Acquiring Knowledge About Adolescents' Activities: Muslim Mothers and Their Daughters and Sons

Drawing on social cognitive domain theory, this study investigated how Muslim mothers in the United States acquired knowledge regarding their adolescent children's activities. Despite the importance of parental monitoring in adolescent development, research remains limited regarding how cultural and religious contexts shape these processes in understudied populations like Muslim Americans.

The sample included 99 Muslim mothers (M_age = 41.26) of middle and high school students (M_age = 13.87). Mothers reported on their knowledge acquisition across six distinct domains of their children's activities: conventional, conventionally religious, moral, prudential, personal, and multifaceted. They also indicated the degree to which they employed maternal solicitation, voluntary child disclosure, and explicit parental rules to acquire information.

Maternal solicitation was associated with knowledge aggregated across domains. Associations, however, varied by domain; for instance, knowledge of conventionally religious activities relied solely on voluntary disclosure, whereas moral issues were associated with both solicitation and rules, and multifaceted issues were uniquely associated with explicit rules. Significant Gender X Source interactions emerged: for conventional and multifaceted issues, solicitation was the primary knowledge source for sons, while voluntary disclosure was the primary source for daughters regarding conventional issues. Additionally, mothers reported high levels of religious belief, which was positively associated with maternal knowledge; however, domain- and gender-specific patterns remained significant after accounting for religiosity.

The findings underscore the domain-specific and gendered nature of parental monitoring within Muslim American families. By demonstrating that information-sharing processes are sensitive to both the type of activity and the child's gender, this study contributes to a more nuanced developmental understanding of how cultural and religious contexts influence adolescent-parent dynamics.