Conditions underlying parents' knowledge about children's daily lives in middle childhood: Between- and within-family comparisons

This study examined the correlates of mothers' and fathers' knowledge about the daily experiences of their firstborn (M = 10.9 years) and secondborn ( M = 8.3 years) children in 198 nondivorced, predominantly dual-earner famil ies. Results revealed between- and within-family differences in knowledge a s a function of mothers' work involvement, sibship composition (i.e., sex, birth order), children's personal qualities (e.g., temperament), and parent s' personal qualities (e.g., education, gender role attitudes). Mothers' kn owledge did not vary as a function of how much they worked outside the home , but fathers knew more about their children's activities, whereabouts, and companions when their wives worked longer hows. Parents knew more about th eir younger than their older offspring. Both mothers and fathers knew more about offspring of the same sex than about opposite-sex children, leading t o greater within-family differences in families with mixed-sex siblings. Pe rhaps because parental involvement and monitoring are more "scripted" for m others than fathers, fathers' knowledge was more consistently related to th eir children's characteristics than was mothers.