A parent's place: Parents', mentors' and program staff members' expectations for and experiences of parental involvement in community-based youth mentoring relationships

• Parents, mentors and program staff have differing views on parental involvement in mentoring.
• Staff recognized how parents could support or detract from match success.
• Mentors anticipated potential parental interference but remained hopeful of their support.
• Parents' views on their own involvement reflected their parenting style and approach to others outside of the family.

Youth mentoring has been conceptualized largely as a dyadic relationship between a mentor and mentee, with less attention paid to the role of parents. This study contributes to an emerging body of research on parent involvement by examining expectations for parents' roles in the mentoring process held by program staff, mentors, and parents themselves. In-depth interviews with mentoring program staff (n = 12), mentors (n = 30), and a parent or guardian of the youth being mentored (n = 30) were analyzed to identify these participants' views on the role of parents. Findings indicate that mentors and program staff were more aligned in their views and tended to be more focused on the ways that parents could potentially interfere with or otherwise disrupt the mentor–youth relationship. Parents' views were more varied and rooted in differences in both their individual values and beliefs about the role of a mentor in their child's life, their parenting styles and ways they expected adults outside of the family who were interacting with their child to engage with them. Implications for future research on parent involvement and for mentoring program practices are discussed.