Parents sometimes wonder how they can be firm and have positive relationships with their teenagers. These may sound like they are mutually exclusive, but research shows that in fact, they are not. If you are trying the find the balance between “friend” and “parent,” well, join the club. Finding “balance” is one of the biggest challenges parents face. But you need to know that you can have a relationship some may want to characterize as “friend:” wonderful, warm, pleasant and supportive, and  be a “parent” who holds your teenager accountable and applies rules — including saying “no” when necessary. And there are important benefits in doing so!

One notable demonstration of this comes from CASA, Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse. This respected organization conducts many insightful studies about parents and teenagers. Their research demonstrates in many ways that parents who hold their teenagers accountable are more effective at keeping them safe from risky behavior.

One study in particular goes one step further, and shows that parents who hold their teens accountable and apply rules have better relationships with them than parents who do not apply rules and are too lenient.

“Hands-on” vs. “hands-off” parenting:*
In this study CASA measured monitoring activities regularly taken by parents.  They examined the following twelve activities… in fact, why don’t you count how many of these activities you take on a regular basis? Do you:

• monitor what your teen watches on TV?
• monitor what she does on the Internet?
•  restrict the CD’s he can buy?
• know where your teenager is after school and on weekends?
• know if your teen is telling you the truth about what he’s really doing?
• know how your child is doing in school?
• impose a curfew?
• make clear that you’d be “extremely upset” if he used marijuana?
• eat dinner with your child six or seven nights a week?
• turn off television during dinner?
• assign regular chores to your son or daughter?
• make sure an adult is at home when your teen arrives home from school?

CASA defined “hands-on” parents as those who consistently took at least ten of the above twelve actions, and “hands-off” parents as those who took five or fewer actions from the list above. Clearly there is a rather large “no-man’s land” for those parents who take between 5 and 10 of the indicated actions. This study was done for 1000 teenagers aged 12-17, and they identified that 3 out of 4 teens live in hands-off households.

More monitoring = better relationships
What is even more interesting, however, is when they correlated this data against the relationships these teens report having with their parents. There is a strong positive correlation between parental monitoring and the quality of the relationships between parents and their teenagers. The survey found that teenagers living with “hands-on” parents had a much better relationship with them…as reported by the teens themselves. Specifically:

• 47% of teens living in “hands-on” households reported an excellent relationship with their father, compared to 13% living in “hands-off” households.
• 57% of teens living in “hands on” households reported an excellent relationship with their mother, while only 24% living in “hands-off” households did.

There is another benefit to “hands-on” parenting, as well. Less parental monitoring is associated with teens who are more likely to be involved in alcohol and drug use, have increased sexual activity with more partners, and lower academic performance in school.

*”Survey links hands-off parenting, teen drug use,” Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly, 26 Feb. 2001: 6.