Ninoslava Pećnik

Parental behaviors related to adolescents’ self-disclosure: Adolescents’ views:

The aim of the study was to explore adolescents’ perceptions of their parents’ behaviors that inhibited or facilitated adolescents’ self-disclosures to them. Four focus groups with 16 girls and 16 boys from Croatia (13—14 year olds) were conducted. Results indicate that adolescents perceive their self-disclosures to be influenced by a variety of specific parental actions and reactions in disclosure-related situations. According to adolescents’ views, not only can parents hinder adolescent’s disclosure by unfavorable reactions, but they can also prompt the adolescent to disclose by behaving in certain manner. Identified parental behaviors and emotional states (labeled as ‘‘inviters’’, ‘‘inhibitors’’, ‘‘negative reactions’’, and ‘‘positive reactions’’) are discussed in terms of contemporary perspectives on optimal parenting based on children’s psychological needs and children’s rights.

Does social workers’ personal experience with violence in the family relate to their professional responses, and how?

The study examines if and how social workers’ personal experience with violence in the family relates to their professional responses to childrens exposure to domestic violence and physical abuse. Four case vignettes depicting situations of physical child abuse and of children witnessing abuse of their mothers were responded to by 106 Slovene social workers. Their ratings of perceived risk to the child, responsibility for endangerment of the child and support for a range of interventions were correlated with their self-reported frequencies of receiving corporal punishment, witnessing fathers violence against mother and experiencing violence from a husband/intimate partner in their private lives. While corporal punishment in social workers’ childhoodswas linked to favouring childrens protection, social workers’ histories of intimate partner violence were associated with perceiving lower risks to children exposed to domestic violence and physical child abuse. Social workers who had personally experienced violence from their parents and intimate partners were most reluctant to suggest shelter for battered women and children, parent counselling, or notification to the police. The results highlight the importance of addressing the influence of personal experiences of violence on professional judgements, through supervision and other programmes supporting quality in social work with children exposed to violence in their families.

How do parents facilitate or inhibit adolescent disclosure? The role of adolescents’ psychological needs satisfaction

The aim of the study was to test whether the correlation between parental behaviors in the context of adolescent disclosure and adolescents’ self-reported disclosure could be explained by fulfillment of adolescents’ basic psychological needs within their relationships with mothers and fathers. The cross-sectional data were collected from a representative sample of 1,074 seventh graders in Croatia. Parental facilitating behaviors (initiating conversation, support and respectful guidance) and some of the inhibiting behaviors (unavailability, punishment) were shown to be indirectly associated with adolescents’ disclosure through the perceptions of their needs satisfaction. The assumption about the unique contribution of the need-for-relatedness satisfaction in mediating the link between parental behaviors and disclosure was consistently supported, whereas the specific contribution of the need-for-autonomy was apparent only in data about mothers, but not fathers. The results are equivalent for routine disclosure and self-disclosure, suggesting that the processes through which parents facilitate or inhibit both are rather comparable.