The close supervision of adolescents dramatically reduces the incidence of risky sexual behavior, drug and alcohol use, and other activities that could negatively affect health and well-being. Because of the strong correlation between parental monitoring and a child’s welfare, social workers, psychologists, child development specialists, and other professionals who work with children now seek to incorporate monitoring into their programs and practice. Therefore they require a definitive resource providing the best research and techniques for productive supervision within the home.This volume defines and develops the conceptual, methodological, and practical areas of parental monitoring and monitoring research, locating the right balance of closeness and supervision while also remaining sensitive to ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. Assembled by leading experts on childrearing and healthy parent-child communication, this book identifies the conditions that best facilitate parental knowledge, ideal interventions for high-risk youth, and the factors that either help or hinder the monitoring of an adolescent’s world. This volume also sets the parameters for future research, establishing a new framework in which the nature and approach of monitoring are evaluated within the parent-adolescent relationship and the particular social realities of everyday life.
