We used a rigorous test of three potential mechanisms explaining the association between parental knowledge and adolescent externalizing, and found that parental knowledge reduces adolescents’ externalizing via environmental mechanisms. This finding adds to the literature by demonstrating that even after accounting for both parents’ and adolescents’ genetic influences, knowledge is a successful parenting strategy for reducing adolescents’ externalizing problems, supporting the original explanation (Dishion & McMahon, 1998; Patterson et al., 1989), not the role of evocative child effects, contrary to some reports (Crouter & Head, 2002; Fosco et al., 2013; Laird et al., 2003; Pardini et al., 2008; Willoughby & Hamza, 2011).
