Parental Knowledge and Child Disclosure as They Relate to Prosocial and Antisocial Behaviors

Abstract

The chapter focuses on parents’ knowledge of their children’s whereabouts and activities, as well as children’s disclosure of their whereabouts and activities to their parents. Knowledge and disclosure have their conceptual and empirical roots in research on parental monitoring, so the chapter begins with a brief historical review of the parental monitoring research. The review is followed by the presentation of a conceptual model of the processes anteceding child disclosure and parental knowledge, and processes linking parental knowledge and child disclosure with children’s prosocial and antisocial behavior. The conceptual model is followed by a review of empirical studies providing tests of the links and processes specified in the theoretical model. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the limitations of the empirical database and identifies promising avenues for future work on potential connections among knowledge, disclosure, and moral development.