Monitoring Challenges: A Closer Look at Parental Monitoring, Parental Psychopathology, and Adolescent Sexual Risk

BACKGROUND: Parents and families play an important role in teenagers' sexual attitudes, behavior and contraceptive use. Parent-child communication about sexual topics and parental supervision are associated with delays in initiating sexual activity, fewer pregnancies and sexual partners, more responsible sexual behavior and greater efforts to avoid AIDS. Although families can play a protective role in reducing adolescent engagement in sexual risk behavior, parents with psychiatric disorders have been found to display more disorganized parenting strategies (inconsistent discipline) and less parental monitoring outside of the home.METHODS: 798 caregiver-adolescent dyads were recruited from adolescent psychiatric programs to participate in a multi-site randomized-controlled trial targeting communication, risk reduction, and monitoring. Ninety-percent of the caregivers were female and 61% were African American. Adolescents were between 13 and 18 years of age (M= 14.9, SD=1.3). RESULTS: Cross-sectional examination of preliminary baseline data revealed significant relationships between parental report of psychopathology and adolescent report of less parental monitoring and greater parental permissiveness. On a self-report screening measure of parental psychopathology (SCL-90R) higher scores on 9 of the 10 possible scales were associated with less parental monitoring (r= .096-.139, p<. 01). Less parental monitoring and greater parental permissiveness was significantly related to adolescent report of having ever had vaginal or anal sex (F= 4.66, p<. 05 and F=5.98, p<. 05, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: These findings lend further support to the impact of parental psychopathology on parental monitoring which influences adolescent sexual risk behavior.