Numerous studies have demonstrated an association between inadequate parental """"""""monitoring"""""""" (i.e., parents' knowledge of their adolescents' daily activities) and poor adolescent adjustment. A common interpretation of this pattern is that parents, by active """"""""monitoring"""""""" and tracking of their adolescents' behavior, buffer them from problematic outcomes. However, a handful of recent studies suggest an alternative interpretation of parental knowledge, demonstrating that adolescents' self-disclosure to parents is a better predictor of parental knowledge, and of adolescent behavior, than active parental behaviors such as parental tracking or surveillance of adolescents' behavior. The present project extends this emerging line of research in several ways. First, we focus on parental knowledge, its sources, and child adjustment longitudinally beginning with the preadolescent years, which will allow for examinations of parental knowledge before and into adolescence (and the correlates of such trajectories). Second, we will examine longitudinally the mother-child and father-child relationship characteristics that promote self- disclosure from adolescents to parents and, in turn, equip parents with high levels of parental knowledge. Two complementary studies are proposed. The first study builds on an ongoing, internally funded project initiated by the PI and two colleagues that is examining parental knowledge and its sources in a school-based study of approximately 600 third-sixth graders and their teachers. We propose funding to continue tracking these students into the adolescent years, a strategy that would be invaluable in understanding the developmental trajectories of parental knowledge and its sources. The second proposed study involves annual home interviews with 125 third-fifth graders and their mothers and fathers, in which we will focus on multiple family members' perceptions of relationship quality, parental knowledge (and its sources), and child adjustment. A variety of analytic techniques will be employed, particularly mixed growth modeling. The proposed project is quite relevant for public health. Most prevention programs and policy campaigns in this area have emphasized """"""""monitoring"""""""" (i.e., questioning, tracking), but it is important as well to study, and potentially base programs on, the processes by which adaptive parent-child relationships have implications for parental knowledge and child/adolescent adjustment. The proposed project - identifying the developmental nature of parental knowledge and its sources during middle childhood and adolescence - is quite relevant for public health. Most prevention programs and policy campaigns in this area have emphasized """"""""monitoring"""""""" (i.e., questioning, tracking), but is important as well to study, and potentially base programs on, the processes by which adaptive parent-child relationships have implications for parental knowledge and child/adolescent adjustment. ? ? ?
