engleski

Parental behaviours related to adolescents' self-disclosure: adolescents' views

Within the field of parenting adolescents, empirical findings showed that parental knowledge about adolescent’ s daily activities, feelings and concerns was linked to numerous measures of adolescent adjustment, including adolescent’ s well-being (Jacobson & Crockett, 2000). Stattin and Kerr (2000) found that this parental knowledge originated mainly from adolescent’ s disclosure which involved spontaneously revealing the information to parents without any prompting. Although self-disclosure surely depends on adolescent’ s characteristics and readiness to disclose to a parent, it is reasonable to expect certain parental behaviours to encourage or discourage this process. The aim of the study was to explore adolescents’ perceptions of their parents’ behaviours that inhibit or facilitate their self-disclosure about daily activities, feelings and concerns. Two focus groups with boys and two groups with girls (13 and 14 years old) were conducted. The participants were asked to recall a situation in which they disclosed to their parent and to name any of parental behaviour occurred that encouraged them to do so. The participants were also invited to recall a situation in which they decided not to disclose to their parent and to report about parental behaviours that discouraged them from disclosing. Group discussion was solicited and directed by moderator. In content analysis of adolescents’ responses, the mentioned parental behaviours were categorized as: (1) parental behaviours and states which inhibit self-disclosure (antecedents of and reactions to self-disclosure) and (2) parental behaviours and states which facilitate self-disclosure (antecedents of and reactions to self-disclosure). The results showed that adolescents perceived their self-disclosures to parents to be related to a number of parental behaviours and states. They included negative parental reactions previously studied as inhibitors of future self-disclosure (Kerr at al., 2003). However, a wide range of positive parental behaviours were also identified, as facilitators of self-disclosure. The findings suggest that adolescents’ self-disclosure to parents may not only be inhibited by specific negative parental reactions, but may also be encouraged by numerous positive parental behaviours. The identification of such behaviours and states, as done in this study, deepens our understanding of parent-adolescent communication processes and provides valuable input for programmes aimed at improving parent-adolescent communication and relationship.

adolescent; parental behaviours; self-disclosure; communication

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