Parents’ Monitoring-Relevant Knowledge, Involvement with Deviant Peers and Substance Use: Time-Variant and Long-Term Associations among Adolescents Aged 12-17

Abstract

With longitudinal data, drawn from the Malmö Individual and Neighbourhood Development Study (MINDS), time-variant and long-term associations between parents’ monitoring-relevant knowledge, involvement with deviant peers and substance use are examined among a sample of 190 adolescents followed from 12 to 17 years of age. The main results show that parents knowing where their children are, what they are doing, and whom they are with, is beneficial in providing protection against involvement with deviant peers, which in turn appear to be important to the development of substance use. These results apply to both time-variant and long-term associations.