“You Don’t Have to Share Everything, You Know”: College Students’ Decisions to Withhold Information From Parents

Abstract

American college students (N = 61) participated in semi-structured qualitative interviews focused on identifying topics students avoided discussing with their parents and reasons for avoiding these discussions. Interviews were transcribed and data analyzed using a cross-case, variable-oriented approach. Students discussed avoiding seven topics in conversations with parents. In order of frequency these were: Romantic Relationships and Sex; Physical and Mental Well-Being; School Decisions and Grades; Friends; Parties, Alcohol and Drug Use; Family Matters; and Personal Beliefs and Lifestyle Choices. Reasons for avoiding discussions with parents yielded four distinct parent-student relationship types: Appropriate Boundaries (43%), Guarding Privacy (30%), Protective of Parents (15%), and Disconnected (13%). Avoided topics associated with these relationship types and the ways in which students in these relationship types reflected on avoidance of topics with parents suggested distinct ways in which students negotiated components of autonomy development during the college years.