Parental Monitoring: A Reinterpretation

• Published in: Child development Vol. 71; no. 4; pp. 1072 - 1085
• Main Authors: Stattin, Häkan, Kerr, Margaret
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston, USA and Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishers Inc 01.07.2000; Blackwell Publishers; Blackwell; University of Chicago Press for the Society for Research in Child Development, etc; Blackwell Publishing Ltd
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adolescent Behavior; Adolescents; Adult; Adult and adolescent clinical studies; Antisocial behavior; Behavior; Behavior Problems; Biological and medical sciences; Child development; Child neglect; Child Rearing; Childrearing Practices; Children; Criminal solicitation; Delinquency; Disclosure; Female; Foreign Countries; Humans; Juvenile Delinquency - prevention & control; Juvenile Delinquency - psychology; Juvenile Delinquency - statistics & numerical data; Knowledge Level; Male; Medical sciences; Middle Aged; Modeling; Monitoring; Parent Child Relationship; Parent-Child Relations; Parental Supervision; Parenting - psychology; Parenting - trends; Parents; Parents & parenting; Police; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Psykologi; Questionnaires; Regression Analysis; Relationships and Interactions; SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP; Sampling Studies; Self Disclosure; Social Behavior Disorders - prevention & control; Social Behavior Disorders - psychology; Social behavior disorders. Criminal behavior. Delinquency; SOCIAL SCIENCES; Socialization; Socialvetenskap; Studies; Surveillance; Surveys and Questionnaires; Sweden; Theory; Sweden; Human; Social environment; Parental behavior; Surveillance; Social interaction; Juvenile delinquency; Adolescent; Sex; Family environment; Social behavior disorder; Parent child relation
• ISSN: 0009-3920; 1467-8624; 1467-8624
• DOI: 10.1111/1467-8624.00210

Monitoring (tracking and surveillance) of children's behavior is considered an essential parenting skill. Numerous studies show that well-monitored youths are less involved in delinquency and other normbreaking behaviors, and scholars conclude that parents should track their children more carefully. This study questions that conclusion. We point out that monitoring measures typically assess parents' knowledge but not its source, and parents could get knowledge from their children's free disclosure of information as well as their own active surveillance efforts. In our study of 703 14-year-olds in central Sweden and their parents, parental knowledge came mainly from child disclosure, and child disclosure was the source of knowledge that was most closely linked to broad and narrow measures of delinquency (normbreaking and police contact). These results held for both children's and parents' reports, for both sexes, and were independent of whether the children were exhibiting probelm behavior or not. We conclude that tracking and surveillance is not the best prescription for parental behavior and that a new prescription must rest on an understanding of the factors that determine child disclosure.