The Link Between Youth Secrecy and Maternal Compassionate and Self-Image Goals

Youth secrecy toward their parents is related to negative outcomes including delinquency, conduct problems, depression, and anxiety. Secrecy literature tends to take one of two perspectives on the causes of youth secrecy: youth motivations for keeping secrets and parent actions that attempt to reduce youth secrecy by increasing levels of disclosure. The current study focuses on the role of mothers’ goals for their relationships with their youth-aged children and the downstream consequences for youth secrecy. Findings supported hypotheses that mothers’ compassionate goals to support their children and not harm them predicted mothers’ greater responsive caring to their children, which facilitated students’ trust in their mother, and ultimately led to the students’ lower secrecy. Alternatively, findings also supported hypotheses that mothers’ self-image goals to maintain or defend private or public images of themselves predicted less responsive caring from mothers toward their children, which predicted students’ diminished trust in their mother, and ultimately led to students’ increased secrecy. Covariates, implications, and future directions are also explored.