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Developmental Psychology2000, Vol. 36, No. 3, 366-380 Copyright 2000 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.0012-1649/00/S5.00 DOI: 10.1037//0012-1649.36.3.366

What Parents Know, How They Know It, and Several Forms of AdolescentAdjustment: Further Support for a Reinterpretation of MonitoringMargaret Kerr and Hakan StattinOrebro University

Parental monitoring has been conceptualized as tracking and surveillance but operationalized as knowl-edge of daily activities. This study tested the tracking and surveillance explanation of why parentalknowledge is linked to better adolescent adjustment. Participants were 1,186 14-year-olds in centralSweden and their parents. The results supported and extended a reinterpretation of parental monitoring(H . Stattin & M. Kerr, in press). Across sex and informant, high parental knowledge was linked tomultiple measures of good adjustment. But children's spontaneous disclosure of information explainedmore of these relations than parents' tracking and surveillance efforts did. Parents' control efforts wererelated to good adjustment only after the child's feelings of being controlled, which were linked to pooradjustment, were partialed out. The findings suggest that parents' tracking and surveillance efforts are notas effective as previously thought.

Life offers adolescents many opportunities for going astray.What can parents do to see that their adolescents avoid suchopportunities? One of the answers that developmental researchoffers is that parents can be good monitors of their children'sactivities. A large body of research that has been conductedover the past 2 decades links high levels of parental monitoringwith fewer adolescent behavior problems: less delinquency orantisocial behavior (Cerakovich & Giordano, 1987; Crouter,MacDermid, McHale, & Perry-Jenkins, 1990; McCord, 1986;Patterson & Stouthamer-Loeber, 1984; Sampson & Laub, 1994;Weintraub & Gold, 1991), less illegal substance use (Flannery,Vazsonyi, Torquati, & Fridrich, 1994), less tobacco use(Biglan, Duncan, Ary, & Smolkowski, 1995), less risky sexualactivity (Metzler, Noell, Biglan, Ary, & Smolkowski, 1994;Romer et al., 1994), better school performance (Crouter et al.,1990; White & Kaufman, 1997), and fewer deviant friends(Chassin, Pillow, Curran, Molina, & Barrera, 1993; Dishion,Capaldi, Spracklen, & Li, 1995). Clearly, monitoring isimportant.

What I s Mon i t o r i ng?The verb to monitor, meaning "to keep watch over or checkas a means of control" (Read et al., 1995, p. 822), denotesdeliberate action, and most conceptualizations of parental mon-itoring presume that parents are acting deliberately. In a recent

Margaret Kerr and Hakan Stattin, Department of Psychology, OrebroUniversity, Orebro, Sweden.This research was supported by grants from the Swedish Council forPlanning and Coordination of Research, the Swedish Council for Re-search in the Humanities and Social Sciences, and the Wenner-GrenskaSamfundet.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to MargaretKerr, Department of Psychology, Orebro University, 701 82 O rebro, Swe-den. Electronic mail may be sent to [email protected].

r ev iew, fo r example , pa ren ta l mon i to r ing was de f ined a s "a se to f co r re la t ed pa ren t ing behav io r s invo lv ing a t t en t ion to andt rack ing o f the ch i ld ' s whereabou t s , ac t iv i t i e s , and adap ta t ions"( D i s h i o n & M c M a h o n , 1 9 9 8 , p . 6 1 ) . Th i s a s s u m p t i o n t h a tmon i to r ing i s some th ing tha t pa ren t s do can be seen in some ofthe conc lus ions tha t a re d rawn f rom mon i to r ing s tud ie s toexp la in the l inks be tween mon i to r ing and good ad jus tmen t ina d o l e s c e n t s :

Lack of parental monitoring . . . insures the possibility of numerousunpunished trials of... delinquent behavior (Patterson & Stout-hamer-Loeber, 1984, p. 1305); good supervision fosters appropriateparental reaction to antisocial and delinquent behaviors, and indirectlyminimizes the adolescents' contact with delinquency-promoting cir-cumstances, activities, and peers (Snyder & Patterson, 1987, p. 227);it may be plausibly inferred that monitoring affects boys' delinquencyby preventing them from associating with [other delinquents], whichmay be a critical factor (Weintraub & Gold, 1991, p. 279); strongparental monitoring helps to deter adolescents from using alcohol anddrugs themselves a nd . .. from associating w ith drug-using peers.(Fletcher, Darling, & Steinberg, 1995, p. 270)

A recent study argues differently (Stattin & Kerr, in press). Inthat study we argued that parental action cannot be assumed inmonitoring, because the measures that are most commonly used donot address what parents do, only what they know. Some items askadolescents to rate their parents' knowledge of their school andfree-time activities: "How much do your parents REALLYknow?" (Fletcher et al., 1995, p. 262); "Do your parents knowwhere you are? Do your parents know w ho you are with?" (W ein-traub & Gold, 1991, p. 272); "My parents know w ho I'm with andwhere I am" (Cernkovich & Giordano, 1987, p. 303). In otherstudies, parents and children answer the same questions about thechild's activities, and agreement between their answers is themeasure of monitoring (Crouter et al., 1990; Crouter, Manke, &McH ale, 1995; Patterson & Stouthamer-Lo eber, 1984). But noneof these measures asks ho w parents got their information. Al-

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WHAT PARENTS KNOW 367though the term monitoring denotes parental action, the measurestap knowledge only.1

How Do Paren t s Get Knowl edge?Some scholars have suggested that if the child is not willing toshare the information, parents' efforts cannot be effective (Crouter

et al., 1990; Weintraub & Gold, 1991), and the above-mentionedstudy (Stattin & Kerr, in press) lends empirical support to thatclaim. Three potential sources of parental knowledge were iden-tified, and they are also used in the present investigation. One wasthe child's free, willing disclosure of information. The other tworepresented parent-initiated efforts to actively track adolescents'whereabouts and activities. One, "parental solicitation," was con-ceptualized as gathering information about children's activities byasking the children themselves and talking with their friends andtheir friends' parents. The other, "parental control," was concep-tualized as controlling adolescents' freedom to simply come andgo as they please, without getting permission first or explainingafterward where they have been and what they have been doing.Taken together, these constructs capture much of what is meant byparental monitoring: "attention to and tracking of the child'swhereabouts, activities, and adaptations" (Dishion & McMahon,1998, p. 61).In our previously mentioned study (Stattin & Kerr, in press),child disclosure, parental solicitation, and parental control wereused to predict a measure of parental knowledge that was similarto the most commonly used "monitoring" measures. Child disclo-sure was, by far, the strongest predictor. Parental solicitation andcontrol added little. Furthermore, when the three sources of infor-mation were used to predict the child's norm breaking, childdisclosure was, again, the most important predictor. In otherwords, in spite of what the label implies, parental "monitoring"represented child disclosure of information more than parentaltracking and surveillance, and child disclosure was the primarylink to low norm-breaking. These findings suggest that the termmonitoring is a misnomer if it is used to refer to parental knowl-edge measures, because the process by which parents get knowl-edge is more an activity of children than of parents. This casts anew light on parental "monitoring," its links to good adjustment,and the bidirectional processes within the family that encourage ordiscourage children to share their daily experiences.

Reevaluat ing Parents ' Tracking and Survei l lance Effor t sIf it cannot be assumed that "monitoring" represents parents'tracking and surveillance efforts, then the relations between par-ents ' efforts and adolescent adjustment must be studied directly.For example, on the basis of the evidence that youths becomedelinquent because of peer pressure (Fridrich & Flannery, 1995)and that they have more deviant friends when parental "monitor-ing" is low (Chassin et al., 1993; Dishion et al., 1995), it has beenconcluded that parents' tracking and surveillance efforts keepchildren from associating with peers who would be bad influences(Fletcher et al., 1995; Snyder & Patterson, 1987). But lookingbeyond the "monitoring" literature, there is evidence that parents'active efforts to control their adolescents' associations and activ-ities are not effective (Cohen & Rice, 1995; Otto & Atkinson,1997). In one study, parental tracking and surveillance of school

work predicted lower, rather than higher, grades and test scores(Otto & Atkinson, 1997). In another study, an intervention thattrained parents to exert more control over their children's access toalcohol and associations with substance-using peers was ineffec-tive, even though parental knowledge of the child's whereaboutswas associated with less substance use (Cohen & Rice, 1995).Apparently, parents' control efforts neither prevented substanceuse nor provided information about the child's whereabouts.In addition, there are both theoretical and empirical reasons tobelieve that vigilant tracking and surveillance might be linked tosome forms of poor adjustment. Research has shown that theperception of personal control is important to people's physicaland psychological health and well-being (Peterson, Seligman, &Vaillant, 1988; Rodin, 1990; Rodin & Langer, 1977; Seligman,1991; Syme, 1990). If people feel that they do not control then-own destinies, they can become depressed (Seligman, 1991) orphysically ill (Peterson et al., 1988; Syme, 1990), and increasingthe sense of personal control, even in small ways, might prolonglife (Rodin & Langer, 1977). Why should personal control be anyless important for adolescents' well-being? Consider the parentaltracking strategy of controlling teenagers' freedom to come and gowithout getting permission or explaining their activities. Almost bydefinition, the more parents do this, the more controlled the childwill feel. If parental control compromises the child's sense ofpersonal control, then any benefits, such as reductions in antisocialbehavior, could come at the cost of higher levels of depression,lower self-esteem, or doubts about their own abilities to succeed.

This raises the related question how parents' active trackingefforts might affect the parent-child relationship. How do adoles-cents respond to parents' efforts to know what they are doing,where they are going, and whom they are with? Everyday expe-rience suggests that adolescents might become resentful, rebel-lious, and, as a result, less emotionally warm and open with theirparents. There has been some related speculation about the par-enting factors associated with adolescent rebellion against theirparents (the "generation gap") and society's values and standards.Some theorists claimed that adolescents should rebel against highparental control (Masters, 1970; Wolman, 1972-1973), whereasothers claimed that low control or permissiveness should producerebellion (Graff, 1970). In empirical studies, rebellion was linkedwith high control (Frankel & Dullaert, 1977; Kelly & Goodwin,1983) and with a patriarchal family structure, regardless of thelevel of control (Balswick & Macrides, 1975). Adolescent hostilityhas also been linked to perceived parental control and higher levelsof punishment (Amoroso & Ware, 1986). To our knowledge,however, there are no studies that have made the link betweenparents' tracking and surveillance and the quality of parent-childrelationships.The present study tested the conclusions that have been drawnfrom the "monitoring" literature about parental tracking and sur-veillance. The present study extends our reinterpretation of mon-itoring (see Stattin & Kerr, in press). First, using an urban samplerather than a rural sample as we had in the other study, wereplicated the findings concerning the basic relations between

' For conceptual clarity, in the remainder of this article we use quotationmarks to distinguish parental knowledge measures"monitoring"fromthe tracking and surveillance constructmonitoring.


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368 KERR AND STATTINparents' knowledge and three sources of information. Then, in-stead of restricting the study to one adjustment measurenormbreakingas we had in the other study, we used multiple measuresof internal adjustment, external adjustment, associations with de-viant friends, and relationships with parents to examine the pos-sible positive and negative effects that parents' efforts might have.We examined whether tracking seems to keep youths from becom-ing involved with deviant peers and engaging in delinquent be-havior, as so often has been claimed; whether tracking and sur-veillance are linked to some forms of poor adjustment, such aslower self-esteem, more depressive symptoms, or poorer parent-child relationships; and whether parents' tracking and surveillanceefforts provide a good explanation of the links between "monitor-ing" and adjustment. Finally, we present evidence to explain whyone very reasonable sounding measure of parents' efforts, parentalcontrol, is not related to better adjustmentbecause control pro-duces the feeling of being controlled, which is linked to poorer,rather than to better, adjustment.

MethodParticipants

Participants were 14-year-old youths and their parents in a mid-sizedSwedish city. Students in all 8th-grade classes in the city (N = 1,283)composed the target sample for the study, which was the first wave of alongitudinal investigation. They took part in the study unless their parentsreturned a form stating that they did not want their child to participate (12parents returned this form). Neither parents nor children were paid for theirparticipation. Of the 1,283 students, 1,186 (92%) were present on the dayof the data collection andanswered the questionnaires.A questionnaire was sent to the home inwhich the child lived during theschool week. It was addressed to the child's biological parent or legalguardian. Parents were asked to return the completed questionnaire bymail; 1,077 (84%) did so. In 73 % of the cases, mothers filled out thequestionnaire alone; in 18% of the cases, fathers filled it out alone; in 8%of the cases, mothers and fathers worked together; and in 1 % of the cases,a guardian other than a parent filled out the questionnaire.2In Sweden, children have the same teacher for Grades 5-8, and theteachers get to know them quite well. At the end of the Grade 8 schoolterm, the teachers were asked to fill out a brief questionnaire for each ofthese students. They were paid for their efforts. In all, 36 out of 55 teachersparticipated and returned ratings on 855 students (67% of the originaltarget sample).During the planning phase of this study, one class of eighth graders froma neighboring community (N = 36) was recruited to fill out the question-naire under the same conditions that the test sample would encounter (sothat potential problems could be identified and solved). Togather reliabil-ity data, we returned to them 2 months later and administered the samequestionnaire again. Those data were used to calculate the test-retest

reliabilities reported in the present study. Because some measures weredropped and others were added after the pilot study, there are a fewmeasures for which reliabilities have not been calculated. The pilot sample,which was from a small, relatively affluent community, was somewhatbetter adjusted and less variable than the large, urban sample used in thestudy; therefore, even though the test-retest correlations were substantial,they should be seen as conservative estimates.Measures

Most of the measures of parent-child communication and relationshipsthat were used in this study were developed within this project andhavebeen refined after several pilot investigations and another large study. They

were given as part of a larger questionnaire. For most of the scale measuresused in this study, the individual items were intermingled throughout thequestionnaire.

What Parents Know: "Monitoring"In keeping with the monitoring literature, we operationalized the term

monitoring as parents' knowledge of the child's whereabouts, activities,and associations. Using 5-point Likert scales, children answered ninequestions about their parents' knowledge:Do your parents: know w hat you do during your free time? know whoyou have as friends during your free time? usually know what type ofhomework you have? know what you spend your money on? usuallyknow when you have an exam or paper due at school? know how youdo in different subjects at school? know where you go when you areout with friends at night? normally know where you goand what youdo after school? In the last month, have your parents ever had no ideaof where you were at night?

Parents answered the same questions, with only minor changes in wordingwhen necessary (e.g., "Doyou: know what your child does during his orher free time? know who your child has as friends during his or her freet ime?"). Means were calculated for the child-report items (a = .85) andparent-report items (a .82). The test-retest reliability for child-reported"monitoring" was substantial, r(36) = .83.

How They Know It: Sources of Parental KnowledgeThree potential sources of information about adolescent's daily activitieswere considered: child disclosure, parental solicitation, and parental con-trol. Five items were used to measure each construct. Principal-componentsanalyses of the 15 variables, reported separately for child- and parent-reported measures, each showed three clear factors. As shown in Table 1,in both analyses the disclosure, solicitation, and control variables loaded ondifferent factors. The loadings ranged from .56 to .82. All other loadings

were less than .38.Child disclosure. This measure comprised five items. The children'squestions were as follows:

Do you talk at home about how you are doing in the different subjectsin school? Do you usually tell how school was when you get home(how you did on different exams, your relationships with teachers,etc.)? Do you keep a lot of secrets from your parents about what youdo during your free time? Do you hide a lot from your parents aboutwhat you do during nights and weekends? If you are out at night,when you get home, do you tell what you have done that evening?Parents answered the same questions, with only minor changes in wordingwhen necessary. Five-point response scales were used. Alpha reliabilitieswere .80 for parents' reports and .78 for children's reports. The 2-monthtest-retest correlation for child-reported disclosure was .70 (df = 36).

Parental solicitation. Five items were averaged to form the parentalsolicitation measure. The children's items were as follows:

2 Recent studies suggest that mothers and fathers can have differentlevels of knowledge under certain conditions (e.g., Crouter, Helms-Erikson, Updegraff, & McHale, 1999). This is an important issue, but wedid not address it in this study because we did not compare mothers andfathers in the same families. In our study, according to both parents' andchildren's reports, parental knowledge did not depend upon the sex of theparent who responded.


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WHAT PARENTS KNOW 369Table 1Factor Loadings for Variables That Measure Sources of Parental Knowledge

Childdisclosure Parentalsolicitation ParentalcontrolItem CR PR CR PR CR PR

Child disclosure itemsChild keeps secrets about free timeChild hides what happens nights & weekendsChild tells what happens in schoolChild explains late night activitiesChild tells about school performance

.79.82.62.64.64

.74.73.72.70.75

- . 0 1- . 1 3.38.28.24

.06- . 0 7.24.27.16

.01.07.11.19.09

.03.05.07.15.02Parental solicitation items

Parents talked with other parents last monthParents talk to child's friends oftenParents initiate conversation about child's free timeParents askchild what happens on average dayParents askchild what happened during free time

.03.14.11.14.05

- . 0 5.15.16.20.12

.56

.64.66

.67.67

.58

.64.64

.65.70

- . 0 6.03.16.21.33

- . 0 5- . 0 2.11.18.18Parental control items

Child must explain if out past curfew -. 09 -. 04 .23 .13 .69 .66Child needs permission to be out late weeknights .13 -.00 .06 .11 .72 .66Child must askbefore making Saturday night plans .14 .08 -.03 .00 .69 .72Child is required to explain all evening activities .03 .08 .27 .06 .72 .77Child has to tell parent of Saturday night plans in advance .21 .17 .07 .03 .74 .69Note. Children's reports (CR) andparents' reports (PR) were factor analyzed separately.

In the last month, have your parents talked with theparents of yourfriends? How often doyour parents talk with your friends when theycome to your home (ask what they do or what they think and feelabout different things)? During thepast month, howoften have yourparents started a conversation with you about your free time? Howoften do your parents initiate a conversation about things that hap-pened during a normal day at school? Do your parents usually ask youto talk about things that happened during your free time (whom youmet when you were out in the city, free time activities, etc.)?Parents answered the same questions, with slight changes inwording whennecessary. The alpha reliabilities were .70 and .69 for youth-reportedand parent-reported solicitation, respectively. Child-reported solicitationwas highly reliable, according to the 2-month test-retest correlation,r(36) = .84.

Parental control. This construct was measured with five items. Y outhsanswered the following:Do you need to have your parents' permission to stay out late on aweekday evening? Do you need to ask your parents before you candecide with your friends what you will do on a Saturday evening? Ifyou have been out very late one night, do your parents require that youexplain what you did and whom you were with? Do your parentsalways require that you tell them w here you are at night, who you arewith, and what you do together? Before you go out on a Saturdaynight, do your parents require you to tell them where you are goingand with whom?

The scale ranged from 1 (no, never) to 5 (yes, always). Parents answeredthe same questions, with minor changes in wording. The alpha reliabilitieswere .78 and .75 for youths' reports and parents' reports, respectively. The2-month testretest reliability for child-reported parental control w as high,K36) = .82.

Adolescent AdjustmentDelinquency. Youths answered 15questions about whether they hadengaged in certain behaviors during the past year. The response scaleranged from 1 (never) to 5 (more than 10 times). The questions were aboutshoplifting, being caught by the police for something they had done,vandalizing public or private property, taking money from home, creatinggraffiti, breaking into a building, stealing from someone's pocket or bag,buying or selling stolen goods, stealing a bike, being in a physical fight inpublic, carrying a weapon, stealing a car, stealing a moped or amotorcycle,using marijuana or hashish, and using other drugs. Parents answered thesame questions about what their youths had done, according to theirknowledge. The correlation between parent- and youth-reported delin-quency was .43 (df = 983).School problems. Ratings from three different informants were used.The youths' and their parents' judgments focused on attitudes towardschool; the teachers' judgments included performance in different subjectsand problem behavior in school as w ell. The teachers' judgments correlatedsignificantly with both parents' and youths' judgments, r(695) = .45, p


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370 KERR AND STATTIN.78 (df = 36). Parents answered similar questions about their children (e.g.,"Does your child enjoy sch ool?" "Does your child try to do his or her bestat school?"). The alpha reliability for this scale was .83.Teacher-rated school problems comprised 10 items taken from variousinstruments that the teachers filled out. The items, which were standardized(z scores) and averaged to form the composite measure, were as follows:

How well does the student perform in comparison w ith others in yourclass? What grade did the student receive in Swedish/English/Math-ematics? [3 questions] How often do you see that a student very muchengages in and shows a burning interest in a subject? How would youdescribe the relationship between the student and school? Is [thestudent] concerned with how well he/she does at school or work?

Ratings were made on 7-point scales anchored with never gets in troublein school to always gets in trouble in school; very good at spelling to no tgood at spelling; and very good at math to not good at math. The alphareliability for this scale was .92.

Poor teacher relations. Children answered seven questions about theirrelationships with their teachers, again using 5-point scales. The questionswere as follows:Do you like your teachers? Do you feel bored with your teachers? Doyou think that your teachers are fair with you? Do you think that yourteachers like you as a student? Do you think that your teachersunderstand you? Do you usually say something against your teachers?If you have a problem at school, do you feel as if you could go to yourteachers about it?

The alpha reliability for this scale was .85.Depressed mood. As the measure of depressed mood, a self-reportquestionnaire, the Child Depression Scale from the Center for Epidemio-logical Studies, was used (Roberts, Lewinsohn, & Seeley, 1991; Schoen-bach, Kaplan, Grimson, & Wagner, 1982; Weissman, Sholomskas, Pot-tenger, Prusoff, & Locke, 1977). Children answered 20 questions abouttheir mood during the last week (e.g., "During the last week I have: beenbothered by things I am usually not bothered by; felt that I am not as goodas everybody else; felt depressed and unhappy; felt like I wanted to cry; feltsad"). In the present sample, the alpha reliability for this scale was .88.Low self-esteem. Ten items from the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale(Rosenberg, 1979) were used as the measure of self-esteem:

For the most part, are you satisfied with yourself? Sometimes, do youthink that you are no use to anyone? D o you think that you have m anygood qualities? Are you able to do things as well as others? Do youthink that you have a lot to be proud about? Do you occasionally feelreally incompetent? Do you feel as if you are worth a lot, at least asmuch as everyone else? Do you wish that you could have betteropinions about yourself? For the most part, do you easily feel like afailure? For the most part, do you see yourself positively?The items w ere reversed, when necessary, so that high scores indicated lowself-esteem. The alpha reliability for this scale was .88. The test-retestcorrelation was .78.

Failure expectations. Youths and parents reported on the child's ex-pectations of failure, a construct that is related to self-esteem but notsynonymous with it (Nurmi, 1993; Nurmi, Onatsu, & Haavisto, 1995;Nurmi, Salmela-Aro, & Ruotsalainen, 1994). Youths answered six ques-tions:I do not really have confidence in my own abilities to do well withdifficult tasks; I quickly become uncertain when I am given new tasks;I often think it is not even worth trying when I am confronted with adifficult problem; I think for the most part that I will do well at things,even if they are difficult; I think that difficult problems and assign-

ments are fun; Since I feel that I have a hard time dealing with things,I usually do worse in school than I could have done.Parents answered similar questions about the youths (e.g., "He/she doesn'treally have confidence in his/her own abilities to do well with difficulttasks," "He/she quickly becomes uncertain when given new tasks," "He/she often thinks that it is not even worth trying when confronted withdifficult tasks"). The alpha reliabilities for youths' and parents' reportswere .75 and .84, respectively. The correlation between parents' andyouths' reports was substantial, r(1164) = .55, p < .001.

Deviant friends. The children were asked a num ber of questions aboutthe different peer groups at school. As part of this questionnaire, they listedthe different "groups of teens that hang out together," starting with thegroup to which they themselves belonged (Cairns & Cairns, 1994; Cairns,Gariepy, & Kinderman, 1987; Gest & Cairns, 1989). Then they answeredthe following questions about their own friends. "In the group that youbelong to, how many people (that you know of): often hang out on thestreets in the evening; have had problems with the police at some time?"Their scores on these items represented the number of their close friendswhom the item described.Poor relations with mother or father. Children answered eight ques-tions about their relationships with their mothers. The response optionsranged from 1 (almost never) to 5 (very often). The questions were asfollows:

Do you and your mother quarrel and fight with each other? How oftendo you feel disappointed with your mother? How often do you feelproud of your mother? [reversed], How w ell do you think that you andyour mother understand each other? [reversed], Do you w ish that yourmother was different? Do you accept your mother the way she is?[reversed], Does your mother usually support and encourage you?[reversed], How often do you feel angry or irritated by your mother?The scale had an alpha reliability of .85 and a test-retest correlation of .69.The same questions were asked about fathers. That scale had an alphareliability of .82 and a test-retest correlation of .82.

Feeling controlled. The children reported on how controlled by theirparents they felt. The items included the following:Do you think that you get enough freedom from your parents to dowhat you want in your free time? [reversed] Do you feel that yourparents demand to know everything? Do you feel as though yourparents control everything in your life? Do you feel as though youcan't keep anything to yourself because your parents want to knoweverything? Do you think that your parents interfere too much in yourfree time activities?

The response options ranged from 1 (yes, always) to 5 (no, never). Th ealpha reliability for this scale was .82, and the test-retest correlationwas .65.Procedure

The adolescents filled out the questionnaires during regular schoolhours, and they were assured of the confidentiality of their answers. Theywere informed that their parents would answer similar questions. Researchassistants administered the questionnaires. Teachers were not present.Parents responded by filling out and mailing in a questionnaire. They wereinformed that their children had answered similar questions at school.Analyses

Correlational and multiple regression strategies were used to show therelations between adolescent adjustment measures on the one hand and"monitoring" and three sources of parents' knowledge on the other. Be-


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WHAT PARENTS KNOW 371Table 2Mean Scores and Standard Deviations as a Function of Gender for All Measures

Item

Parental "monitoring"CRPRChild disclosureCRPRParental solicitationCRPRParental controlCRPR

DelinquencyCRPRSchool problemsCRPRTRPoor teacher relations: CR

Depressive symptoms: CRLow self-esteem: CRFailure expectationsCRPR

Hang out on streets: CRCaught by police: CR

With mother: CRWith father: CR

CR

MBoys

SDGirls

M SDParents' knowledge and sources of knowledge

- 0 . 0 9- 0 . 0 6-0 .12-0 .13- 0 . 1 1- 0 . 0 3-0 .13- 0 . 0 6

0.140.070.070.150.160.03

-0 .13-0 .13- 0 . 0 70.06

1.730.92

0.700.670.700.760.670.690.720.74

0.070.060.110.110.090.020.110.07

External maladjustment0.790.540.760.710.720.74

-0 .11- 0 . 0 6- 0 . 0 5-0 .17-0 .17- 0 . 0 2

Internal maladjustment0.480.650.640.74

0.110.110.07- 0 . 0 5

Friends' deviance2.121.59

Poor parent-child- 0 . 0 9-0 .12

0.05

0.650.69

1.50.48relationships

0.080.08Feeling controlled

0.65 -0 .0 4

0.650.610.740.700.670.650.720.66

0.330.330.730.760.750.70

0.600.700.690.75

2.171.04

0.770.76

0.75

t

- 4 . 2 * *- 3 . 2 *-5 .4**- 5 . 3 * *- 5 . 3 * *- 1 . 2-5 .6**- 3 . 0 *

7.0**4.7**3.0*3.7**6.3**1.3

-7 .6**- 5 . 9 * *- 3 . 6 * *2.3

1.54.3**

- 4 . 1 * *- 4 . 8 * *

2.3

df

117110041158100611631058114897 3

70 279011649898301165

1168109811521051

773492

11481117

1166Note. The term "monitoring" refers to parental knowledge measures. Means are standardized (z) scores, exceptfor friends' measures, which indicate the number of friends. CR = children's reports; PR = parents' reports;TR = teachers' reports.* p < . 0 1 . * * p < . 0 0 1 .

cause many relations are reported and the sample size is large, a signifi-cance cutoff of .01 was used. In addition, for consistency and ease ofinterpreting the tables, higher scores on the adjustment variables alwaysmean poorer adjustment.Results

Gender DifferencesGender is included to show that the basic relations betweenparents' kn owledge, sources of knowledge, and adolescent adjust-ment are similar for boys and girls. This issue arises because

gender differences in some aspects of parents' communication andcontrol, particularly of younger children, appear in the literature(e.g., Leaper, Anderson, & Sanders, 1998; Lytton & Rornney,1991; Pomerantz & Ruble, 1998). As reported in Table 2, genderdifferences also appeared for many measures used here. Boysscored higher on externalizing problems (delinquency, schoolproblems) and peer deviance, and girls scored higher on internal-izing problems (depressive symptoms, low self-esteem). Girls alsoscored higher on almost all measures of parents' knowledge andsources of knowledge, and they also reported poorer relationshipswith their parents than boys did. Despite these mean-level differ-


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372 KERR AND STATTINTable 3Bivariate Correlations Between Parental Knowledge ("Monitoring") andAdolescent Adjustment Measures

MeasureExternal maladjustmentDelinquencyPRSchool problemsPRTRPoor teacher relationsInternal maladjustmentDepressed moodLow self-esteemFailure expectationsPRFriends' characteristicsHang out on streetsHave been caught by policeFamily discord

Bad mother relationsBad father relations

Child-reported "monitoring"Total

- . 4 5 * *- . 2 4 * *- . 4 6 * *- . 2 8 * *- . 2 8 * *- . 4 8 * *- . 2 4 * *- . 2 4 * *- . 2 5 * *- . 1 7 * *- . 2 9 * *- . 2 8 * *- . 4 8 * *- . 4 1 * *

Boys

- . 4 4 * *- . 2 6 * *- . 4 7 * *- . 2 8 * *- . 2 7 * *- . 4 9 * *- . 2 6 * *- . 2 7 * *- . 1 4 *- .1 4 *- . 2 5 * *- . 2 4 * *- . 4 7 * *- . 4 2 * *

Girls

- . 5 2 * *- . 1 9 * *- . 4 4 * *- . 2 7 * *- . 2 5 * *- . 4 6 * *- . 2 9 * *- . 2 7 * *- . 1 8 * *- . 1 8 * *- . 3 1 * *- . 3 1 * *- . 5 2 * *- . 4 5 * *

Parent-reported "monitoring"Total

- . 3 0 * *- . 3 9 * *- . 2 8 * *- . 4 1 * *- . 3 2 * *- . 3 0 * *- . 1 5 * *- . 1 8 * *- . 2 2 * *- . 3 3 * *- . 2 0 * *- . 2 2 * *- . 2 8 * *- . 2 3 * *

Boys

- . 3 0 * *_ 4 4 * *- . 3 4 * *- . 4 4 * *- . 3 6 * *- . 3 4 * *- . 1 8 * *- . 1 9 * *- . 2 4 * *- . 3 3 * *- . 1 9 *- . 2 4 * *- . 3 2 * *- . 2 8 * *

Girls

- . 2 8 * *- . 3 3 * *- . 2 0 * *- . 3 6 * *- . 2 8 * *- . 2 5 * *- . 1 9 * *- . 2 1 *- . 2 2 * *- . 3 1 * *- . 2 0 * *- . 1 8 * *- . 2 9 * *- . 2 2 * *

Note. All adjustment measures are adolescents' self-reports unless otherwise indicated. PR = parents' reports;TR = teachers' reports.* p < . 0 1 . * * p < . 0 0 1 .

ences, however, the pattern of findings is the same for bothgenders. Because of space constraints, separate results for boysand girls are presented only for some key results.Relations Between Parents' Knowledge and

Adjustment, Broadly DefinedFirst, it is necessary to establish that "monitoring" is linked togood adjustment, broadly defined. Table 3 shows that, as in pre-vious studies, "monitoring" correlates negatively with poor exter-nal adjustment and having undesirable friends. Table 3 extendsprevious "monitoring" findings by showing that "monitoring" cor-relates with internal adjustment and relationships with parents. It isimportant to note that for many of these relations, the data are from

Table 4Intercorrelations Among "Monitoring " (Parents' Knowledge)and Three Sources of Knowledge

1.2.3.4.

MeasureChild disclosureParental solicitationParental controlParental "monitoring"

1.41**(970).33**(1156).28**(1148).70**(1156)

2.36**(1060).33**(977).37**(1146).23**(1161)

3.17**(1049).22**(1044).29**(967).32**(1146)

4.64**(1063).46**(1066).26**(1047).43**(986)

Note. Degrees of freedom are in parentheses. Parents' reports are aboveand children's reports are below the diagonal. Correlations between par-ents' and children's reports on the diagonal are in boldface.**p < .001.

two different informants (i.e., those marked PR [parents' reports]or TR [teachers' reports] in the left portion of the table and allexcept those marked PR in the right portion). These correlationsare somewhat lower in magnitude, but the same relations appear.Table 3 also shows that the same conclusionhigher levels of"monitoring" are linked with better adjustment, broadly definedholds for both boys and g irls. This is true despite the fact that thereare mean-level differences between boys and girls on many ofthese measures. Regardless of rater, the particular form of adjust-ment, or the child's gender, then, higher levels of parental knowl-edge ("monitoring") are related to better adjustment.

Do Tracking and Surveillance Provide Knowledge?To examine how parents' efforts to gain information are relatedto knowledge, we computed correlations between "monitoring"and the sources of knowledge; these correlations appear in Table 4.Intercorrelations among parent-rated measures are above the diag-onal, intercorrelations among child-rated measures are below thediagonal, and correlations between parent- and child-reported mea-sures are on the diagonal. For both parents' and children's reports,parent-initiated efforts were less strongly linked to "monitoring"than was child disclosure (Z = 12.82, p < .001, for parentalcontrol vs. child disclosure, children's ratings; Z = 6.01, p < .001,for parental solicitation vs. child disclosure, parents' ratings).These findings replicated those in our other study (Stattin & Kerr,in press). For children's ratings, parental solicitation and controldid not differ significantly in their correlations with "monitoring"(Z = 2.35, p > .01). For parents' ratings, parental solicitationcorrelated more highly with "monitoring" than parental control did(Z = 5.30, p < .001). It should be noted that the same pattern ofrelations was found when parent-reported "monitoring" was cor-


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WHAT PARENTS KNOW 373related with child-reported sources, r(977) = .35, p < .001,K980) = .13, p < .001, and K970) = .12, p < .001, for childdisclosure, parental solicitation, and parental control, respectively,and when child-reported "monitoring" was correlated with parent-reported sources, r(919) = .36, p < .001, r(983) = .14, p < .001,and H963) = .09, p < .01, for child disclosure, parental solicita-tion, and parental control, respectively. Judging from these corre-lations, then, parent-initiated tracking and surveillance efforts areless important than the child's free, willing disclosure in providinginformation.

Do Tracking and Surveillance Promote GoodAdolescent Adjustment?

Are parents' efforts directly related to adjustment, broadly de-fined? To answer this, we looked at correlations between the threesources of information and the adjustment measures. As shown inTable 5, there are some instances in which parental control orsolicitation are significantly correlated with better adolescent ad-justment. However, for nearly every measure of adjustment, par-ents ' control and solicitation are significantly less strongly corre-lated with adjustment than child disclosure is. Higher child-ratedparental control and/or solicitation tend to be related to less delin-quency, fewer school problems, and better relations with teachers,but child disclosure is more strongly linked to these measures.Child disclosure is also the strongest link to fewer depressivesymptoms, better self-esteem, and better relations with both par-ents, especially mothers. Even for having fewer deviant friends,where parents' efforts are thought to be so beneficial, child dis-closure is clearly the strongest link. There is little evidence thatparents' tracking and surveillance efforts keep adolescents awayfrom deviant peers, even when parents' own reports of their

solicitation and control efforts are used (see the right portion ofTable 5).However, because these information sources are all correlatedwith each other, bivariate correlations are not good estimates oftheir unique relations to adjustment. To uncover their uniquecontributions, we entered the three information sources simulta-neously into regression models predicting each of the adjustmentmeasures. These results, reported separately for girls and boys,appear in Table 6. Across adjustment measures, gender, and in-formant, control and solicitation made relatively unimportantunique contributions to the prediction of adjustment. Furthermore,they were sometimes significantly linked to poorer, rather thanbetter, adjustment. Child disclosure, in contrast, was always linkedto better adjustment, and all but one of these relations weresignificant. There is no direct evidence, then, to link parents'tracking efforts with good adolescent adjustment in a broad, gen-eral way.Do Tracking and Surveillance Explain Why "Monitoring"

Is Linked to Adjustment?The final step in testing the assumptions that have been madeabout why "monitoring" is related to good adjustment is to deter-mine whether parents' tracking and surveillance efforts provide agood explanation for the links between "monitoring" and adjust-ment, as the monitoring literature claims. Following a regressionprocedure used by Frame and Eccles (1998), we predicted eachadjustment measure from "monitoring" on a first step and from"monitoring" and one of the sources of information on a secondstep. Of interest was whether controlling for a particular source ofinformation would significantly reduce the relation between "mon-itoring" and adjustment (i.e., move the slope out of the 95%

Table 5Bivariate C orrelations Linking Three Sources of Parental Information W ith Adolescent Adjustment

MeasureExternal maladjustmentDelinquencyPRSchool problemsPRTRPoor teacher relationsInternal maladjustment

Depressed moodLow self-esteemFailure expectationsPRDeviant friendsHang out on streetsHave been caught by policeFamily discordBad mother relationsBad father relations

Childdisclosure

- . 3 7 * *- . 1 7 * *- . 4 8 * *- . 3 1 * *- . 3 3 * *- . 4 7 * *- . 2 7 * *- . 3 1 * *- . 3 1 * *- . 2 4 * *- . 2 8 * *- . 2 5 * *- . 5 2 * *- . 3 9 * *

Child-reportedParentalsolicitation

.00- . 0 1- . 1 7 * *- . 0 8 *- . 1 8 * *- . 1 3 * *- . 0 3- . 1 1 * *- . 1 4 * *- . 1 1 *- . 0 1- . 0 0- . 1 2 * *- . 1 0 *

sourcesParentalcontrol

- . 1 2 * *- . 0 8 *- . 1 8 * *- . 0 9 *- . 1 3 * *- . 1 8 * *- . 0 3- . 0 2- . 0 2- . 0 6- . 0 5- . 0 8- . 0 4- . 1 1 * *

Z a

6.5**1.98.2**5.0**3.2**7.9**6.0**5.0**4.3**3.0*4.7**3.4**

10.9**7.1**

Childdisclosure

- . 2 4 * *- . 3 2 * *- . 2 5 * *- . 3 9 * *- . 2 5 * *- . 2 7 * *- . 0 9 *- . 1 3 * *- . 1 5 * *- . 3 2 * *- . 2 1 * *- . 2 1 * *- . 2 8 * *- . 2 1 * *

Parent-reportedParentalsolicitation

.04- . 1 1 * *- . 0 4- . 1 3 * *- . 1 2 *- . 0 7- . 0 8 *- . 0 7- . 1 1 *- . 1 3 * *- . 0 4- . 0 3- . 1 1 *- .1 0 *

sourcesParentalcontrol

- . 0 5- . 1 3 * *- . 0 2- . 0 8- . 0 6- . 0 1- . 0 1- . 0 4- . 0 0- . 0 0- . 0 7- . 0 4- . 0 4- . 0 5

Z a

4.3**4.7**4.8**6.2**2.6*4.6**0.21.31.04.7**2.6*3.1*3.9**2.5

Note. All adjustment measures are adolescents' self-reports unless otherwise indicated. PR = parents' reports; TR = teachers' reports.a Difference between child disclosure and the next largest correlation (Fisher's R to Z).* />< .01 . * * / > < . 0 0 1 .


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374 KERR AND STATTINTab le 6Beta Slopes From Multiple Regression Models Predicting Adjustment From Three Sources of Parental Information

Measure

External maladjustmentDelinquencyPRSchool problemsPRTRPoor teacher relationsInternal maladjustmentDepressed moodLow self-esteemFailure expectationsPRDeviant friendsHang out on streetsHave been caught by policeFamily discordPoor mother relationsPoor father relations

External maladjustmentDelinquencyPRSchool problemsPRTRPoor teacher relationsInternal maladjustmentDepressed moodLow self-esteemFailure expectationsPRDeviant friendsHang out on streetsHave been caught by policeFamily discordPoor mother relationsPoor father relations

Childdisclosure

- . 3 8 * *- . 1 4 *- . 4 7 * *- . 3 5 * *- . 3 3 * *- . 4 8 * *- . 2 8 * *- . 3 4 * *- . 3 2 * *- . 2 9 * *- . 2 4 * *- . 3 1 * *- . 5 3 * *- . 4 2 * *

- . 2 2 * *- . 2 4 * *- . 2 9 * *- . 3 2 * *- . 2 4 * *- . 2 9 * *- . 1 0- . 1 7 *- . 1 3 *- . 2 8 * *- . 2 5 * *- . 1 8 *- . 3 9 * *- . 2 8 * *

GirlsParentalsolicitatior

.17*.02.01.01- . 1 1.06- . 0 1- . 0 6- . 1 1 *- . 0 7

.13.16- . 0 4- . 0 0

.05- . 0 4.10- . 0 4- . 0 6.08

.00.04- .1 2 *- . 0 7

.02.02

.07.04

Parentali controlChild-reported

- . 0 5- . 0 5- . 0 4.00.02- . 0 7.10.14*.08.04

- . 0 0.04.09.01

Parent-reported- . 0 1- . 0 9- . 0 2- . 0 0.10.00- . 0 0- . 1 0.12*.04

.04- . 0 1

.11.02

ModelRsources

.36.15.48.35.37.49

.27.34.35.31

.22.28

.51.42sources

.21.29.27.33.26.27

.09.20.21.30

.24.18

.37.27

Childdisclosure

- . 5 2 * *- . 2 0 * *- . 4 8 * *- . 2 6 * *- . 2 1 * *- . 4 6 * *- . 3 8 * *- . 3 5 * *- . 3 5 * *- . 1 7 *- . 3 2 * *- . 3 3 * *- . 6 0 * *- . 4 3 * *

- . 2 5 * *- . 3 4 * *- . 2 2 * *- . 4 3 * *- .1 9 *- . 2 6 * *- . 1 5 *- . 1 5 *- . 2 0 * *- . 3 3 * *- . 1 4 *- . 2 3 * *- . 2 8 * *- . 1 7 * *

BoysParentalsolicitation

.22**.15*.01.10.01.04

.03- . 0 5- . 0 4.02

.13*.12

.03.03

.05.05.02.06.02- . 0 1- . 0 8- . 0 5.05.02

.07.08- . 0 8- . 0 9

Parentalcontrol

- . 0 5- . 0 4- . 0 6- . 0 4.04- . 0 7.06.01.07- . 0 2

- . 0 6- . 0 5.08- . 0 7

.03- . 0 8.06- . 0 3- . 1 0.06

.05.04- . 0 7.06- . 0 5- . 0 6

.07- . 0 5

ModelR

.51.20.49.25.24.46

.37.37.34.17

.32.33

.59.44

.24.34.21.41.22.26

.19.17.21.33

.14.23

.31.23Note. All adjustment measures are adolescents' self-reports unless otherwise indicated. PR*p < .01. **p < .001. parents' reports; TR = teachers' reports.

confidence interval). As shown in Table 7, there is no singleinstance in which controlling for parental solicitation or parentalcontrol creates a significant change in a relation between "moni-toring" and adjustment. In contrast, there are few instances inwhich controlling for child disclosure does not significantlychange the "monitoring" slope. In some cases, "monitoring" be-comes nonsignificant when child disclosure is added.

Why Does Parental Control Not Work?Parental control, defined in various ways, has been widelyconsidered a vital strategy for parents of adolescents. Consider theitems that make up the present parental control measurerequir-ing children to get permission to stay out late on weekday eve-

nings, to tell of their Saturday night plans in ad vance, to tell wherethey have been in the evening and with whom, and, if they havebeen out past curfew, to explain why. These sound like reasonablestrategies. However, the correlations between control and adjust-ment are less than impressive, as seen in Table 5. How could suchstrategies not be related to good adolescent adjustment?

We argue that this is because higher levels of parental controlare related to greater feelings of being controlled on the part ofadolescents, and feelings of being controlled are linked to poorer,not better, adjustment. The present data bear this out. The higherthe level of parental control that the children reported, the morethey tended to feel controlled, r( \ 148) = .34, p < .001. This is alsosomewhat true for parents' reports of control, r(959) = .14, p


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\ WHAT PARENTS KNOW 375Table 7Tests of Sources of Parental Information as Explanations of the Relations Between "Monitoring" and Adolescent Adjustment

Measure

External maladjustmentDelinquencyDelinquency (PR)School problemsPRTRPoor teacher relationsInternal maladjustmentDepressed moodLow self-esteemFailure expectationsPRDeviant friendsHang out on streetsBeen caught by policeFamily discordBad mother relationsBad father relations

External maladjustmentDelinquencyPRSchool problemsPRTRPoor teacher relationsInternal maladjustmentDepressed moodLow self-esteemFailure expectationsPRDeviant friendsHang out on streetsBeen caught by policeFamily discordBad mother relationsBad father relations

Step 1

B

- . 3 8- . 1 5- . 5 1- . 3 2- . 3 2- . 5 1- . 2 0- . 2 5- . 2 5- . 1 8- . 9 5- . 5 6- . 5 1- . 4 5

- . 2 6- . 2 7- . 3 3- . 4 9- 3 7- . 3 5- . 1 3- . 1 9- . 2 2- . 3 8- . 7 1- . 4 6- . 3 1- . 2 6

"monitoring" ("M")

CI "M "Child-reported "

- . 4 3 t o - . 3 4- . 1 8 t o - . 1 1- . 5 7 t o - . 4 5- . 3 9 t o - . 2 5- . 4 0 t o - . 2 5- . 5 7 t o - . 4 6- . 2 4 t o - . 1 5- . 3 1 t o - . 1 9- . 3 0 t o - . 1 9- . 2 5 t o - . 1 2- 1 . 2 t o - . 7 3- . 7 0 t o - . 4 2- . 5 7 t o - . 4 6- . 5 1 t o - . 3 9

- . 3 2- . 1 5- . 2 7- . 1 5- . 1 3- . 3 1- . 0 7- . 0 5- . 0 6.01- . 6 2- . 4 1- . 2 4- . 3 0

Step 2 BChilddisclosure

monitoring" and sources- . 0 8.00- . 3 2- . 2 3- . 2 6- . 2 6- . 1 6- . 2 6- . 2 5- . 2 6- . 4 2- . 2 1- . 3 7- . 2 1

Parent-reported "monitoring" and sources- . 3 1 t o - . 2 1- . 3 1 t o - . 2 3- . 4 0 t o - . 2 6- . 5 6 t o - . 4 3- . 4 5 t o - . 2 9- . 4 1 t o - . 2 8- . 1 8 t o - . 0 7- . 2 6 t o - . 1 2- . 2 9 t o - . 1 6- . 4 5 t o - . 3 1- . 9 7 t o - . 4 5- . 6 2 t o - . 3 1- . 3 8 t o - . 2 5- . 3 4 t o - . 1 9

- . 2 1- . 2 2- . 2 3- . 3 3- J O- . 2 5- . 1 2- . 1 6- . 2 0- . 2 4- . 4 2- . 3 3- . 1 9- . 1 9

- . 0 7.07- . 1 3- . 2 3- . 0 9- . 1 3- . 0 0- . 0 4- . 0 3- . 1 9- . 3 8- . 1 8- . 1 7- . 1 1

"M "

- . 4 2- . 1 5- . 4 9-31- . 2 9- . 5 0- . 2 1- . 2 4- . 2 3- . 1 7- 1 . 0- . 5 9- . 5 1- . 4 5

- . 2 9- . 2 9- . 3 6- . 5 1- . 3 8- . 3 7- . 1 2- . 2 0- . 2 2- . 3 8- . 7 6- . 5 2- . 3 2- . 2 6

Step 2 BParentalsolicitation

.10.03- . 0 8- . 0 2- . 1 3- . 0 2

.03- . 0 5- . 0 9- . 0 8

.31.15

.01.01

.07.04.09.05.06.06

.03- . 0 0- . 0 3

.00

.18.14- . 0 0- . 0 2

"M "

- . 3 9- . 1 4- . 5 0- . 3 2- . 3 0- . 5 0- . 2 3- . 2 7- . 2 7- . 1 8- . 9 9- . 5 6- . 5 6- . 4 6

- . 2 7- . 2 7- . 3 4- . 5 0- . 3 6- . 3 6- . 1 4- . 1 9- . 2 4- . 4 0- . 7 0- . 4 9- . 3 6- . 2 7

Step 2 BParentalcontrol

.01- . 0 0- . 0 4- . 0 0.04- . 0 3

.09.07.06- . 0 1- . 1 4.00

.12

.03- . 0 2.06.03.02.07

.04.00.06.08- . 0 7.04

.12- . 0 1Note. The term "monitoring" ("M") refers to parental knowledge measures. All adjustment measures are adolescents' self-reports unless otherwiseindicated. There was a 95% confidence interval (CI) for the unstandardized slope (B). PR = parent rated; TR = teacher rated. For numbers in boldface,p < .01.

.001. Feeling controlled, in turn, is related to every measure ofpoor adjustment (rs range from . 14 for having friends who hangout on the streets in the evening to .43 for bad mother relations, allps < .001). In regression terms, one cannot get an unbiasedestimate of the relations between parental control and adolescentadjustment without adjusting for feeling controlled, which is cor-related with both the predictor and the criterion measures. Therelations between parental control and each of the adjustmentmeasures after adjusting for the child's feelings of being controlledare shown in Table 8. The beta slopes for feeling controlled,entered simultaneously, are also included in the table.

When children's reports of parental control are considered, afteradjusting for the fact that feeling controlled is increasing alongwith parental control efforts, these reasonable-sounding parental

control strategies correspond to better adjustment on all measuresexcept depression. In contrast, feeling controlled is independentlylinked to poor adjustment on every measure. (There are no signif-icant interactions between parental control and feeling controlledin any of these models.) For parents' reports of control, most of thelinks to adolescent adjustment remain nonsignificant, even afteradjusting for feeling controlled.

It should be noted that a more realistic view would account forthe fact that parental control correlates with child disclosure andparental solicitation, as well as with feeling controlled. When thesecovariates are added, the only significant relations between paren-tal control and adjustment are for the external adjustment mea-sures, and, although statistically significant, they are all low inmag nitude, j3 = -.0&,p = . 01 ,( 3 = - . 1 0 , p < .01, a nd /3 = - . 1 1 ,


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376 KERR AND STATTINTable 8Beta Slopes From Multiple Regression Models Predicting Adjustment From Parental Controland Children's Feelings of Being Controlled (Entered Simultaneously)

MeasureExternal maladjustmentDelinquencyPRSchool problemsPRTRPoor teacher relationsInternal maladjustmentDepressed moodLow self-esteemFailure expectationsPRDeviant friendsHang out on streetsHave been caught by policeFamily discordPoor mother relationsPoor father relations

ChildParentalcontrol

- . 2 0 * *- . 1 2 * *- . 2 8 * *- . 1 6 * *- . 1 9 * *- . 2 8 * *- . 0 4- .1 0 *- .1 0 *- . 1 2 * *- . 1 1 *- . 1 5 * *- . 2 0 * *- . 2 1 * *

reportedFeelingcontrolled

.22**.11*.30**.20**.19**.31**

.21**.25**22**

.18**

.18**.21**

.50**.30**

ParentParentalcontrol

- . 0 7- . 1 2 * *- . 0 5- . 1 1 * *- . 0 7- . 0 4- . 1 2- . 0 7- . 0 3- . 0 2- . 0 9- . 0 6- . 0 3- . 0 8 *

reportedFeelingcontrolled

.15**.08*.21**

.16**.15**.21**

.21**.25**.20**

.13**

.14**

.15**

.45**.25**Note. All adjustment measures are adolescents' self-reports unless otherwise indicated. PR = parents' reports;TR = teachers' reports.* p < .01. **p < .001.

p < .001, for child-reported delinquency, school problems, andpoor teacher relations, respectively. In the broader picture, then,parental control is a relatively poor predictor, even after control-ling for feeling controlled.

DiscussionStudies of parental "monitoring" have shown repeatedly thatchildren's and parents' judgments of how much parents knowabout their adolescents' daily activities are related to measures ofgood external adjustment and fewer deviant friends. This studyreplicated those findings and extended them by showing that bothparents' and children's estimates of how much parents know abouttheir adolescents' daily activities were also related to measures ofinternal adjustment and relationships with parents. How shouldfindings such as these be understood? Studies in the monitoringliterature usually interpret them as evidence that parental trackingand surveillance strategies are effective in preventing adolescentsfrom becoming involved with deviant peers and in delinquentbehavior, the assumption being that if parents have knowledge, itis because they took active steps to get it. This study tested thatinterpretation and found no evidence for it.As in our other recent study (Stattin & Kerr, in press), thepresent study demonstrated that from parents' and children'spoints of view, child disclosure of information provided a betterexplanation than tracking and surveillance measures (parental so-licitation and control) of how parents get knowledge. The presentstudy extends the findings of our other study (Stattin & Kerr, inpress) by showing that child disclosure of information was morestrongly linked to adjustment than were measures of parents'tracking efforts, and child disclosure provided a better explanation

than tracking and surveillance of why parental knowledge is linkedto adjustment. These results held for parents' and children's judg-ments of what parents knew and how they knew it, in most caseseven when parents' judgments of these variables were comparedwith children's judgments of adjustment. The use of parents' andchildren's views of parent-child interactions was a particularstrength of the study. Although others have argued that children'sviews provide the most important or accurate glimpse into familyinteractions (Glasgow, Dornbusch, Troyer, Steinberg, & Ritter,1997; Niemi, 1974), and although parents' and children's viewssometimes show little consensus (W. A. Collins, 1990; Smetana,1988), this study included both and found that the same conclu-sions could be drawn from either informants' reports or from acombination of the two.

From these results, it cannot be concluded that, in the normalsocialization process, parental tracking and surveillance preventschildren from interacting with deviant peers who draw them intodelinquency, as scholars often have assumed (Chassin et al., 1993;Dishion et al., 1995; Fletcher et al., 1995; Snyder & Patterson,1987). On the contrary, with child disclosure and parental controlheld constant, one tracking measure, parental solicitation, wassomewhat associated with a greater likelihood of delinquency and,for boys, with having deviant friends. But these results should notbe overinterpreted because of their low strengths and because wedo not know the direction of causality. For the strongest of theserelationsthe links between child-reported parental solicitationand child-reported delinquencysolicitation might have been areactive strategy used by parents who already knew that theirchildren were breaking the law. Or, alternatively, the childrenmight have perceived their parents' solicitation efforts as overly


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WHAT PARENTS KNOW 377controlling and intrusive and reacted by turning to a delinquentpeer culture that their parents could not penetrate or control.

This study suggests further that controlling adolescents' free-dom to come and go as they please is a questionable strategy forkeeping abreast of what they are doing and promoting goodadjustment, broadly defined. This is because with higher levels ofparental control, adolescents had stronger feelings of being con-trolled, which, in turn, were linked with greater depressive symp-toms, poorer self-esteem, and more expectations of failure, just asthe lack of perceived personal control is in adults (Seligman,1991). In fact, feelings of being controlled were related to pooradjustment in a broad, general way. Because feelings of beingcontrolled accompany higher levels of parental control, the prac-tical consideration for parents might be finding a way to controlwithout producing feelings of being controlled. But even withfeeling controlled partialed out, parental control was rather weaklyrelated to adjustment. On the whole, then, there is not much inthese results to recommend parental control as a strategy.

Given the theoretical and practical implications of these conclu-sions, it is important to ask how well these measures reallyrepresent parental tracking and surveillancethat is, do they pro-vide a fair test of parents' tracking efforts? In our view, parentsmight keep track of their children's whereabouts and activities ina variety of ways: by requiring the children (a) to describe wherethey intend to go and with whom; (b) to get permission beforegoing out, both on school nights and on weekends; and (c) if theyviolate curfew, to explain where they have been, what they havebeen doing, and with whom. Parents might also attend to and tracktheir children's whereabouts and activities by regularly askingthem about their school and leisure-time experiences, keeping intouch with the parents of their children's friends so that they canbe used as a source of information and asking their children'sfriends how they think and feel about various issues in order tounderstand what influences their children are encountering. Allthese were included in our measures of parental solicitation andcontrol, and, although there might be other means of trackinga child's whereabouts and activities, we argue that these offer afairly comprehensive coverage of what parents normally do ona day-to-day basis to keep track of what their children are doing.

Even though child disclosure and "monitoring" were highlycorrelated, controlling for child disclosure did not completelyeliminate all the relations between "monitoring" and adjustment,particularly for delinquency. One possible explanation for this isthat parents of well-adjusted, nondelinquent youths have sourcesof information about daily activities that were not considered inthis study. Physical presence could be one. Perhaps well-adjustedadolescents do not have to tell their parents where they are andwhat they are doing, and their parents do not have to ask, becausetheir parents are physically therefor example, the parents andchildren are at home together or the parents are driving the chil-dren to their activities or participating in the activities themselves.These adolescents should be well-adjusted and their parents shouldknow what they are doing without having to be told. Or, to focuson the other end of the child disclosure continuum, perhaps ayouth's nondisclosure is not a complete explanation of why par-ents of poorly adjusted or delinquent youths have little knowledgeabout their children's daily activities. Perhaps factors such asparental apathy or neglect combine with the child's secretivenessto determine how little parents know about what poorly adjusted

youths are doing. The important conclusion to be drawn from thepresent results, however, is that parents' tracking and surveillanceefforts, as represented by solicitation and control, provide noexplanation for the links between "monitoring" and adjustment.Child disclosure provides a better explanation, even though it isnot always a complete explanation.These findings have implications for several literatures, espe-

cially the monitoring literature. Monitoring studies have beenwidely cited, and the conclusions that parental tracking and sur-veillance efforts are beneficial have been widely accepted. Thepresent findings call those conclusions into question and suggestthat reexamination is in order. But there are other conclusions thatshould be reexamined, and they are not always obvious, because"monitoring" scales have made their way into other researchwithout being labeled as parental knowledge ("monitoring") mea-sures. A case in point is the recent work distinguishing between"behavioral" and "psychological" control (Barber, 1996; Barber,Olsen, & Shagle, 1994). The argument was that these two types ofcontrol would be differently related to internalizing and external-izing behavior. Psychological control (e.g., guilt induction) shouldcreate internalizing problems, whereas behavioral control (e.g.,curfew rules) should prevent externalizing problems. In one ofthese studies (Barber, 1996), behavioral control was never actuallymeasured. Instead, it was operationalized by a 5-item "monitoring"scale that measured parental knowledge. The "monitoring" mea-sure was, indeed, related to lower externalizing problems, just as ithas been in many "monitoring" studies and as it was in the presentstudy, but it was not a measure of behavioral control, so thehypothesis went untested. In another study (Barber et al., 1994),behavioral control was operationalized two ways: with the "mon-itoring" measure and with two items that measured parental dis-engagement (noncontrol). With disengagement as the measure ofbehavioral control, the results were less clearly supportive of thehypothesis. But, even though they were more construct-valid than"monitoring," the disengagement items were not very good mea-sures of what parents do to control their youths' activities. Con-sequently, this idea, which has been widely embraced, was notwell tested by these studies.

Another literature into which "monitoring" scales have madetheir way without being labeled as parental knowledge ("monitor-ing") measures is the parenting styles literature. The strictness/supervision scale that has been used in a number of influentialstudies (e.g., Glasgow et al., 1997; Lamborn, Mounts, Steinberg, &Dornbusch, 1991; Steinberg, Lamborn, Darling, Mounts, & Dorn-busch, 1994) includes these commonly used "monitoring" items:"How much do your parents REALLY know? Where you go atnight? What you do with your free time? Where you are mostafternoons after school?" "My parents know exactly where I ammost afternoons after school." These parental knowledge measurescompose almost half of the strictness/supervision measure. Theinclusion of these "monitoring" items, because they probablyrepresent child disclosure more than parents' efforts, calls intoquestion the basic assumption that "[p]arenting style is a charac-teristic of the parent (i.e., it is a feature of the child's socialenvironment), independent of characteristics of the developingperson" (Darling & Steinberg, 1993, p. 487). Many parentingstyles studies have been done without using these particular mea-sures, but the present results suggest that we should be moreattentive to what measures have been used and what they mean,


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378 KERR AND STATTINeven for well-established constructs such as authoritativeparenting.These findings confirm that adolescents themselves are activeagents in the process through which parents keep track of whatthey are doing, where they are going, and whom they are with. Infact, they are the primary suppliers of information. It would be amistake to conclude, however, that child disclosure is somethingcompletely separate from anything parents do, because parents'actions probably play a role in a child's willingness to disclose.How parents have reacted to information in the past and howaccepting and warm they are, in general, are likely to influencedisclosure. One could even argue that parents' past solicitationefforts c ould influence child disclosure by encouraging the child todevelop a habit of disclosing. Very young children could begintalking to parents about their daily activities because the parentsask and listen with interest, and this could become habitual, untilthe disclosure is independent of parents' asking. This explanationrequires assumptions that should not be made without investiga-tion, but investigations into the origins of child disclosure arecertainly in order.

There are other possible explanations why some children dis-close more information to their parents than others, and why thosesame children are better adjusted regardless of their parents' con-trol and solicitation strategies. One explanation involves childtemperament. The high-disclosing children might be temperamen-tally prone to communicate freely. They might be the "easy"children (Thomas & Chess, 1977) or those who are highly sociableand have little negative emotionality (Buss, 1989; Buss & Plomin,1984, 1986). These same temperamental predispositions mightalso make them generally better adjusted because of the waypeople react to them and because their behavior is consistent withconventional values and expectations.Another potential causal factor is emotional attachment to thefamily, which has been used in the past to explain why some

children refrain from antisocial behavior (Hirschi, 1969). The ideais that children who are emotionally attached to their parents areunlikely to do anything that would embarrass them, such as com-mitting criminal acts. The parents are "psychologically present"with the children when they face tempting situations. This line ofreasoning has received some empirical support. Measures of emo-tional attachment to the family have been linked to good adjust-ment (Benda & Whiteside, 1995; Sokol-Katz, Dunham, & Zim-merman, 1997).Finally, child disclosure itself might play a causal role in thechild's emotional attachment to the family. A recent meta-analyticreview of the literature on self-disclosure and liking concluded thatthere are three robust effects: (a) People who disclose more areliked by others, (b) people disclose more to those they like, and (c)after people disclose to others, they like those people more thanbefore (N. L. Collins & Miller, 1994). Most self-disclosure studieshave dealt with initial meetings and intimate self-disclosure, but ifthe same general mechanisms apply to family communication,then both parents' and children's disclosure should intensify theemotional attachments within the family.For parents, the important practical question is: What should we

do to prevent problems? P resently, it appears that the less effectivestrategy, and one that has the potential of backfiring, is to try toprevent adolescents from getting into trouble by rigorously con-trolling their activities and associations. Creating a family climate

that fosters good communication and openness on the child's partis clearly important, but the developmental literature does not tellus what factors cause children to share their experiences with theirparents. The literature offers static, unidirectional views of howparental behaviors affect adolescents or of how adolescents per-ceive their parents' behaviors but few insights into the morerealistic, bidirectional processes through which parents and chil-dren constantly shape and reshape each other through their mutualactions and reactions (Lerner, Castellino, Terry, Villarruel, &McKinney, 1995). Child disclosure must be seen as part of atransactional developmental process (Ford & Lerner, 1992; Gott-lieb, 1991; Johnston, 1987; Sameroff, 1983). Clearly our grand-mothers were wrong when they said that children should be seenand not heard. It is not yet known what encourages or inhibitschildren from sharing their daily experiences, but it might turn outthat the most important m onitoring and controlling that parents cando is to monitor their own behavior and control their own wordsand actions that discourage children from being open andcommunicative.

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Received October 14, 1998Revision received December 20, 1999

Accepted December 28, 1999

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