About This Project

Adolescents regulate intimacy with parents through both overt and subversive behaviors. Youths increasingly expect ownership and control over “personal” information, often beyond what parents deem to be appropriate. Changes in adolescence lead to clashes between parents' existing expectations for information and access and youths' expectations for privacy. Parental privacy invasion motivates youths to take restorative action by either directly confronting parents (Hawk et al., 2009) or by keeping more secrets (Hawk, Keijsers, Frijns, et al., 2013).

 

This fuels a negative cycle that decreases relationship quality as youths move toward adulthood. Parents also face choices in balancing information needs and children’s privacy demands. Parents with high self-efficacy tend to employ overt monitoring strategies, such as asking questions or setting rules (Hawk et al., 2016). Parents who lack confidence tend to more often covertly monitor youths by snooping and eavesdropping.

 

Across studies in both Northern Europe and Mainland China (Hawk et al., 2016; Hawk, 2017), covert monitoring is consistently linked to disturbances in family communication and relationships, particularly in terms of promoting greater secrecy. Thus, parental intrusiveness ultimately backfires, as youths use secrecy and/or conflict to introduce distance into the relationship.