APPLETON, WIS. — The importance of negotiating the balance of secrecy and disclosure between parents and their children and the role that balance plays in the development of autonomy during adolescence will be examined in a Lawrence University Science Hall Colloquium.
Jeremy Bakken, a 1999 Lawrence graduate who is pursuing a Ph.D. in human development at UW-Madison, presents “African-American and Hmong Adolescents’ Secretive Behavior: Strategies used to Limit Parents’ Knowledge About Peers” Tuesday, Oct. 3 at 4:15 p.m. in Science Hall, Room 102. The event is free and open to the public.
Bakken will discuss his latest research on how economic and cultural forces influence adolescents’ decisions about disclosing or concealing information about their peer relationships.
Bakken’s study is based on interviews conducted in a mid-sized Midwestern city with 23 African American and 13 first- or second-generation Hmong adolescents in grades 6-12 from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. The subjects were asked about their activities with friends, including information management strategies and motivations for keeping information from their parents. Four primary strategies emerged: full disclosure, partial disclosure, topic avoidance and deception.
The research, according to Bakken, suggests several important considerations about disclosure and secrecy in parent-child relationships during adolescence, such as secretive behaviors are not always deceptive. Most adolescents do not want to lie to their parents and avoid doing so by merely omitting part of the story or avoiding talking about particular activities altogether. Conversely, many parents acknowledge that they do not need or want to know every detail about their children’s activities.
