engleski

Adolescents' Strategic Disclosure to Parents: Anticipating Reactions

Adolescents’ strategic disclosure to parents: anticipating reactions Parental knowledge about adolescents’ daily activities was found to be predictive of numerous indicators of adolescent adjustment, including well-being (e. g. Jacobson & Crockett, 2000). This knowledge was found to originate mainly from adolescents’ disclosure which involved spontaneously revealing the information to parents (Stattin & Kerr, 2000). However, withholding information often stems from expecting negative reactions from parents (Marshall, Tilton-Weaver, & Bosdet, 2005), which makes important to investigate how parents actually react to adolescents’ disclosures and how it affects future disclosures. The aim of this research was to explore adolescents’ views on which parents’ reactions inhibit or facilitate their future disclosures. Four focus groups with 13 and 14 year old boys and girls were conducted (N=32). They were recruited from an elementary school in Zagreb (the capital of Croatia). Each group consisted of eight members, and participants were homogenous by grade and gender. Adolescents were encouraged to talk about parents’ reactions to their disclosures of daily activities, feelings and concerns as well as disclosures of “misdeeds”. Open coding of adolescents’ responses resulted in 28 categories of parental reactions, which were further classified in two higher-order groups of reactions. The first one consisted of parental reactions which were considered by youth as positive and facilitating future disclosures (e. g. calm reaction, constructive feedback, emotional support, instrumental support, taking adolescent seriously, parental self-disclosure, etc..), and the second one consisted of parental reactions considered as negative and inhibiting future disclosures (e. g. anger and yelling, lecturing, teasing, distraction, punishment, breaking confidentiality etc..). The results evidently demonstrate that adolescents observe and evaluate their parents’ reactions to disclosures. Furthermore, they suggest that adolescents actively contribute to their relationships with parents by strategically disclosing or withholding information, thereby enhancing relationship or limiting parental authority over certain aspects of their lives (Buhrmester & Prager, 1995). It seems that adolescents anticipate parental reactions on the basis of the reactions in similar past interactions (Kuczynski & Parkin, 2006), and decide on disclosure or non-disclosure accordingly. Moreover, adolescents attempt to moderate expected parental reactions by actively choosing the “right moment” for disclosure. They observe parental affective states and subtle signs which determine the appropriateness of the disclosure in a given situation.

adolescents' agency; parents; disclosure; parental reactions

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