The first is intra-individual factors that are on the child’s mind and cause him or her to need
social input. Biological development, cultural and social pressures, and individual maturity
determine these issues, and, thus, a child’s age, personality, and background also contribute to his
or her level and need of self-disclose in a relationship with a parent. Second set of factors is
called contextual factors, which include the opportunities and situations that the individual has to
disclose as created by the socio-cultural environment. Girls are noted for usually disclosing their
problems, mostly to their mothers, while boys reveal more about bad grades, behavioral
conflicts, and other issues to both parents. Certain people called high openers more likely to get
others to disclose. Even people known to disclose very little are likely to disclose more to high
openers. Thus, if parents are characterized as good listeners, trustworthy, accepting, relaxed, and
sympathetic, as are high openers, then they will likely elicit more disclosure from their children.
Feelings, positive or negative about the parent-child relationship during one’s upbringing have
also been found to correlate with the child’s disclosures to the parents. Sometimes children
qualify their disclosures by merely stating that they only disclose what they feel they want to
their parents. Thus, some information is kept secret. This is dubbed selective self-disclosure.