Disclosure and Secrecy in Adolescent–Parent Relationships

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208 Smetana, Metzger, Gettman, and Campione-Barr disclosure were examined in a separate analysis, described in more detail below.) Adolescent secrecy. Means and standard deviations for adolescents’ ratings of secrecy toward mothers and fathers are shown in Table 3. Adolescents were more secretive about peer than personal issues or schoolwork and more secretive about personal issues than schoolwork, F(2, 246) 5 34.10. A significant Sex of Child Sex of Parent interaction, F(1, 248) 5 5.64, was qualified by a significant Sex of Child Sex of Parent Topic interaction, F(2, 496) 5 3.61. Boys concealed personal issues from mothers more than girls did, F(1, 248) 5 4.79. A significant Topic Grade interaction, F(2, 496) 5 7.06, revealed that 9th graders were more secretive about peers than either schoolwork or personal issues and more secretive about personal issues than schoolwork, Ms 5 2.87, 2.68, 2.11, SDs 5 1.21, 0.93, 0.98, respectively. In contrast, 12th graders did not differentiate between personal and peer issues, although they hid both more than schoolwork, Ms 5 2.59, 2.69, 2.29, SDs 5 0.89, 1.02, 0.93, respectively. These findings were qualified by a significant Grade Child’s Sex Topic interaction, F(2, 496) 5 5.40, which was due to a Grade Child’s Sex interaction for schoolwork, F(3, 269) 5 2.84. Post Table 3 Means and Standard Deviations for Adolescents’ Ratings of Disclosure and Secrecy to Parents hoc tests indicated that 12th-grade boys kept secrets about schoolwork more than did either 12th-grade girls or 9th-grade boys (see Table 3). Adolescent disclosure. Adolescents’ ratings of disclosure to mothers and fathers are also presented in Table 3. As hypothesized, adolescents reported voluntarily disclosing more to mothers than to fathers, F(1, 252) 5 52.66, Ms 5 3.16, 2.92, SDs 5 0.85, 0.90, respectively. Mirroring the results for secrecy, adolescents also disclosed more about schoolwork than either peers or personal issues and more about peers than personal issues, F(2, 504) 5 175.87. A significant Sex of Child Sex of Parent interaction, F(1, 252) 5 10.54, was qualified by a significant Sex of Child Sex of Parent Topic interaction, F(2, 504) 5 6.39. Post hoc analyses revealed that, as expected, girls disclosed more about personal issues, Ms 5 2.96, 2.65, SDs 5 0.94, 0.87, and schoolwork, Ms 5 3.93, 3.69, SDs 5 0.90, 0.91, respectively, to their mothers than did boys, but boys and girls did not differ in their voluntary disclosure to mothers about peers. Contrary to hypotheses, there were no differences in boys’ and girls’ disclosure to fathers. In addition, a significant Topic Grade interaction, F(2, 504) 5 10.60 revealed that 12th graders voluntarily disclosed more about peers than did 9th graders, Regarding mothers Regarding fathers Boys Girls Boys Girls 9th 12th M 9th 12th M 9th 12th M 9th 12th M Disclosure Personal M 2.59 2.73 2.65 2.94 2.98 2.96 2.40 2.63 2.51 2.52 2.45 2.49 SD 0.93 0.81 0.87 0.93 0.94 0.94 0.90 0.76 0.85 0.87 0.88 0.87 School M 3.84 3.52 3.69 3.97 3.87 3.93 3.65 3.29 3.49 3.70 3.57 3.64 SD 0.99 0.79 0.91 0.91 0.89 0.90 1.07 0.91 1.01 1.13 1.09 1.11 Peer M 2.72 3.13 2.91 2.98 3.19 3.08 2.65 3.00 2.81 2.55 2.77 2.65 SD 1.08 1.04 1.08 1.26 1.78 1.22 1.14 1.06 1.11 1.21 1.21 1.21 Secrecy Personal M 2.78 2.72 2.79 2.55 2.48 2.52 2.77 2.68 2.73 2.76 2.59 2.69 SD 0.95 0.92 0.95 0.93 0.92 0.93 1.02 0.93 0.98 1.02 0.99 1.00 School M 2.10 2.57 2.34 2.07 2.09 2.12 2.17 2.58 2.36 2.17 2.23 2.20 SD 1.03 1.00 1.04 0.99 0.90 0.95 1.00 1.06 1.05 1.09 1.02 1.06 Peers M 2.97 2.53 2.85 2.71 2.70 2.68 3.07 2.50 2.81 2.90 2.87 2.90 SD 1.17 0.88 1.06 1.26 1.13 1.21 1.20 1.02 1.15 1.35 1.18 1.27
Table 4 Means and Standard Deviations for Adolescents’ and Mothers’ Ratings of Disclosure Adolescents (rating mothers) Mothers 9th grade 12th grade 9th grade 12th grade Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls Personal M 2.57 2.87 2.81 3.06 2.72 3.31 2.71 3.33 SD 0.95 0.98 0.84 0.99 0.84 0.86 0.85 0.90 School M 3.80 3.86 3.58 4.01 3.14 3.58 2.72 3.56 SD 0.90 0.96 0.90 0.81 0.90 0.84 0.84 0.97 Peers M 2.73 2.93 3.07 3.35 3.28 3.62 2.89 3.51 SD 1.07 1.31 1.09 1.20 0.94 1.04 0.96 0.99 F(1, 173) 5 4.13, Furthermore, 12th graders disclosed more about peers than about personal issues, whereas 9th graders did not differentiate between peers and personal issues in their disclosure to parents. Parent – adolescent differences in perceived disclosure. Because most parent participants were mothers and because the previous analyses revealed that adolescents rated their fathers and mothers differently, the next analyses compared adolescents’ ratings of disclosure to mothers with mothers’ responses (n 5 202). Thus, a 2 (adolescents’ sex) 2 (grade) 2 (adolescents’ ratings of mothers vs. mothers) 3 (topic) repeated measures ANOVA with generation and topic as repeated measures was performed on disclosure ratings. A significant Generation Grade interaction, F(1, 198) 5 6.60, indicated that mothers viewed their 9th graders as disclosing more than 9th graders reported disclosing, Ms 5 3.36, 3.05, SDs 5 0.82, 0.79, respectively, but 12th graders and their mothers did not differ, Ms 5 3.24, 3.28, SDs 5 0.91, 0.86. A significant Generation Sex interaction, F(1, 198) 5 5.94, revealed that mothers viewed their daughters as disclosing more than girls reported disclosing, Ms 5 3.49, 3.29, SDs 5 0.84, 0.93, but that boys’ and their mothers’ ratings did not differ, Ms 5 3.05, 2.94, SDs 5 0.79, 0.80. A significant main effect for topic, F(1, 198) 5 89.24, was qualified by significant Topic Generation, F(1, 198) 5 67.04, Topic Grade, F(1, 198) 5 3.67, and Topic Generation Grade interactions, F(1, 198) 5 4.76. Post hoc analyses revealed that while 12th graders voluntarily told their mothers more about their peer relations than 9th graders did, as Disclosure in Adolescence 209 found in the previous analyses, mothers did not differ significantly in their views of adolescents’ disclosure about these issues. Correlates of Adolescent Disclosure and Secrecy In the next set of analyses, we examined correlations among the study variables, as shown in Table 5. For ratings of the legitimacy of parental authority and beliefs about disclosure, the moral, conventional, and prudential items were dropped, and the multifaceted and personal items were combined into a single index to more closely match the issues of disclosure and secrecy under investigation. Given their high intercorrelations, adolescents’ ratings of mothers and fathers were combined in these analyses for disclosure, secrecy, trust, discussion frequency, and conflict intensity. As expected, adolescents’ ratings of disclosure and secrecy were significantly and inversely correlated, r(274) 5 .46. As can be seen, intercorrelations among the independent variables were generally low to moderate. We also examined correlations between adolescentrated disclosure and secrecy and several sociodemographic background variables, including parents’ ages, educations, SEI scores, ethnicity (White vs. all else), and marital status (married, two-parent vs. all else), but no significant relationships were obtained. Next, we conducted regression analyses to examine the unique influence of study variables on disclosure and secrecy regarding different issues. As we had no a priori hypotheses about the ordering of variables, all variables were entered in a single step. Because adolescents’ beliefs about the legitimacy of parental authority and their beliefs about their obligations to disclose to parents were strongly correlated (r 5.51), leading to concerns with multicollinearity, we included only beliefs about adolescents’ obligations to disclose to parents in the regression equations. Therefore, adolescents’ age and sex, adolescents’ ratings of trust, discussion frequency and conflict intensity, self-esteem, and beliefs about obligations to disclose to parents, as well as parents’ ratings of acceptance, psychological control, and trust in their child were entered in the analyses. Separate analyses were run for disclosure and secrecy regarding personal, peer, and schoolwork issues, resulting in six separate regressions. Preliminary analyses revealed that parental trust was not significant in any of the analyses, and thus it was dropped from the final analyses. The results of the analyses are presented in Table 6. We also conducted exploratory analyses examining adolescents’ separate ratings for each topic for
Page 1 and 2: Child Development, January/February
Page 3 and 4: 1988a, 2000; Smetana & Asquith, 199
Page 5 and 6: about legitimate parental authority
Page 7: (but only marginally, for prudentia
Page 11 and 12: 5 .16, po.05). In contrast, greater
Page 13 and 14: associated with less trust in the p
Page 15 and 16: suggests the need for further speci
Page 17: Appendix A Table A1 Stimulus Items

Disclosure and Secrecy in Adolescent–Parent Relationships

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