Parenting: Old questions, new fears?

19
Dec
2024

Judith G. Smetana, Nicole Campione-Barr, Lauree C. Tilton-Weaver

“It’s 10 O’clock – do you know where your children are?” This question was widely posed to parents in public service announcements broadcast on the radio and TV and posted on billboards in the US from the 1960s to the 1990s.

These public service announcements were based on scientific research on parental monitoring—parents’ behaviors aimed at knowing where their children and adolescents are, who they are with, and what they are doing. At the time, parental monitoring was viewed as the primary means of curtailing adolescents’ problem behavior and preventing a range of social ills, including reducing substance use and petty and serious crime, as well as risky sexual behavior. In short, parents were told that if they monitored their children and adolescents, they would be able to step in and effectively avert contact and involvement with peers engaging in norm-breaking activities.

In the late 1990s, some researchers called the advice into question. We (and others) argued that the research on which the advice was founded was gravely flawed, for several reasons.

First, the measurement of monitoring in this body of research was highly problematic. In most research studies, parents or adolescents were asked how much parents really knew about adolescents’ activities outside the home. such as where the teen goes at night, what happened during the school day, and where the teen is most afternoons after school. They didn’t ask whether parents made rules about or controlled these behaviors. Thus, this measured parental knowledge of teens’ activities, rather than their parenting behaviors. With others, we argued that the research should focus directly on parents’ monitoring behaviors (e.g., asking questions, looking for information), not on what parents know.

Second, virtually all of the studies at the time were cross-sectional and correlational. That is, the responses were measured at a single point of time. Unfortunately, the inferences that can be drawn from such data are severely limited. They may demonstrate associations among the variables, but they cannot be used to infer development (change over time) or the causal directions of the associations. Nonetheless, many had erroneously described parental knowledge (called monitoring) as preventing problem behaviors and contact with delinquent youth.

Another problematic issue involved assumptions about parents: those that tried to monitor would gain information; those that did not try would be left in the dark. The blame for not knowing about one’s offspring’s behavior was put squarely on the shoulders of the parents. Essentially, knowledgeable parents were “good” parents, while parents who knew little to none about their teens’ behaviors were seen as inadequate.

Assumptions weren’t just being made about parents—these researchers were making faulty assumptions about adolescents. That is, they assumed that adolescents complied with parents’ attempts to gain knowledge. In other words, parents ask; adolescents tell. But it isn’t that simple! Anyone who has spent time with teenagers knows that youth often have their own goals, plans, and desires, and these may conflict with what parents want them to do or what parents want to know. We argued that in addition to measuring parents’ actual behaviors, we also needed to know about how adolescents responded to parents’ attempts to gain information about their lives.

Finally, we contended that the advice contained in the public service announcements was based on another faulty assumption – that knowing where your kids are guarantees that they won’t get into trouble. Moreover, parents weren’t told how to monitor or what to do with the information they gained.

Several key research papers published at the beginning of this century provided a watershed moment. That is, once the flaws of the research behind the public service announcements were clearly elaborated, we and other researchers began to set the record straight. New lines of research, conducted in varied samples in different locations sought to understand the complex dance between the different ways that parents parented and sought information from their teens and the situations in which teenagers chose to disclose or conceal this information from their parents. After two and a half decades of work, the first comprehensive text on this research—The Cambridge Handbook of Parental Monitoring and Adolescent Information Management—provides some answers to the many questions researchers have posed in addressing the limitations of prior studies.

An important insight from the recent research is that parents’ behaviors are not necessarily effective in providing the information parents seek. Rather, adolescents’ willingness to provide the information to parents is key. Adolescents have their own agendas. Some adolescents disclose virtually everything to their parents, while others may be more likely to withhold all or part of the information parents seek or may even provide misinformation. Moreover, the same adolescent may disclose in some circumstances and conceal in others, depending on the types of situations involved.

Parents who try to gain information frequently don’t get it. When teenagers are asked what they are up to, we and others have found that they provide a variety of reasons for providing or withholding information. These reasons show that adolescents’ willingness to share information depends in part on their evaluations of whether the information is important (or necessary) for parents to know, whether parents have a legitimate need or right to know, whether parents’ attempts to find out are invading their privacy, and whether youth believe that their parents will react favorably or unfavorably to the information teens provide.

To a very large degree, adolescents are active agents in these processes, and they make decisions about what their parents ought to know. And when parents react poorly to adolescents’ behaviors or disclosures, they may find it even harder to track their adolescents.

Fast forward twenty-five years. Despite our efforts and the consensus that has emerged from the psychological research, the same misunderstandings about the role of parents in these processes are still occurring. Even more troubling, this is happening at a time when new forms of risk are emerging or old risks may be increasing. For instance, parents are particularly concerned about their teenagers’ wellbeing online and on the streets, where youth may be exposed to dangerous substances, aggressive people, and other troubling experiences.

Take, for example, this news report from the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC; Jenco, 2023):

“About 86% of teens feel they are monitored closely by their parents or caregivers, which has been linked to engaging in fewer risky behaviors, according to a new study. ‘Parents have an important role to play in the promotion of healthy adolescent behaviors that can influence developmental trajectories and health outcomes,’ researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) wrote in a new Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.”

The quote above drew on the 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which studied a national sample of US high school students). In this study, the youth were asked “How often parents or adults in their family know where they are going and with whom.” The 6% who are labeled “highly monitored” responded that their parents knew “always” or “most of the time.” Adolescents who responded any other way (parents knew sometimes, rarely, or never) were labeled as being low in parental monitoring. The same mistaken conclusions, which we and others have sought to correct over the past 25 years by disentangling parental monitoring and parental knowledge, are reoccurring. Monitoring is being confused with parental knowledge.

The report goes on to suggest that the 86% who were “closely monitored,” compared to those who were “monitored” less were monitored to misuse marijuana and opioids, to have sex, and to feel depressed or attempt suicide. Once again, data collected at a single point in time (that is, correlational data) are being interpreted as showing that monitoring (actually knowledge) leads to fewer problem behaviors.

The same methodological flaws and erroneous assumptions are driving policy. From our own research, we know that it is more likely that adolescents who engaged in more problematic behaviors (having sex, misusing substances, experiencing bullying or forced sex) and symptoms of depression are more likely to withhold information from their parents. That is, teenagers’ unwillingness to disclose, rather than inadequate parental monitoring, is the real source of the parents’ lack of knowledge.

Is this concerning, especially for the 14% whose parents don’t know much about their lives? Certainly! Do we serve adolescent well by implying that we can fix this by having parents go after the information they haven’t provided? The past decades of research have shown conclusively that pressuring adolescents who haven’t willingly provided information to parents is unlikely to be effective. More importantly, for us, news such as this encourages parents to “monitor” without being told how and when to monitor, or potentially and very importantly, when to back off!

We agree on one point: parents can’t guide their teenagers if they are in the dark. And we strongly agree that parents (and parenting) do matter – just not in the way that is often suggested. But the best way for parents to gain that information is to establish responsive, warm, and trusting relationships with their teens, in which they provide room for adolescents’ autonomy and privacy needs. Establishing a routine of sharing information between family members in childhood probably makes it more likely that when kids enter adolescence, they’ll still be willing to keep their parents informed.

Additionally, parents who are overly controlling often lead their adolescents to conceal more—the opposite of what was likely intended by those parents and the PSAs that encouraged their behaviors.

The Cambridge Handbook of Parental Monitoring and Adolescent Information Management offers scholars and practitioners insight into these issues. It also addresses contextual concerns like cultural variability, digital technologies, and specific forms of youth disclosure such as “coming out” and medical concerns. This edited volume draws from a quarter century of research from the leading experts in the field. Our hope is that it provides a basis for clearer guidance for parents, teachers, and practitioners looking out for the best interests of today’s teens.