Stattin H, Kerr M
Department of Psychology, University of Orebro, Sweden.
Child Dev. 2000 Jul-Aug;71(4):1072-85. doi: 10.1111/1467-8624.00210.
Monitoring (tracking and surveillance) of children's behavior is considered an essential parenting skill. Numerous studies show that well-monitored youths are less involved in delinquency and other normbreaking behaviors, and scholars conclude that parents should track their children more carefully. This study questions that conclusion. We point out that monitoring measures typically assess parents' knowledge but not its source, and parents could get knowledge from their children's free disclosure of information as well as their own active surveillance efforts. In our study of 703 14-year-olds in central Sweden and their parents, parental knowledge came mainly from child disclosure, and child disclosure was the source of knowledge that was most closely linked to broad and narrow measures of delinquency (normbreaking and police contact). These results held for both children's and parents' reports, for both sexes, and were independent of whether the children were exhibiting problem behavior or not. We conclude that tracking and surveillance is not the best prescription for parental behavior and that a new prescription must rest on an understanding of the factors that determine child disclosure.
对儿童行为的监测（追踪与监督）被视为一项重要的育儿技能。大量研究表明，受到良好监测的青少年较少参与犯罪及其他违规行为，学者们据此得出结论，父母应该更仔细地追踪自己的孩子。本研究对这一结论提出质疑。我们指出，监测措施通常评估的是父母所掌握的信息，而非其来源，父母获取信息的途径既可以是孩子主动透露，也可以是自己积极监督的结果。在我们对瑞典中部703名14岁青少年及其父母的研究中，父母所掌握的信息主要来自孩子的主动透露，而孩子的主动透露是与犯罪的广义和狭义衡量指标（违规行为和与警方的接触）联系最为紧密的信息来源。这些结果在孩子和父母的报告中均成立，对两性都适用，且与孩子是否表现出问题行为无关。我们得出结论，追踪和监督并非父母行为的最佳方式，新的方式必须基于对决定孩子主动透露信息的因素的理解。
