Parental monitoring, personality, and delinquency: Further support for a reconceptualization of monitoring

Stattin and Kerr [Stattin, H., & Kerr, M. (2000). Parental monitoring: A reinterpretation. Child Development, 71(4), 1072–1085] suggested reconceptualizing “parental monitoring” and presented evidence from a Swedish sample that challenged current operational definitions. We replicate and extend their findings. Parental knowledge (“monitoring”) related more strongly to child disclosure than to parental solicitation of information in a more ethnically-diverse U.S. sample. We then addressed whether adolescents’ personalities accounted for the links between child disclosure, parental knowledge, and delinquency. Solicitation, knowledge, and disclosure generally did not predict delinquency when controlling for adolescent personality. Personality contributed significant incremental validity to the statistical prediction of delinquency above and beyond solicitation, knowledge, and disclosure; the reverse was generally not true. Adolescents’ personalities largely account for the “parental monitoring”-delinquency association, which supports reconceptualizing monitoring.