereafter, a sizable body of research on parentalmonitoring that challenged the early view emerged.Many studies showed that monitoring did play animportant role in constraining antisocial behavior, andseveral review studies came to that conclusion (Loeber& Stouthamer-Loeber, 1986; Snyder & Patterson, 1987).

Today, the idea that monitoring measures reflectparents efforts to control and manage their children iswidespread (see Dishion & McMahon, 1998; Snyder &Patterson, 1987). Authors argue that more and strongersurveillance by parents could reduce antisocial behav-

ior in children (Fletcher et al., 1995; Patterson &Stouthamer-Loeber, 1984; Romer et al., 1994; Snyder &Patterson, 1987; Weintraub & Gold, 1991). Pattersonand Stouthamer-Loeber (1984) suggested that juveniledelinquents parents are indifferent trackers of theirsons whereabouts (p. 1305). Fletcher et al. (1995) con-cluded that strong parental monitoring could bothdeter adolescents from engaging in drug use in the firstplace and reduce the risks of further use, and Romer etal. (1994) suggested that parents of friendship groupsshould join together to monitor their childrens free-

time activities to prevent risky sexual behavior. How-ever, these conclusions are not supported by thepresent study. They were based on an inferential leap:that parental knowledge must have come from surveil-lance and direct control. The present study suggestsotherwise. Researchers, therefore, have likely drawn

premature conclusions from monitoring findings.Researchers have also used monitoring measures

such as Patterson and Stouthamer-Loebers (1984)five-item questionnaire to build models to explain howparents influence their childrens antisocial behavior.For example, Barber (1996) recently distinguished the-oretically between psychological and behavioral con-trol. He argued that they would be differently relatedto internalizing and externalizing behavior; psycho-logical control should create internalizing problemsand behavioral control should prevent externalizingproblems, and, indeed, he found that behavioral con-

trol was negatively related to delinquency. As a mea-sure of behavioral control, however, he used a 5-itemmonitoring scale that measured parental knowl-edge, the rationale being that monitoring . . . appearsto be a particularly reliable and powerful index offamily management and regulation (p. 3301). In reality,although the monitoring scale taps parents aware-ness of their childrens whereabouts, it cannot be as-sumed to represent parents behavioral attempts tocontrol the child. The alternative interpretationthatchildren with externalizing problems hide theirnormbreaking behavior from their parents more thanother children, which results in their parents knowinglessis more likely in light of our findings.

At least two plausible theoretical explanations couldaccount for our main finding: that high discloserswere lower on normbreaking. One is a temperamentexplanation. Perhaps some children are just tempera-mentally prone to be agreeable, conventional peoplewho have nothing to hide from their parents and whocommunicate willingly and openly. In this formulation,temperament would be a third variable that causesgood behavior and also causes children to confide intheir parents, but there might be no causal link betweendisclosure and good behavior at all. However, if this

was all that was going on in our data, child disclosureshould not have been important among children whohung out on the streets in the evening, but it was.Clearly, a richer explanation is needed.

Another explanation is that parents have donesomething to build up the kinds of relationships thatfacilitate communication, and those relationships arewhat prevent bad behavior. This explanation is con-ceptually linked to early formulations of control the-ory that take the childs attachment to the parents asthe crucial aspect of behavioral control (Hirschi, 1969).


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The basic idea is that the childs emotional bond to theparents prevents the child from doing anything thatmight compromise the relationshipanything ofwhich parents might disapprove or that might em-barrass them. Consistent with this, attachment mea-sures have been shown to be important predictors of

delinquency (e.g., Benda & Whiteside, 1995; Sokol-Katz, Dunham, & Zimmerman, 1997). Attachmentmight be a third variable that causes children to wantto tell their parents all about their lives and also keepsthem from getting into trouble, thus explaining bothdisclosure itself and the link between disclosure andantisocial behavior. Our data are not supportive ofthis idea, however. Child disclosure remains thestrongest predictor of normbreaking, even after con-trolling for parent- and child-rated indicators ofparentchild relationships.

A limitation of both of these views is that they pos-

tulate directional effects that are probably too simplis-tic. Socialization is not a unidirectional process (Mac-coby & Martin, 1983; Magnusson & Stattin, 1998).Developmental psychology has moved from a top-down view of parenting to a more interactive view ofparentchild processes that recognizes the necessity ofreciprocity, cooperation, coordination, and coregula-tion. A good parentchild relationship, which shouldoperate preventively, should be a two-way process, in-cluding both the parents solicitation of knowledgeand control of their childrens behavior and the chil-drens willingness to make their parents part of theirlives. A parentchild relationship that protects chil-dren from antisocial behavior is unlikely to be built onthe parents or the childrens actions alone. For in-stance, parents attempts to solicit information from anunwilling child might have a limited effect on thechilds behavior. In fact, some youngsters might viewparental solicitation as an intrusion into their privacyand a means for parents to control their behavior. Par-ents well-meaning attempts to find out about theirchildrens activities have to be matched by the chil-drens willingness to reveal what they are doing,where they are going, and whom they are with. A fewtimes, this has been expressed in the monitoring litera-

ture (Crouter, et al., 1990; Weintraub & Gold, 1991).Crouter et al. (1990) defined monitoring as similar toPulkkinens (1982, p. 656) child-center guidance andemphasized the dual nature of the concept: Parentswho are good monitors have made the effort to estab-lish channels of communication with their child, andas a result of their relationship with the child, they areknowledgeable about the childs daily experiences. Inorder to be an effective monitor, however, parental in-terest is not enough: A child must be willing to sharehis or her experiences and activities with the parent.

Seen in this light, parental monitoring is a relationshipproperty. This discussion of child disclosure and howthe parentchild relationship might facilitate it is rarin the monitoring literature (for another exception, seCrouter et al., 1999). Typically, the parentchild relationship is discussed as a factor that determines wha

parentswill doto monitor their children (e.g., Dishion &McMahon, 1998) and the childs active role is ignored

This study leaves certain questions to be answered bfuture research. The cross-sectional design of the studprecludes any detailed insights into causal connectionsOnly longitudinal studies will enable us to identify thorigins of child disclosure or to say anything definitivabout whether parents knowledge actually preventproblems. Future studies should also include comparsons of mothers and fathers within the same families because recent evidence suggests that their knowledgmay differ under certain circumstances (Crouter et al

1999). This particular area of research would be especially interesting for future Swedish studies becausSwedish law encourages and facilitates fathers involvement more than in the United States, where differencein parental knowledge have been found.

The present study has a number of strengths, however. One is the large sample size and the high response rates from both children and parents. Anotheis that the study deals with both parents and childrens reports, which do not overlap precisely buwhich nonetheless reveal the same overall picturabout parents knowledge, where it comes from, anhow these factors are connected to normbreaking. Thistudy challenges the common assumption of what parental monitoring is; it reveals that parents direct control over childrens behavior is not as important as thyoungsters own voluntary disclosure of informatioabout their lives. Thus, this study suggests that a bidrectional model of parentchild interactions is needed

Our findings carry implications for future monitoring research and for parenting. In the future, researchers should not use the term monitoring to refeto measures of parental knowledge. Monitorinshould be reserved for measures that actually tap parents active efforts. If parental knowledge is measured

it should be labeled parental knowledge. We shouldrecognize that parental knowledge is extremely important, for reasons which are as yet unknown. In future criminological investigations, more effort shoulgo toward identifying aspects of parentchild relationships that are associated with the childs disclosure of information. A focus on the adolescents poinof view is also needed. For example, one issue thahas received little attention in the monitoring literature is adolescents trust in their parentswhether thefeel that their parents are willing to listen to them, ar


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responsive, and would not ridicule or punish if theyconfided in them. Another issue is whether adoles-cents and their friends develop common attitudesand norms about how much they should confide intheir parents about their daily activities and experi-ences. These and other possible influences on child

disclosure should be investigated.Concerning implications for parenting, general

advice to parents should be given cautiously. Parentsnormally use different socializing strategies simulta-neously and try to find a balance between them. Par-ents awareness of their childrens activities is cer-tainly important for preventing negative behavior.However, our results suggest that in addition to con-trolling the childs whereabouts, parents should try tooptimize conditions for the child to disclose informa-tion about his or her everyday experiences. Parentalcharacteristics that have been associated with juve-

nile delinquency, such as aggression; hostility; cruel,neglecting attitudes toward the child; negativism; andpermissiveness of aggression (see Snyder & Patterson,1987, for a review) are all behaviors that would dis-courage child disclosure. A more child-centered ap-proach, which would result in a two-way dialogue,might encourage children to share their mental liveswith their parents. Parents must be aware of how ad-olescents feel and think as they formulate their up-bringing strategies. Hirschi (1969) suggested that theparents psychological presence in the child wouldkeep the child from behaving badly, but that may notbe achievable if the childs point of view and possible

reactions are not psychologically present in the parentsas they interact with their child.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was supported by grants from theSwedish Council for Planning and Coordination ofResearch and the Swedish Council for Research in theHumanities and Social Sciences. During the prepara-tion of this manuscript, Margaret Kerr was supportedby a grant from the Wenner-Grenska Samfundet.

AUTHOR ADDRESSES AND AFFILIATIONSCorresponding author: Hkan Stattin, Departmentof Psychology, University of rebro, 701 82 re-bro, Sweden; e-mail: [email protected] Kerr is also at the University of rebro.

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