no longer predicted less antisocial behavior, and youths’ behavior no longer reduced monitoring efforts by mothers two years later (Table 3). Taken together, these results indicate that the reciprocal associations between monitoring and preadolescent antisocial behavior are not robust in this cohort; they were small, inconsistent across informants, and were better accounted for by family background and parents’ characteristics. Does youths’ antisocial behavior influence parental knowledge? We next examined the results for parental knowledge, expecting that higher levels of youth’s antisocial behavior would predict lower parental knowledge, but that greater knowledge would have little effect on later antisocial behavior. We found that the more antisocial behavior youths displayed at age 10, the less knowledge their mothers had at age 12 (Figure 3, panel a). Knowledge reported by mothers at age 10 did not statistically reduce youths’ antisocial behavior two years later. We tested the robustness of these results as previously. First, the results remained similar across different informants of parental knowledge, with higher levels of youths’ antisocial behavior at age 10 predicting less parental knowledge as reported by both youth and fathers at age 12 (Figure 3, panels b and c). Second, taking family characteristics into account did not change the pattern of results (Table 3). In addition, we tested whether the results remained when an informant outside the family reported on youths’ antisocial behavior. When using only teachers’ reports of youths’ behavior, the results did not change (Figure 4). Taken together, our findings show that youths’ antisocial behavior predicted lower levels of parents’ knowledge. This effect was consistent across different informants of parental knowledge and youths’ antisocial behavior, and also when someone other than
to completely exclude the possibility that differential stabilities may have contributed to the pattern of results. Second, we examined the associations between monitoring, knowledge, and antisocial behavior at a relatively early age. Preadolescence is a time when there is a sharp decrease in the amount of time children spend with their families and an increase in their unstructured and unsupervised leisure time (Larson & Richards, 1991), which may provide opportunities to engage in antisocial behaviors. The prevalence of antisocial behavior rises between childhood and adolescence as well (Bendixen & Olweus, 1999). Examining the effects of parental knowledge and monitoring during this time is therefore both developmentally and clinically relevant. Third, our sample comprised twins and we cannot be certain that our results generalize to singletons. However, twins and singletons do not differ in their prevalence of antisocial behaviors or antisocial personality traits (Johnson, Krueger, Bouchard, & McGue, 2002; Moilanen et al., 1999) and effect sizes for associations between risk factors and psychopathology outcomes have generally been found to be similar across behavioral genetic and non-genetic studies (Moffitt & E-Risk Study Team, 2002). Fourth, our analyses of the effects of monitoring and knowledge on antisocial behavior could not be entirely repeated with data from fathers or youth. Reassuringly, other studies indicate that youths’ own ratings of parental monitoring or knowledge are no more predictive of antisocial behavior than mothers’ (Kerr & Stattin, 2003). Fifth, our sample of fathers was not representative of the population with regards to socio-economic status and parents’ antisocial behavior. Our findings using fathers’ information should be interpreted with caution but they were consistent with the results obtained for youths’ and mothers’ reports. Implications for research and clinical practice Our study has implications for future research. First, examining the association between children’s antisocial behavior and parental knowledge in the context of families’
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Parental Monitoring Parental Knowledge Age-10 parental monitoring xxxxAge-12 antisocial behavior Age-10 antisocial behavior xxxAge-12 parental monitoring Age-10 antisocial behavior xxxxAge-12 parental knowledge Standardized path estimate (95% CI) Standardized path estimate (95% CI) Standardized path estimate (95% CI) None -.05 (-.08, -.01) -.07 (-.12, -.02) -.24 (-.30,-.19) Family SES -.03 (-.07, .01) -.05 (-.10, .01) -.23 (-.28,-.17) Parent’s antisocial personality -.04 (-.08, .00) -.06 (-.12, -.01) -.22 (-.28,-.16) Maternal depression -.04 (-.08, -.01) -.07 (-.13, -.02) -.24 (-.30,-.19) All -.03 (-.07, .01) -.05 (-.11, .00) -.21 (-.27,-.15) Note: CI = Confidence Interval Table 4. Genetic and environmental influences on antisocial behavior at age 10 and parental knowledge and monitoring at age 12. Genetic and environmental influences A (95% CI) C (95% CI) E (95% CI) Age-12 parental knowledge .68 (.44, .85) .15 (.00, .36) .18 (.14, .23) Age-12 parental monitoring .09 (.00, .21) .79 (.68, .87) .13(.09, .16)