Adolescents use various strategies to manage their parents' access to information. This study tested developmental change in strategy use, longitudinal associations between disclosing and concealing strategies, and longitudinal associations linking disclosing and concealing strategies with antisocial behavior and depressive symptoms. Self-report data (n = 218; 49% female; 49% European American, 47% African American) following Grades 5 (M age = 11 years, 11 months), 6, and 7 show that the use of disclosing strategies (e.g., telling all, telling if asked) following misbehavior declined while use of concealing strategies (e.g., omitting details, keeping secrets, lying) increased over time. Longitudinal links between strategies suggest a transactional process wherein infrequent disclosing is a gateway to concealment but concealment also predicts subsequent rank-order reductions in disclosure. Infrequent disclosing was associated with more subsequent antisocial behavior and depressive symptoms, whereas more antisocial behavior was associated with more subsequent concealment. Although absolute declines in disclosure and increases in concealment are normative, individual differences show that adolescents reporting low levels of disclosure, rather than high levels of concealment, appear to experience the most adjustment problems.

Adolescents differ in the extent to which they believe that parents have legitimate authority to impose rules restricting adolescents' behavior. The purpose of the current study was to test predictors of individual differences in legitimacy beliefs during the middle school years. Annually, during the summers following Grades 5, 6, and 7, early adolescents (n = 218; 51% female, 47% African American, 73% in 2-parent homes) reported their beliefs regarding the legitimacy of parents' rules that restrict and monitor adolescents' free time activities. Cross-lagged analyses revealed that legitimacy beliefs were bidirectionally associated with independent decision making, psychological control, antisocial peer involvement, and resistance to control. Legitimacy beliefs declined more rapidly during the middle school years for boys than for girls and for adolescents who were older relative to their classmates. More independent decision making in Grades 5 and 6 predicted larger than expected declines in legitimacy beliefs in Grades 6 and 7. In sum, legitimacy beliefs weaken developmentally, and weaker legitimacy beliefs relative to same-grade peers are anteceded by premature autonomous experiences, psychological control, and adolescent attributes.

Family support programs aim to improve parent wellbeing and parenting as well as adolescent mental and behavioral health by addressing the needs of parents of adolescents experiencing or at risk for mental health problems. Family support programs can be part of the treatment for adolescents diagnosed with mental or behavioral health problems, or family support programs can be delivered as prevention programs designed to prevent the onset or escalation of mental or behavioral health problems. This review discusses the rationale for family support programs and describes the range of services provided by family support programs. The primary focus of the review is on evaluating the effectiveness of family support programs as treatments or prevention efforts delivered by clinicians or peers. Two main themes emerged from the review. First, family support programs that included more forms of support evidenced higher levels of effectiveness than family support programs that provided fewer forms of support. Discussion of this theme focuses on individual differences in client needs and program adaptions that may facilitate meeting diverse needs. Second, family support prevention programs appear to be most effective when serving individuals more in need of mental and behavioral health services. Discussion of this theme focuses on the intensity versus breadth of the services provided in prevention programs. More rigorous evaluations of family support programs are needed, especially for peer-delivered family support treatments.

The current study focused on the childhood to adolescence transition and sought to determine why some children are more compliant than others as well as why children comply more often with some of their parents' rules than with others. Indices of parents' agency and children's agency were tested as predictors of compliance. Parent-based decision-making and parents' responses to expressed disagreement served as indices of parents' agency while children's beliefs regarding the legitimacy of parents' rules and felt obligation to obey rules served as indices of children's agency. Parent-child dyads (n = 218; 51% female, 49% European American, 47% African American) were interviewed during the summers following the children's 5th (M adolescent age = 11.9 years) and 6th grade school years. Children who felt that their parents' rules were more legitimate were more compliant overall than were children who felt that the rules were less legitimate. Children compiled more with rules governing topics perceived to be legitimately regulated by parents, when parents made more decisions regarding the topic and when parents responded to disagreement by standing strong. Results were generally consistent across parents' and children's reports of compliance and across cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses. At the transition from childhood to adolescence, only children's agency explained why some children are more compliant than others, but parents' and children's agency helped to explain why children complied with some rules more than others.

Studies of privacy invasion have relied on measures that combine items assessing adolescents' feelings of privacy invasion with items assessing parents' monitoring behaviors. Removing items assessing parents' monitoring behaviors may improve the validity of assessments of privacy invasion. Data were collected from 163 adolescents (M age 13 years, 5 months; 47% female; 50% European American, non‐Hispanic, 46% African American) and their mothers. A model specifying separate factors for privacy invasion and monitoring behavior fit adolescent‐reported and parent‐reported data significantly better than a single factor model. Although privacy invasion and monitoring behavior were positively associated, privacy invasion and monitoring behavior correlations were significantly different from one another across all ten variables reported by adolescents and across eight of the nine variables reported by mothers. The pattern of results strongly supports a recommendation for researchers to exclude items assessing monitoring behaviors to provide a more valid assessment of privacy invasion.