What parents don't know: Disclosure and secrecy in a sample of urban adolescents

Abstract

Research with two-parent European households has suggested that secrecy, and not disclosure of information per se, predicts adolescent adjustment difficulties. The present study attempted to replicate this finding using data from a 4-wave study of 358 poor, urban adolescents (47% male; M age = 12 yrs) in the United States, most of whom (> 92%) were African American. Adolescents self-reported secrecy, disclosure, depressive symptoms, and delinquency at each wave. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed that a two-factor model with secrecy and disclosure as separate, but correlated, factors was a better fit than a one-factor model. However, predictive models differed from previous research. Secrecy did not predict depressive symptoms, rather depressive symptoms predicted secrecy. For delinquency, there were significant paths from both secrecy to delinquency and delinquency to secrecy, as well as from delinquency to disclosure. These results did not differ by age or sex. Comparisons with previous findings are discussed.

Cross-Cultural Examination of Links between Parent–Adolescent Communication and Adolescent Psychological Problems in 12 Cultural Groups

“…Then again, earlier studies with Western adolescents predominantly measured adolescent disclosure as a mixture of disclosure and secrecy (Stattin and Kerr 2000) (rather than separating these two constructs as proposed by Frijns et al 2010) and often investigated externalizing (e.g., Racz and McMahon 2011) rather than internalizing problems. One exception is a study by Hamza and Willoughby (2011) where a negative link from adolescent depressive symptoms to disclosure was found among Canadian mid-adolescents and a study by Jäggi et al (2016) where a negative link between depressive symptoms to secrecy was found among US Black preadolescents. Thus, specific prospective links between adolescent disclosure, secrecy, and internalizing among early adolescents have rarely been studied prior to the present investigation, and less is known about these links worldwide.…”

Secrets and Lies: Adolescent Religiosity and Concealing Information from Parents

“…First, previous research suggests that many of the variables that were included in the model are reciprocally related (Tilton-Weaver 2014). For example, adolescent substance use and delinquency contributes to concealing information from parents (Jaggi et al 2016), but a tendency to conceal information from parents also seems to be significantly related to further substance use and delinquency (Frijns et al 2005;Jaggi et al 2016). Adolescents who have low self-control may conceal more from their parents, but (based on the "muscle" or "strength" model of self-control) concealing information from parents may also reduce the capacity for self-control (Frijns et al 2005).…”

“…As Darling and Tilton-Weaver (2019, p. 1) argue "revealing and concealing strategies are conceptually distinct from one another: an adolescent can reveal a great deal of information to parents about school activities while concealing their drinking". Previous research also suggests that the relationship between information management and adolescent outcomes is primarily the result of concealing strategies (Frijns et al 2010;Jaggi et al 2016). In other words, concealing strategies have a strong negative effect on adolescent outcomes, whereas disclosing strategies have a weak positive effect on adolescent outcomes.…”

“…Adolescents use a variety of passive and active strategies to manage the information that their parents have about their activities, such as full disclosure, omitting details, avoiding the issue unless asked, keeping secrets, and lying (Laird et al 2013;Smetana et al 2009;Tasopoulos-Chan et al 2009). Research suggests that disclosing and concealing should be considered to be two separate (but related) concepts, rather than two ends of a continuum (Darling and Tilton-Weaver 2019;Frijns et al 2010;Jaggi et al 2016). As Darling and Tilton-Weaver (2019, p. 1) argue "revealing and concealing strategies are conceptually distinct from one another: an adolescent can reveal a great deal of information to parents about school activities while concealing their drinking".…”

« Où étais-tu et avec qui ? »

“…La libre divulgation et les secrets gardés devraient donc être étudiés comme deux phénomènes à part entière (Frijns et al, 2010), ce que plusieurs travaux ont récemment confirmé (p. ex., Almas, Grusec, & Tackett, 2011 ;Jäggi, Drazdowski, & Kliewer, 2016 ;Lionetti, Keijsers, Dellagiulia, & Pastore, 2016).…”