Parental criticism and young adolescent self-disclosure: A cross-cultural study

Criticism by mothers and fathers, as well as young adolescents' perceptions of parental criticism and their self-disclosure to parents, was assessed for a sample of 80 families. Of these, 40 were resident in Australia (20 Anglo-Australian and 20 Greek-Australian) and 40 were resident in Greece (20 professional and 20 working-class). There were no differences between the groups in amount of criticism by parents nor in adolescents' perceptions of criticism. Greek- and Anglo-Australian adolescents disclosed significantly less to parents than did the Greek adolescents. For Greek-Australian adolescents there was an inverse relationship between self-disclosure on a number of topics and perceived levels of parental criticism. The results were interpreted in terms of cultural differences between the groups and adaptive behaviors of the Greek-Australian adolescents.This research was supported by a University of Melbourne grant to the first author.Received Ph.D. from University of Melbourne. Research interests include the social context of adolescent development.Received Ph.D. from Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki. Research interest is in cognitive development through the life span.Received Ph.D. from Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki. Research interest is in cognitive development through the life span.