Actual and Perceived Parental Knowledge and Child Delinquency: Does the Sex of the Parent,the Sex of the Child,and the Child’s Age Make a Difference?

Abstract

Parental knowledge was tested as a possible deterrent to future delinquency in 3914 (51% male) early to mid-adolescent school children from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. Using three waves of data, parent-rated mother and father knowledge were tested as correlates of future delinquency, controlling for age, perceived parental knowledge, and the willingness of children to share their thoughts and feelings with parents. Variables from Wave 5 (age 12/13) were used to predict delinquency at Wave 6 (age 14/15), and variables from Wave 6 were used to predict delinquency at Wave 7 (age 16/17). Results showed that mother- but not father-reported knowledge effectively deterred future child delinquency. A significant sex x mother knowledge interaction was found in both analyses, indicating that boys experienced a stronger deterrent effect than girls. It was further demonstrated that the deterrent effect of parental knowledge on child delinquency was stronger in early adolescence than in middle adolescence.

Keywords

parental monitoring actual and perceived parental knowledge delinquency

Up until the turn of the 21st century, it was generally agreed that parents who actively monitored and supervised their offspring had children who were significantly less likely to engage in antisocial behavior than the children of parents who did not closely monitor and supervise their offspring (Dishion & McMahon, 1998). That was before Stattin and Kerr (2000; Kerr & Stattin, 2000) and their seminal work on parental monitoring, knowledge, and antisocial behavior. The crux of Stattin and Kerr’s argument was that what most researchers investigating parental monitoring and child misbehavior were actually measuring was parental knowledge (parental knowledge of child’s activities and associations) rather than parental monitoring and that it was parental knowledge that was responsible for the moderately strong correlations recorded between measures of parental monitoring and child antisocial and delinquent behavior. According to Stattin and Kerr, there are three sources of parental knowledge: parental solicitation, parental control, and child disclosure. Although there is evidence that all three sources contribute to parental knowledge (Racz & McMahon, 2011), youth disclosure may make the strongest contribution (Kerr et al., 2010; Liu, Chen, & Brown, 2020).

Child Disclosure, Parental Knowledge, and Parental Monitoring

Youth disclosure is normally assessed by asking the child or the parents whether the child tells the parents where they are going, where they have been, and what they have been doing. These questions are usually directed at a specific activity (e.g., school) or over a particular period of time (e.g., evening). Another question that is sometimes asked on youth disclosure scales and questionnaires is whether the child keeps secrets from the parents. Youth who do not keep secrets from their parents and who tell their parents where they are going, where they have been, and what they are doing are much less likely to engage in delinquent and antisocial behavior than youth who do not disclose where they are going, where they have been, or what they are doing (Padilla-Walker & Son, 2019). A necessary prerequisite for youth disclosure is a willingness to discuss personal issues with parents, regardless of what those issues might be or how they might affect the parent–child relationship. The current study accordingly included a measure of a child’s willingness to communicate with their parents about personal issues as a means of controlling for child disclosure.

In a recent meta-analysis, Liu et al. (2020) determined that child disclosure was the best way parents’ acquire knowledge about their child’s activities and friendship networks. This knowledge can then be used to monitor and control the child’s behavior, or it may simply reflect the fact that the child has a good relationship with their parents and is unlikely to engage in behavior that would disappoint their caregivers. Lahey et al., 2008) compared direct and indirect sources of parental knowledge and determined that parental knowledge and limit setting predicted future delinquency, controlling for prior delinquency. By controlling for prior delinquency, Lahey et al. reasoned that they were also controlling for a child’s willingness to disclose personal information to their parents (i.e., youth with more prior delinquency had more to hide and would therefore be less likely to personally disclose information to their parents). Unfortunately, this study did not assess child disclosure directly. In a study that did assess child disclosure directly, Lippold, Fosco, Ram, & Feinberg, (2014) discovered that both direct parental supervision and child disclosure increased parental knowledge, which, in turn, predicted lower levels of future delinquency and substance use.

Although parental knowledge has been assessed with reports from parents (Burke, Pardini, & Loeber, 2008; Eaton, Krueger, Johnson, McGue, & Iacono, 2009), it is more often based on child reports. In a review of 47 studies on parental knowledge, monitoring, and youth conduct problems, Racz and McMahon (2011) discovered that studies using child-reported measures of parental knowledge outnumbered studies using parent-reported measures two to one. The ratio is even larger for more recently published studies (Lippold et al., 2016; McAdams, Salekin, Marti, Lester, & Barker, 2014; Walters, 2018; Yun, Cui, & Blair, 2016). It is possible, then, that the relationship between child-rated or perceived parental knowledge and child-reported delinquency has been inflated by shared method variance or one of several types of response bias. Although researchers sometimes include parent- and child-rated measures of parental knowledge in the same study, only a few of these studies have made comparisons between the two measures (see Padilla-Walker & Son, 2019 for an exception), and even fewer have sought to determine the predictive efficacy of parent-rated parental knowledge after controlling for child-rated (perceived) parental knowledge, the former of which is referred to as actual parental knowledge for the purposes of the current study.

Contextual Factors

When researchers have included parent-rated measures of parental knowledge in their studies, they have normally either restricted themselves to one parent, usually the mother, or combined the ratings of mothers and fathers into a single score. In the few instances where researchers have included parental knowledge ratings from both parents, significant differences in knowledge have been noted (Racz & McMahon, 2011). As a general rule, mothers are more knowledgeable about their child’s activities and associations than are fathers (Crouter & Head, 2002), in part, perhaps because youth are more likely to self-disclose to their mothers than to their fathers (Keijsers, Branje, VanderValk, & Meeus, 2010). The sex of the child may be as important as the sex of the parent in determining the level, extent, and efficacy of parental knowledge. Parents, it would seem, are usually more knowledgeable about the activities of their daughters than of the activities of their sons (Dishion & McMahon, 1998; Neumann, Barker, Koot, & Maughan, 2010), female youth are more likely to disclose information to their parents than male youth (Ethier, Harper, Hoo, & Dittus, 2016; Keijers & Poulin, 2013), and parental knowledge is more closely tied to low levels of child delinquency in girls than in boys (Gryczkowski, Jordan, & Mercer, 2010; Yun et al., 2016).

Another contextual factor with relevance to the parental knowledge–delinquency relationship is child age or developmental stage. Prior research indicates that while parental knowledge tends to decrease as the child enters puberty (Laird & Marrero, 2011), the inverse correlation that links parental knowledge and delinquency has been found to strengthen over the course of adolescence (Pardini, Fite, & Burke, 2008). Even so, one difference between studies displaying a direct effect of parental knowledge on delinquency and antisocial behavior (Fletcher et al., 2004; Lahey et al., 2008; Lippold et al., 2014) and studies indicating that parental knowledge has an indirect effect on delinquency by way of child disclosure (Kerr & Stattin, 2000; Kerr, Stattin, & Burk, 2010) is that while participants in two out of the three studies showing an effect (Lahey et al., 2008; Lippold et al., 2014) were early adolescents, participants in all three studies showing no effect were mid- to late-adolescents. This suggests that a direct effect for parental knowledge may be more prominent or pervasive when participants are in early adolescence than when they are at a later stage of development when peer influence begins to eclipse parental influence (Brown & Bakken, 2011).

Present Study

The main research question investigated in the current study was whether parent-reported knowledge of a child’s activities and associations, referred to from hereon in as actual parental knowledge, is capable of reducing future delinquent behavior while controlling for child-rated perceived parental knowledge and child willingness to communicate thoughts and feelings to their parents. Three more specific sub-hypotheses pertaining to the context of the parental knowledge–delinquency relationship and reviewed in an earlier section of this Introduction (i.e., sex of parent, sex of child, and age of child) were also evaluated in this study:

H1. Increased levels of actual parental knowledge will correlate with reduced delinquent behavior after age, perceived parental knowledge, and child willingness to communicate with parents are controlled.

H1a. Actual maternal knowledge should be significantly more effective in reducing delinquency than actual paternal knowledge.

H1b. Sex should moderate the actual parental knowledge–delinquency relationship such that actual parental knowledge is significantly more effective in reducing delinquency in girls than in boys.

H1c. The parental knowledge–delinquency relationship should be significantly stronger when actual parental knowledge is measured in early adolescence (age 12/13) than when it is measured in middle adolescence (age 14/15).

Method

Participants

The sample for this study came from a large-scale longitudinal investigation known as the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC: Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2018). Cohort K (kindergarten) of the LSAC was used to conduct the current analyses because it included the variables and covered the developmental period (early to mid-adolescence) of prime interest in this study. Wave 5 of the LSAC, the point at which the study began, contained 4,033 youthful participants. The 119 children (3.0% of the total) who failed to complete any of the self-report measures included in the present study were removed from the sample before the analyses were conducted, leaving a final sample of 3,914 participants (1,996 boys and 1,918 girls). The average age of participants at the start of the study (Wave 5) was 12.41 years (SD = 0.49, range = 12–13) and 97.3% of the sample was non-indigenous, with 2.5% of aboriginal ethnicity and 0.2% self-identifying as Torres Strait Islanders.

Sample Weights

Longitudinal sample weights for Wave 5 of the LSAC were used to calculate correlations and regression analyses for this study. The LSAC samples were created with multistep cluster sampling, a probability sampling technique. Sample weights were added to maintain the representativeness of the sample in the face of nonresponse and study attrition. Sample weights were therefore used to augment the representativeness of the sample and control for systematic bias created by missing data and sampling error.

Measures

Actual Parental Knowledge

The independent variable for this study was actual parental knowledge as assessed separately by participants’ mothers and fathers. The scale consisted of the following four items (“know where child is”; “know who child is with”; “talk with child about their life”; and “child goes out without telling”) at Wave 5 (Age 12/13) and of the following three items (“know where child is”; “know who child is with”; and “child goes out without telling”) at Wave 6 (Age 14/15). The item “talk with child about their life” was left out of the Wave 6 survey by the creators of the LSAC. Each item on the actual parental knowledge scales was rated on a five-point Likert-type scale (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = agree, and 5 = strongly agree), except for the item “child goes out without telling” which was reverse coded (1 = strongly agree and 5 = strongly disagree). Item scores were then averaged to produce a mean score.

Because the Cronbach alpha coefficient has been shown to be negatively biased against shorter scales (Cortina, 1993) and none of the scales from the current study was longer than four items, the alpha coefficient was supplemented by a mean inter-item correlation (r). Clark and Watson (1995) recommend using scales with mean inter-item correlations of .15–.50, with mean inter-item correlations falling into the lower half of this range being most appropriate for scales measuring broad constructs and mean inter-item correlations falling into the upper half of this range being more appropriate for scales measuring narrow constructs. In the current study, the mother-rated parental knowledge scale achieved adequate to good internal consistency when the child was 12/13 years old (α = .58, mean inter-item r = .26) and 14/15 years old (α = .65, mean inter-item r = .39). Similarly, the father-rated parental knowledge scale also attained adequate to good internal consistency at child ages 12/13 (α = .62, mean inter-item r = .31) and 14/15 (α = .66, mean inter-item r = .40).

Participant Delinquency

Delinquent behavior at Waves 6 and 7 of the LSAC, when participants were 14/15 and 16/17 years of age, respectively, served as dependent variables in this study. Delinquency was assessed with the following 17 items (got into a physical fight in public, skipped school, stole from a shop, drew graffiti in a public place, carried a weapon, took a motor vehicle for a ride, stole money from a person, ran away from home, purposely damaged property, damaged a parked car, ran around with a group that damaged property, suspended or expelled from school, broke into a house/flat/vehicle, stole something from a parked car, started a fire, used force or threat of force to get money or things from someone, and caught by police for something done wrong). Participants rated the frequency with which they engaged in each of these behaviors over the past year on a six-point scale (0 = not at all, 1 = once, 2 = twice, 3 = three times, 4 = four times, and 5 = five or more times). The delinquency score had low stability from Wave 5 to Wave 6 (r = .22) and moderate stability from Wave 6 to Wave 7 (r = .56).

Control and Moderator Variables

Three control variables were included in this study: age (in years), perceived parental knowledge, and child communication. Perceived parental knowledge was rated by the child and consisted of four items (“Parents know my friends”; “Parents know how I spend my money”; “Parents know what I do in my free time”; and “Parents know where I am most afternoons”), each of which was rated on a three-point scale (1 = parents don’t know, 2 = parents know a little, and 3 = parents know a lot). When summed, the four items produced a scale score that could range from 4 to 12. Internal consistency across the two administrations of this four-item scale was adequate at age 12/13 (α = .60, mean inter-item r = .29) as well as at age 14/15 (α = .62, mean inter-item r = .30). Child willingness to communicate with their parents was assessed with two items (“I talk with my parents when I have a problem” and “I share feelings with my parents”), each rated on a four-point scale (1 = almost never or never true, 2 = sometimes true, 3 = often true, and 4 = almost always or always true). These two items correlated highly with each other (r = .78–.81). Sex served as the moderator variable in this study and it was multiplied by centered values of mother and father actual knowledge to create sex x actual parental knowledge interaction terms.

Analytic Plan

Three waves of data from the LSAC-K were included in this study: Wave 5, when participants were 12/13 years of age; Wave 6, when participants were 14/15 years of age; and Wave 7, when participants were 16/17 years of age. Two regression analyses were calculated. One had age, sex, child communication, perceived parental knowledge, actual mother knowledge, actual father knowledge, the sex x actual mother knowledge and sex x actual father knowledge interactions, and delinquency at Wave 5 predicting delinquency at Wave 6. The other had age, sex, child communication, perceived parental knowledge, actual mother knowledge, actual father knowledge, the sex x actual mother knowledge and sex x actual father knowledge interactions, and delinquency at Wave 6 predicting delinquency at Wave 7. In both analyses, delinquency was treated as a lagged outcome variable by virtue of the fact that a prior measure of delinquency was included as a predictor variable (i.e., Wave 5 delinquency in the equation predicting Wave 6 delinquency and Wave 6 delinquency in the equation predicting Wave 7 delinquency).

Descriptive statistical analyses, correlations, and collinearity diagnostics were performed with SPSS version 26 (Corporation IBM, 2019), whereas regression analyses were performed with MPlus 8.3 (Muthén & Muthén, 1997-2017). A maximum likelihood (ML) estimator was employed in the regression analyses, along with biased-corrected bootstrapped 95% confidence intervals (Preacher, 2015). Because they do not make any dispositional assumptions, bootstrapping techniques are often preferred to normal theory procedures like the Z test (DiCiccio & Efron, 1996; Rucker, Preacher, Tormala, & Petty, 2011). To be considered significant, a confidence interval should not include zero.

Simple slope analysis of all significant interaction effects was performed and reported with an asymptotic t-test calculated using Dawson (2014) online program for interactive effects. Comparisons between regression coefficients both between and across equations were performed using a test described in Paternoster, Brame, Mazerolle, & Piquero (1998); β₁ – β₂ / √(SE₁² + SE₂²).

Missing Data

The LSAC-K sample was well-represented in this study, with 97% of the original members serving as participants. Nonetheless, there was a significant amount of missing data, particularly on the two actual father knowledge scales. Of the 3914 youth who participated in this study, 39.9% had no missing data (58.4% at Wave 1, 54.0% at Wave 2, and 73.6% at Wave 3), 18.3% were missing data on one variable, 18.7% were missing data on two variables, 7.5% were missing data on three or four variables, and 15.6% were missing data on five to nine variables. Seven out of the 13 variables had more than 5% missing data: Parental Knowledge-14 (16.1%), Child Communication-14 (16.1%), Mother Knowledge-14 (16.1%), Father Knowledge-12 (37.9%), Father Knowledge-14 (41.7%), Delinquency-14 (16.7%), and Delinquency-16 (26.4%). Missing data were handled with full information maximum likelihood (FIML), a procedure that estimates population parameters and standard errors for the full sample using the value that maximizes the likelihood function of all non-missing data. Research indicates that FIML is less biased than listwise deletion or simple imputation (Allison, 2002) and that it is robust to violations of its basic assumptions (Collins, Schafer, & Kam, 2001).

FIML rests on two principal assumptions. The first assumption is that the data are missing at random (MAR). For all intents and purposes, this assumption cannot be tested in most research situations because the data required to do so are missing. If, for example, those with missing data on one of the delinquency scales were to have engaged in significantly more or significantly less delinquency than participants with complete data on this scale, then this would constitute a violation of the MAR assumption. Although there is no way to know for sure if this assumption was violated in the current study, there is no obvious reason to suspect that it was. The second assumption upon which FIML rests is multivariate normality. This assumption can be tested by comparing the standard errors attained with an ML estimator and the standard errors attained with a maximum likelihood with robust standard errors (MLR) estimator (Muthén, 2010). Comparing standard errors obtained using an ML estimator with standard errors obtained with an MLR estimator revealed minimal differences in the results for both the Delinquency-14 (range = 0–2.7%, mean = 0.9%) and Delinquency-16 (0–1.8%, mean = 1.0%) analyses. Such small differences provide strong support for the multivariate normality assumption of FIML.

Results

Descriptive statistics and inter-correlations for the 13 variables included in this study are listed in Table 1. There was a small but statistically significant difference between boys and girls on how much actual parental knowledge and attention each received from their mothers (p < .001) and fathers (p < .05), with girls receiving more attention than boys according to the results of all four actual parental knowledge scales. When collinearity diagnostics were performed on the predictors in each of the regression equations, results showed no evidence of multicollinearity (tolerance = .671–.990; variance inflation factor = 1.011–1.491).

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics and Correlations for the 13 Variables Included in the Current Investigation.

Variable	n	M	SD	Range	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13
1.Age	3914	12.41	0.49	12–13	.00	-.03	-.04	-.02	-.01	-.05	-.05	-.04	-.03	.02	.02	.02
2.Sex	3914	1.49		1–2		-.05	-.09†	.05	.03	.09†	.07†	.04	.06	-.12†	.10†	-.13†
3.Child Communicate-12	3833	3.18	0.91	1–4			.43†	.24†	.15†	.15†	.12†	.12†	.06	-.11†	-.14†	-.09†
4.Child Communicate-14	3285	2.92	0.99	1–4				.12†	.26†	.14†	.15†	.06	.10†	-.04	-.16†	-.08†
5.Perceived Parent Know-12	3831	2.86	0.36	1–4					.17†	.10†	.05	.07	.06	-.20†	-.11†	-.09†
6.Perceived Parent Know-14	3285	2.82	0.36	1–4						.10†	.14†	.06	.11†	-.04	-.21†	-.12†
7.Actual Mother Know-12	3780	4.59	0.40	1.75–5							.46†	.24†	.23†	-.14†	-.22†	-.14†
8.Actual Mother Know-14	3285	4.54	0.45	2–5								.21†	.31†	-.08†	-.24†	-.17†
9.Actual Father Know-12	2431	4.43	0.46	1–5									.50†	-.06	-.06	-.04
10.Actual Father Know-14	2280	4.45	0.48	1.67–5										-.08†	-.17†	-.12†
11.Delinquency-12	3838	1.42	4.37	0–85											.22†	.28†
12.Delinquency-14	3261	1.31	4.00	0–74												.56†
13.Delinquency-16	2882	2.09	5.80	0–82

Note. Variable = variable name, Age = chronological age in years, Sex = male (1) versus female (0), Child Communicate-12 = child willingness to communicate with parents at age 12, Child Communicate-14 = child willingness to communicate with parents at age 14/15, Perceived Parent Know-12 = perceived parental knowledge at age 12/13, Perceived Parent Know-14 = perceived parental knowledge at age 14/15, Actual Mother Know-12 = actual mother knowledge of child activities and friendship networks at age 12/13, Actual Mother Know-14 = actual mother knowledge of child activities and friendship networks at age 14/15, Actual Father Know-12 = actual father knowledge of child activities and friendship networks at age 12/13, Actual Father Know-14 = actual father knowledge of child activities and friendship networks at age 14/15, Delinquency-12 = self-reported child delinquency at age 12/13, Delinquency-14 = self-reported child delinquency at age 14/15, Delinquency-16 = self-reported child delinquency at age 16/17, M = mean, SD = standard deviation, Range = range of scores in current sample..

†p < .00064 (Bonferroni-corrected alpha: .05 / 78 correlations).

The results of two separate regression analyses (see Table 2) revealed that actual mother knowledge interacted with sex in equations predicting delinquency at ages 14 and 16, whereas actual father knowledge did not. In addition, the main effect for actual mother knowledge was significant in the Delinquency-14 equation and approached significance (p = .05) in the Delinquency-16 equation. Regardless of whether the interaction term was (Z = −3.50, p < .001) or was not (Z = −3.50, p < .001) included in the regression equation, actual mother knowledge did a significantly better job of predicting Delinquency-14 than father knowledge. On the other hand, mother and father actual knowledge did not differ significantly in their ability to predict Delinquency-16 (Z = −1.13, p = 258).

Table 2.

Regression Results for Delinquency at Age 14 and Delinquency at Age 16.

Variables	Delinquency-14			Delinquency-16
Variables	b [95% CI]	β	Z	b [95% CI]	β	Z
Age	−0.008 [-0.139, 0.125]	−0.00	−0.11	0.083 [-0.139, 0.319]	0.01	0.70
Sex	−0.327 [-0.455, −0.217]	−0.09	−5.43**	−0.380 [-0.599, −0.170]	−0.06	−3.48**
Child Communicate-12 and 14	−0.063 [-0.152, 0.030]	−0.03	−1.37	0.106 [-0.019, 0.248]	0.03	1.56
Perceived Par Know-12 and 14	−0.361 [-0.718, −0.078]	−0.07	−2.27*	−0.117 [-0.617, 0.429]	−0.01	−0.43
Actual Mother Know-12 and 14	−0.691 [-1.208, −0.363]	−0.15	−3.29*	−0.344 [-0.705, −0.017]	−0.05	−1.95
Actual Father Know-12 and 14	0.058 [-0.188, 0.334]	0.01	0.43	−0.070 [-0.522, 0.277]	−0.01	−0.36
Sex x Act M Know-12 and 14	0.155 [0.036, 0.329]	0.08	2.15*	0.192 [0.055, 0.354]	0.06	2.52*
Sex x Act F Know-12 and 14	−0.011 [-0.136, 0.095]	−0.01	−0.19	−0.103 [-0.321, 0.060]	−0.03	−1.08
Delinquency-12 and 14	0.118 [0.072, 0.178]	0.15	4.34**	0.952 [0.664, 1.268]	0.54	6.02**

Note. Delinquency-14 = regression results for self-reported delinquency at age 14/15, Delinquency-16 = regression results for self-reported delinquency at age 16/17, Age = chronological age in years, Sex = male (1) versus female (2), Child Communicate-12 and 14 = child willingness to communication with parents at age 12/13 as a predictor of Delinquency-14 and at age 14/15 as a predictor of Delinquency-16, Perceived Par Know-12 and 14 = perceived parental knowledge at age 12/13 as a predictor of Delinquency-14 and at age 14/15 as a predictor of Delinquency-16, Actual Mother Know-12 and 14 = actual mother knowledge when child age 12/13 as a predictor of Delinquency-14 and at age 14/15 as a predictor of Delinquency-16, Actual Father Know-12 and 14 = actual father knowledge when child age 12/13 as a predictor of Delinquency-14 and when child age 14/15 as a predictor of Delinquency-16, Sex x Act M Know = interaction between sex and actual mother knowledge when child age 12/13 as a predictor of Delinquency-14 and at age 14/15 as a predictor of Delinquency-16, Sex x Act F Know = interaction between sex and actual father knowledge when child age 12/13 as a predictor of Delinquency-14 and at age 14/15 as a predictor of Delinquency-16, Delinquency-12 and 14 = self-reported delinquency at age 12/13 as a predictor of Delinquency-14 and at age 14/15 as a predictor of Delinquency-16, b [95% CI] = unstandardized coefficient and 95% bias-corrected bootstrapped confidence interval (in brackets), Z = Wald Z test statistic, p = significance level of the Wald Z test statistic, N = 3914.

*p < .05; **p < .001.

The significant sex x mother interactions for Delinquency-14 and Delinquency-16 are displayed in Figures 1 and 2, respectively. Calculating the simple slopes for the significant sex x actual mother knowledge interaction for Delinquency-14 revealed that boys (t = −4.71, p < .001) and girls (t = −2.11, p < .05) reported significantly less delinquency when actual maternal knowledge was high compared to when it was low. By contrast, actual maternal knowledge fell short of predicting Delinquency-16 in boys (t = −1.61, p = .11) and showed no relationship to Delinquency-16 in girls (t = 0.35, p = .73). With (Z = −2.44, p < .05) or without (Z = −2.40, p < .05) the interaction term, prior maternal knowledge did a significantly better job of predicting Delinquency-14 than it did of predicting Delinquency-16.

The results did not change when the analyses were restricted to the 10 most serious delinquent acts (got into a physical fight in public, took a motor vehicle for a ride, stole money from a person, purposely damaged property, ran around with a group that damaged property, broke into a house/flat/vehicle, stole something from a parked car, started a fire, used force or threat of force to get money or things from someone, and caught by police for something done wrong). The sex x actual mother knowledge interaction and mother main effect were both significant in the Serious Delinquency-14 analysis (p < .05), whereas the sex x actual mother knowledge interaction was significant (p < .05) and the actual mother knowledge main effect approached statistical significance (p = .05) in the Serious Delinquency-16 analysis.

Discussion

One hypothesis and three sub-hypotheses were tested in this study. The main hypothesis proposed that actual parental knowledge—defined as parental knowledge from the prospective of each parent separately—would predict a reduction in delinquency over a period of 2 years after controlling for the effects of age, child-rated perceived parental knowledge, and the child’s willingness to communicate with their parents. This hypothesis found partial support in that only actual maternal knowledge reduced future delinquency and then only when participants were in early adolescence. These two conditional effects (mother knowledge but not father knowledge and early adolescence but not middle adolescence) were covered by and consistent with sub-hypotheses 1a and 1c, respectively. Sub-hypothesis 1b held that sex would moderate the relationship between actual parental knowledge and delinquency. This was supported by significant sex x actual maternal knowledge interactions in both the early adolescence and middle adolescence analyses. The fact that the effect of actual maternal knowledge on delinquency was significantly stronger in boys than in girls ran counter to this sub-hypothesis.

Implications

The main conclusion to be drawn from this study is that parental knowledge, as perceived by the parent and referred to as actual parental knowledge in the current investigation, is capable of predicting a reduction in delinquency over a period of 2 years after child-rated perceived parental knowledge and a child’s willingness to communicate with their parents is controlled. This suggests that the documented relationship between parental knowledge and child delinquency (Racz & McMahon, 2011) is not simply the result of shared method variance or response biases created by a child respondent completing both the parental knowledge and child delinquency measures. The effect was conditional, however, on the sex of the parent, the sex of the child, and child age. The fact that it occurred with mother but not father actual knowledge is consistent with the previously published studies that have examined parental knowledge in mothers and fathers separately (Yun et al., 2016) and suggests that mother knowledge is a more effective deterrent to delinquency than father knowledge based perhaps on differences in the amount of time mothers and fathers spend with their children. There was also evidence that maternal knowledge was a more effective deterrent during early adolescence than during middle adolescence, a finding that conflicts with several prior studies (Pardini et al., 2008). This developmental context effect can perhaps be explained by the child’s transition into puberty and gradual shift in the relative importance of parents and peers in how youth define their values, priorities, and sense of self (Collins & Steinberg, 2006).

Sub-hypothesis 1b, which predicted that sex would moderate the actual parental knowledge–delinquency relationship and that girls would obtain more benefit from high actual parental knowledge than boys, failed to receive much in the way of support in the current investigation. Although there was evidence of a significant sex x actual parental knowledge interaction, the simple slopes were in the exact opposite direction of what had been predicted. Instead of girls benefitting more from high actual maternal knowledge, boys benefitted more from having mothers who were more knowledgeable about their activities and associations. This is inconsistent with a large body of research suggesting that girls are particularly responsive to and benefit more from high actual parental knowledge than boys (Kerr, Stattin, & Pakalniskiene, 2008; Yun et al., 2016). The current findings are not without precedence. Testing Palestinian refugees from four schools in North Amman, Ahmad, Smetana, and Klimstra (2014) observed an interaction between disclosure, reputed to be an important source of parental knowledge, and sex, to where boys displayed decreased levels of norm-violating behavior when disclosure was high, and girls showed no difference in norm-violating behavior based on high versus low disclosure. Given slightly higher actual parental knowledge scores for girls than boys in the current study, it may be that boys who experience levels of actual parental knowledge comparable to what is normally reserved for girls, function more similarly to girls in terms of delinquency (Figures 1 and 2 in current paper) and norm-violating behavior (Figure 1 in Ahmad et al., 2014).

To the extent that mother knowledge predicted a decrease in future child delinquency in early adolescent boys and girls, it might have value for both prevention and intervention. The question becomes how best to foster actual parental knowledge. We know that child disclosure is the strongest source of parental knowledge and monitoring (Kerr et al., 2010; Liu et al., 2020) and that parental solicitation and control are the weakest. The latter two sources have, in fact, been found to result in increased antisocial behavior in situations where the child perceives that the parent’s behavior is invasive and overly controlling (Hawk, Hale, Raaijmakers, & Meeus, 2008; Kerr & Stattin, 2003). Parental behavior is often grouped into two broad categories: control and support. Research indicates that parental control and support achieve comparable (low-moderate) correlations with delinquent and antisocial behavior (Hoeve et al., 2009). Although it is sometimes assumed that parental knowledge is a facet of parental control, parental support may be a more effective pathway to parental knowledge, particularly given the role of child disclosure in parental knowledge and fact that parental support is just as effective as parental control in reducing delinquency. This view is supported by research indicating that parental knowledge and the quality of the parent–child relationship are connected (Abar, Jackson, & Wood, 2014; McCann, Perra, McLaughlin, McCartan, & Higgins, 2016; Wertz et al., 2016; Willoughby & Hamza, 2011). Finding creative and effective ways of accumulating parental knowledge by increasing parental support is a practical implication of the current results that could be used to prevent and reduce delinquent and acting out behavior.

Limitations

There were several limitations to this study that should be mentioned. From the standpoint of external validity, the current investigation was conducted on Australian school children. Because three-quarters of the Australian population is white and the LSAC did not provide a breakdown of the racial/ethnic status of the sample (except for indigenousness), there could be problems generalizing these results to samples from other countries. With respect to internal validity, the indicators for several of the variables in this study were brief scales of two to four items. The internal consistency of the two independent variables (mother and father actual knowledge) and one control variable (perceived parental knowledge) ranged from poor to adequate using the alpha coefficient but from adequate to excellent using the mean inter-item correlation, a more appropriate indicator of internal consistency for short scales (Clark & Watson, 1995). The opposite problem was observed with the two items used to assess child disclosure. The correlation between the two items was so high as to suggest that the items may have been redundant. Finally, one item from the actual parental knowledge measure used at age 12/13 was not included by the creators of the LSAC in the same measure at age 14/15. This may have weakened the relationship between actual parental knowledge at age 14/15 and delinquency at age 16/17 and illustrates some of the pitfalls associated with using secondary data.

Conclusion

If you were to ask 20 child development experts to define parental monitoring, you might well end up with 20 different answers. This was one reason why actual and perceived parental knowledge were studied instead of parental monitoring. Yet, understanding how parental knowledge deters delinquency can have important implications for theory, practice, and policy. This was an initial attempt to validate parent-rated parental knowledge, referred to here as actual parental knowledge, as a correlate and potential predictor of delinquency when controlling for child-rated perceived parental knowledge and an essential ingredient for child disclosure (i.e., willingness to communicate with parents). Additional research is required to determine how much direct and indirect sources of child- and parent-perceived parental knowledge contribute to delinquency prevention and desistance, if the factors interact, and whether the effect extends beyond actual maternal knowledge and early adolescent male offspring delinquency.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Glenn D. Walters

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