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While parents’ knowledge of what their children do (such as their activities, behaviors and relationships), especially during adolescence when young people spend less and less time with their parents and more and more with their peers, is a protective factor against risk-taking, delinquency or addiction, it remains to be seen how parents acquire this knowledge.

This knowledge is a two-way, two-dimensional process: the parent must make the effort to know, and the child must want to communicate information. Trust is a key element in the process, and we consider that the child’s willingness is the more essential factor of the two.

Greater parental knowledge predicts less child engagement in a given behavior, but less child engagement in a given behavior also predicts greater parental knowledge.

There are three types of sources of parental knowledge: the child’s confidence, the parent’s solicitation and finally the parent’s control. In recent years, several studies (Assailly 2007) have insisted that the first source is by far the most influential. The parents would not play such an active, direct role in the development of externalized problems and the young person’s adaptation would be more related to what they are willing to entrust.

That said, confidence is possible because parents create a climate that allows it. It is, in fact, more an indicator of the quality of the parent/child relationship than of educational and parenting behavior. Confidence and bonding are associated and reinforce each other: when we confide, the relationship improves, and vice versa. This has been observed in different sociocultural environments (e.g. in Holland, it has been observed as much in adolescents of European origin as in Moroccan, Turkish or Surinamese). This does not preclude cultural differences in the sensitivity to the detection of externalized disorders and hyperactivity (also in Holland, Moroccan, Turkish and Surinamese parents detect them less than parents of Dutch origin).

Three causal relationships are possible:

 – Indirect: the parents’ educational style predicts their child’s confidence, which, in turn, predicts both the parents’ knowledge of their child’s problems and, ultimately, their child’s problems.

 – Direct: the educational style determines the parents’ level of knowledge, whether or not the adolescent confides in them; parents obtain this knowledge by other means (observation, solicitation of the spouse or other adults).

 – Direct relationship between style and behavior: whether they know it or not, parents influence their children simply by the way they raise them.

For example, applying this model to substance use and delinquency, we see that both causal models exist. Some effects are direct, from parental behavior based on their knowledge of what their child is doing. Parents who are invested in controlling the behavior of the young person manage to gain knowledge without their child even confiding in them, by other means. Some effects, however, are indirect, through what their child is willing to tell them about what he or she is doing; this is true for both mothers and fathers.

Thus, we see the interplay between control and connection: sensitivity promotes the young person’s confidence, intrusiveness inhibits it. The warmth of the relationship and the absence of intrusive strategies provide the relational basis for the adolescent’s trust and confidence, which then enhance parents’ knowledge of what their child is really doing. This is what protects against affiliation with deviant peers and the development of externalized problems.

As for the prevention implications of these phenomena, we know that addressing this relational dimension is most important in family environments that are not too “at risk”. In contrast, in very disadvantaged environments, the direct effects of behavioral control are more important.

Other works (Assailly 2007) highlight a more complex modeling of sources and their influences, distinguishing between paternal and maternal functioning. Fathers have more indirect ways of gathering information than mothers, and the strategies are dependent on various factors, such as the number of hours at work. When fathers get information from mothers, this seems to be linked to a lesser involvement of the young person in risky behaviors. This is a system not only of communication between the child and the parents but also of how parents communicate with each other.

On the other hand, adolescents feel more compelled to disclose safety issues than more personal issues. Adolescent boys and girls confide more in their mothers than in their fathers, especially about personal matters: overall, 60% of adolescents confide in their mothers, 20% in their fathers and 20% in neither (Choquet and Com-Ruelle 2003). Girls confide in their mothers more than boys, but mothers overestimate the extent to which their daughters confide in them, which they do not do about their sons.

As for addiction, the paradox is that parents whose children actually use illicit drugs underestimate the phenomenon more than parents whose children do not use them. The former also overestimate the control they have over the phenomenon. The underestimation is even greater for alcohol.

We can see that awareness-raising activities should be carried out, because it is the parents who are most concerned who paradoxically feel the least concerned. When there is a discrepancy between what parents and adolescents report about risky behavior (sexuality, psychoactive substances, violence), there is a link between parents’ overestimation of their child’s real involvement in risky behavior at a given time and the child’s greater involvement in such behavior later on. It is as if overestimation also acts as a risk factor.

Is it because young people, confronted with their parents’ overestimation, see it as a lack of confidence, a factor that will push them into risk and make their parent’s judgment “prophetic” (“since you think I am going to do it so much, then I am going to do it”)? Or is it because parents have good intuition and “guess” in advance what their children will do later? Or even, do the characteristics of the family’s social environment lead both to parents overestimating and young people engaging in risky behaviors later on?

Similarly, accurate parental knowledge is sometimes more harmful than underestimation if parents become more authoritarian and the relationship with their child suffers. We must work not only on this issue of the concordance between what the parents and the adolescent know but also on the parents’ reaction modes to the disclosure of their children’s dangerous behaviors.

For example, when their child does well in school, parents tend to underestimate his or her risky behaviors. Is it because of the “reassurance” of schooling that parents relax their control, which ends up being harmful? We know that teenagers who do well in school are not the ones who confide in others most.

We see how this issue of disclosure and secrecy is complex: parental knowledge can be a protective factor, but parents believe they know more than they actually do. Their knowledge depends on aspects of life, the age and sex of the child and differences between generations.

Thus, parental knowledge of various behaviors will determine their reactions. For example, there may be a lot of conflict about smoking, because smoking is not considered serious on either side, so it will be less hidden, whereas the young person will make much more of an effort to hide other behaviors related to illicit drugs or sex.

Conversely, parents, no doubt overly focused on the dangers of illicit drugs, will communicate much more about these and forget to communicate about the dangers of tobacco. These communication patterns are passed from generation to generation.

In conclusion, and contrary to the old maxim, “children should be seen but not heard”, we note that parental supervision must not be too rigid, fussy or intrusive, because, in this case, the child will no longer confide in them, and it is this absence of confidence that will become the causal factor of risky behavior. This is an environmental transaction and parents must be careful, in their words and actions, so as not to block their child’s communication with them.