Human Development and Family Science, University of Georgia, 101 Child Development Lab, 202 Carlton St., Athens, GA, 30602, USA,
J Youth Adolesc. 2014 Jul;43(7):1176-90. doi: 10.1007/s10964-013-0060-0. Epub 2013 Nov 20.
Adolescent health behaviors, especially health risk behaviors, have previously been linked to distal (i.e., family economic pressure) and proximal (i.e., parental support) contributors. However, few studies have examined both types of contributors along with considering health promoting and health risk behaviors separately. The present study investigated the influences of family economic hardship, supportive parenting as conceptualized by self-determination theory, and individual psychosocial and behavioral characteristics (i.e., mastery and delinquency, respectively) on adolescents' health promoting and health risk behaviors. We used structural equation modeling to analyze longitudinal data from a sample of Caucasian adolescent children and their mothers and fathers (N = 407, 54 % female) to examine direct and indirect effects, as well as gender symmetry and asymmetry. Findings suggest that family economic pressure contributed to adolescent mastery and delinquency through supportive parenting. Further, supportive parenting indirectly affected adolescent health risk behaviors only through delinquency, whereas supportive parenting indirectly influenced health promoting behaviors only through mastery, suggesting different developmental pathways for adolescent health risk and health promoting behaviors. Testing for gender symmetry of the full model showed that maternal and paternal parenting contributed to females' health risk behaviors directly, while maternal and paternal parenting contributed to males' health risk behaviors through delinquency. Gender symmetry was largely unsupported. The study highlights key direct and indirect pathways to adolescent health risk and health promoting behaviors within a family stress model and self-determination theory framework, and also highlights important gender differences in these developmental pathways.
青少年健康行为，尤其是健康风险行为，此前与远因（即家庭经济压力）和近因（即父母支持）有关。然而，很少有研究同时考虑这两种因素，并分别考虑促进健康和存在健康风险的行为。本研究调查了家庭经济困难、自我决定理论所构想的支持性养育以及个体心理社会和行为特征（即掌握和犯罪行为）对青少年促进健康和存在健康风险行为的影响。我们使用结构方程模型分析了来自白种人青少年儿童及其母亲和父亲样本的纵向数据（N=407，女性占 54%），以检验直接和间接效应，以及性别对称和非对称。研究结果表明，家庭经济压力通过支持性养育对青少年的掌握和犯罪行为产生影响。此外，支持性养育仅通过犯罪行为间接影响青少年的健康风险行为，而支持性养育仅通过掌握间接影响青少年的促进健康行为，这表明青少年健康风险和促进健康行为存在不同的发展途径。对完整模型的性别对称检验表明，母亲和父亲的养育直接影响女性的健康风险行为，而母亲和父亲的养育通过犯罪行为影响男性的健康风险行为。性别对称在很大程度上没有得到支持。本研究强调了家庭压力模型和自我决定理论框架内青少年健康风险和促进健康行为的关键直接和间接途径，并强调了这些发展途径中的重要性别差异。
