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PARENTING
PARENTAL MONITORING/AWARENESS OPTIONS DOCUMENTS DOMAIN AND CONSTRUCT DEFINITIONS AND JUSTIFICATIONS
Domain
Parenting
Definition
This study defines parent-child interaction fairly broadly, addressing both proximal aspects of direct parent behavior during interaction with the child or adolescent (e.g., warmth), as well as more distal parenting aspects such as seen in parental monitoring and awareness of child activities. The relationship between parenting traits and skills and child outcomes has been at the heart of psychological thought for as long as the field has existed and has been found to be empirically linked to a wide range of child outcomes (Bornstein, 2002). This is specifically relevant to the current project because seven of the EDCP evaluation projects consider parent-child interactions an important construct to measure and evaluate. Appropriate measures of parenting differ by age of child, and their specific function in conceptual models may also differ, depending on the child’s age (e.g., proximal for younger children, distal for older children). But by assessing conceptual continuities across studies, EDCP may be able to forge a more developmental conception of what constructs within the domain are of the greatest value to understanding particular child outcomes.
Construct
Parental Monitoring/Awareness
Definition
At present there is a discrepancy in the research literature as to whether parental monitoring should be defined in terms of the parent’s active seeking of information about the child, or parent’s actual awareness of the child activities or states (Crouter & Head, 2002). Because of this lack of consensus, we will include measures taking both approaches: active seeking of information about the child and awareness of child activities or states. When possible, scale and item information will be separated based on what is being measured: awareness (e.g., Do you know whom your child is with after school?) or monitoring/tracking (e.g., How often do your parents ask you where you are going after school?).
Global Justification for Inclusion of Construct
Parent-child engagement evolves over the course of child development. Information about the child in infancy and early childhood more often derives from direct engagement. With greater engagement of the older child and adolescent in activities and relationships outside of the home, knowledge about the child increasingly requires obtaining information about experiences that the child has outside of the parent’s immediate presence. Because most of the conceptual work that has been completed for the construct of monitoring/awareness pertains to older children and parents’ ability to seek or obtain information about the child when he/she is not in the parent’s presence, we will use these as a focus in identifying measurement approaches for the present project.
Even within the older age range, there is some divergence in how parental monitoring is defined in the research, with some defining “monitoring” as the process of seeking information about the child and some defining “monitoring” in terms of actual awareness of the child’s whereabouts, companions, activities, and states (Crouter & Head, 2002). We include measures of both active seeking of information and of actual awareness about the child and label the construct accordingly as “monitoring/awareness” rather than simply “monitoring.” Wherever possible, information about scales and items will be separated based on whether the study is tapping awareness (e.g., Do you know whom you child is with after school?) or monitoring (e.g., How often do your parents ask you where you are going after school?).
As children grow older, their activities, interests, and peer groups change a great deal with more of these occurring beyond the immediate supervision of adults (Laird, Pettit, Bates, & Dodge, 2003; Laird, Pettit, Dodge, & Bates, 1998). A more distal form of parenting is needed to allow the adolescent enough space to function independently, yet to permit the parent to remain informed about the various aspects of the child’s life.
In a comprehensive review of the literature, Dishion and McMahon (1998) defined parental monitoring as a set of correlated parenting behaviors that relate to active tracking and attention to the child’s activities and whereabouts. This definition holds monitoring as the parent-driven tracking and surveillance of children. The act of surveillance is sometimes conceptualized as including parental control and rule-setting (Snyder & Patterson, 1987). Parents actively “collect” information from various sources, such as teachers, other parents, and through interactions during their shared activities with the child (Crouter, Helms-Erikson, Updegraff, & McHale, 1999). But as noted by some current researchers, what was often conceived of as the active seeking of information might have, in actuality, been measuring parental knowledge (Crouter & Head, 2002; Kerr & Stattin, 2000; Stattin & Kerr, 2000). That is, the measurement (i.e., knowledge) has not always matched the definition of the construct (i.e., active tracking).
Recent work indicates that parent and child report of children’s activities are often weakly correlated (Crouter & Head, 2002). Further, research suggests that the parent who most actively seeks information about the child may not in fact be the one who is best informed about the child. Recent work suggests that being informed may rest on the child being forthcoming rather than on the parent actively seeking information about the child. The possibility exists that some underlying characteristic of the parent-child relationship may result in the child being forthcoming and the parent remaining informed. In this framework, active seeking of information by a parent beyond a certain extent may be an indicator of problems (for example, risky behavior in the child that alarms the parent and results in greater vigilance or a lack of open and reciprocal communication such that the parent must extract the information from a child who is not forthcoming).
When researchers have considered both child self-disclosure and active elicitation by parents in predicting knowledge of child activities, whereabouts, and companions, child-disclosure was far more predictive of knowledge than parental control or solicitation (Stattin & Kerr, 2000). That is, parental knowledge is most shaped by a willingness of the child to self-disclose, as opposed to the acts of the parent in eliciting the information.
The distinction between elicitation of information by the parent and child self-disclosure appears to be important in predicting child outcomes as well. In the study by Stattin & Kerr (2000), child self-disclosure was the most closely related to delinquency, with those disclosing more showing less delinquency (Stattin & Kerr, 2000). In another study that looked at adolescent adjustment outcomes such as depressed mood, school performance, and deviant peer connection, child tendency to self-disclose explained most or all of the variance in outcomes when considered with parental control and solicitation. Moreover, neither parental control nor solicitation was found to mediate this relationship (Kerr & Stattin, 2000).
The reciprocal nature of parental knowledge and delinquency has also been assessed longitudinally. Laird, Pettit, Bates, and Dodge (2003) found that low levels of parental knowledge in one year predicted increased delinquency the next, and that higher levels of delinquency in one year predicted less parent knowledge the following year. A purely parent-driven model might suggest that parental monitoring and knowledge would increase as delinquency did. That is, a parent taking the initiative to actively seek out information about a child as a practice for enhancing child outcomes would step up tracking when behavior is at its worst, to “right” the direction the child is going in. Perhaps parental information seeking increases only for children who are within a certain range of risk-taking behavior. Delinquency may emerge in a range in which parent information seeking is no longer coordinated with extent of child behavior problems. Interventions aimed at parental monitoring may help to restore the coordination of information seeking and child behavior when within a troubling range. In the existing research, such as the study by Laird and colleagues, given that how parent information was obtained (by child self-disclosure or active seeking of information by the parent) was not assessed, it remains unclear whether it is the fact of parental awareness that is the catalyst for decreasing delinquency, whether children who self-report are simply less likely to become delinquent, or whether it is some characteristic of the parent-child relationship that underlies both monitoring and delinquency (Crouter & Head, 2002; Ladd & Golter, 1988; Stattin & Kerr, 2000).
Monitoring operationalized in terms of knowledge or awareness has been linked to a wide array of adolescent outcomes. Parental awareness has repeatedly been found to be related to lower levels of conduct problems and delinquency (Dishion & McMahon, 1998; Frick, Christian, & Wooton, 1999). The mechanisms (or even direction of effects) are not entirely clear, but lack of awareness is often associated with deviant peer group association(Dishion, Capaldi, Spracklen, & Li, 1995), as well as susceptibility to antisocial peer pressure within the peer group (Curtner-Smith & MacKinnon-Lewis, 1994). Dishion, Patterson, Stoolmiller, and Skinner (1991) noted that the primary mechanism between parental monitoring and later delinquency outcomes might well be through the relationship of monitoring to peer group selection. Awareness has also been shown to be moderated by neighborhood quality, with those in low safety neighborhoods showing a larger effect of parental awareness on delinquency (Pettit, Bates, Dodge, & Meece, 1999). Similarly, parental awareness has been associated with low levels of other risk-taking behaviors, such as substance use (Mott, Crowe, Richardson, & Flay, 1999) and sexual activity (Meshke & Silbereisen, 1997; Romer et al., 1994). School achievement has also been found to be related to parental knowledge, though not always in the expected direction. For instance, although Crouter, MacDermid, McHale, and Perry-Jenkins (1990) found that boys of parents with low knowledge of their activities performed less well in school, Otto and Atkinson (1997) found that monitoring of homework was related to worse grades, again raising the question of the directionality of the relationship.
Beyond child outcomes, parental awareness has been associated with a wide range of contextual factors such as poverty, where greater poverty has been related to less awareness (Pagani, Boulerice, Vitaro, & Tremblay, 1999; Pettit, Laird, Dodge, Bates, & Criss, 2001). Parental work demands have also been linked to parental knowledge, but this has varied by the gender of the parent, with mothers showing fairly constant knowledge despite hours worked, but fathers showing increases and decreases in knowledge relative to the hours worked by the mother (i.e., more maternal working is associated with more paternal knowledge while less maternal working is associated with less paternal knowledge; Crouter & Head, 2002; Crouter & McHale, 1993). Other parental characteristics, such as marital status have also been found to be related to parental knowledge, with single-parenthood associated with less knowledge (Pettit et al., 2001).
Given the issues raised by Stattin and Kerr (2000) and Crouter and Head (2002), studies should be specific about the nature of the construct that they are trying to measure (i.e., awareness vs. tracking and surveillance).
References
Bornstein, M. C. (2002). Handbook of Parenting (Vol. I). Mawah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Publishing.
Crouter, A. C., & Head, M. R. (2002). Parent monitoring and knowledge of children: Second Edition, Handbook of Parenting (Vol. 3, pp. 461–483). Mawah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Publishing.
Crouter, A. C., Helms-Erikson, H., Updegraff, K., & McHale, S. M. (1999). Conditions underlying parents’ knowledge about children’s daily lives in middle-school: Between- and within family comparisons. Child Development, 70, 246–259.
Crouter, A. C., MacDermid, S. M., McHale, S. M., & Perry-Jenkins, M. (1990). Parent monitoring and perceptions of children’s school performance and conduct in dual- and single earner families. Developmental Psychology, 26, 649-657.
Crouter, A. C., & McHale, S. M. (1993). Temporal rhythms of family life: Seasonal variation in the relation between parental work and family processes. Developmental Psychology, 29, 198–205.
Curtner-Smith, M. E., & MacKinnon-Lewis, C. E. (1994). Family processes effects on adolescent males’ susceptibility to antisocial peer pressure. Family Relations, 43, 462–468.
Dishion, T. J., Capaldi, D., Spracklen, K. M., & Li, F. (1995). Peer ecology of male adolescent drug use. Development and Psychopathology, 7, 803-824.
Dishion, T. J., & McMahon, R. J. (1998). Parent monitoring and the prevention of child and adolescent problem behavior work and: A conceptual and clinical formulation. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 1, 61–75.
Dishion, T. J., Patterson, G. R., Stoolmiller, M., & Skinner, M. L. (1991). Family, school, and behavioral antecedents to early adolescent involvement with antisocial peers. Developmental Psychology, 27, 172-180.
Frick, P. J., Christian, R. E., & Wooton, J. M. (1999). Age trends in associations between parenting practices and conduct problems. Behavior Modification, 23, 106–128.
Kerr, M., & Stattin, H. (2000). What parents know, how they know it and several forms of adolescent adjustment: Further support for a reinterpretation of monitoring. Developmental Psychology, 36(3), 366-380.
Ladd, G. W., & Golter, B. S. (1988). Parents’ management of preschooler’s peer relations: Is it related to children’s social competence. Developmental Psychology, 23, 109–117.
Laird, R. D., Pettit, G. S., Bates, J. E., & Dodge, K. A. (2003). Parent’s monitoring-relevant knowledge and adolescents’ delinquent behavior: Evidence of correlated developmental changes and reciprocal influences. Child Development, 73(3), 752–768.
Laird, R. D., Pettit, G. S., Dodge, K. A., & Bates, J. E. (1998). The social ecology of school age child care. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 19, 341–360.
Meshke, L. L., & Silbereisen, R. K. (1997). The influence of puberty, family processes, and leisure activities on the timing of first sexual experience. Journal of Adolescence, 20, 403–418.
Mott, J. A., Crowe, P. A., Richardson, J., & Flay, B. (1999). After-school supervision and adolescent cigarette smoking: Contributions of settings and intensity of after-school self-care. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 22, 35–58.
National Research Council, & Institute of Medicine. (2000). From neurons to neighborhoods: The science of early childhood development. Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development. J. P. Shonkoff & D. A. Phillips (Eds.), Board on Children, Youth, and Families, Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Otto, L. B., & Atkinson, M. P. (1997). Parental involvement and adolescent development. Journal of Adolescent Research, 12, 68–89.
Pagani, L., Boulerice, B., Vitaro, F., & Tremblay, R. E. (1999). Effects of poverty on academic failure and delinquency in boys: A change and process model approach. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 40, 1209–1219.
Pettit, G. S., Bates, J. E., Dodge, K. A., & Meece, D. W. (1999). The impact of after-school peer contact on early adolescent externalizing problems is moderated by parental monitoring, perceived neighborhood safety, and prior adjustment. Child Development, 70, 768–778.
Pettit, G. S., Laird, R. D., Dodge, K. A., Bates, J. E., & Criss, M. M. (2001). Antecedents and behavior-problem outcomes of parental monitoring and psychological control in early adolescence. Child Development, 72(583–598).
Romer, D., Black, M., Ricardo, E., Feigekman, S., Kalgee, L., Galbraith, J., Nesbit, R., Hornik, R. C., & Stanton, B. (1994). Social influences on sexual behavior of youth at risk for HIV exposure. American Journal of Public Health, 84, 977–985.
Snyder, J., & Patterson, G. (1987). Family interaction and delinquent behavior. In H. C. Quay (Ed.), Handbook of Adolescent Delinquency (pp. 216–243). New York: Wiley.
Stattin, H., & Kerr, M. (2000). Parent Monitoring: A reinterpretation. Child Development, 71(4), 1072–1085.
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