Family Meal Practices and Well-Being in Hong Kong: The Mediating Effect of Family Communication

Abstract

The literature has provided substantial evidence for the positive associations between family meals and well-being. The underlying mechanism of this relationship has not been explicitly examined. The Happy Family Kitchen II project was a cluster randomized controlled trial of a community-based family intervention. Using data from this project, this article examined the direct and indirect associations among family meal practices, family communication time and quality, and well-being in Hong Kong. A total of 1,261 participants completed a self-administered questionnaire at baseline, 4 weeks, and 12 weeks. Cross-sectional and prospective mediation analyses showed that family meal and family meal preparation indirectly influenced family health, happiness and harmony, subjective happiness, and mental and physical quality of life through their effects on family communication quality. In contrast, family communication time was a weaker mediator of these effects. These findings highlight the role of quality rather than quantity of family communication in promoting well-being.

The association of problematic smartphone use with family well-being mediated by family communication in Chinese adults: A population-based study

“…Our findings of mediating effects of communication sufficiency and quality reflected the contributing role of family communication to family well-being in Olson's Circumplex Model of Family Systems (Olson, 2000), McMaster Model of Family Functioning (Epstein et al, 1978), and our community-based intervention studies (Ho et al, 2018;. The negative association between PSU and family communication was consistent with previous findings that Internet addiction was associated with lower levels of quantity and quality of parent-adolescent communication (Lei & Wu, 2007;Liu, Lin, Zhou, & Zhang, 2019).…”

“…One explanation might be that family communication facilitates the development of emotional connections within families and enables family members to express and share attitudes, values, and beliefs and to be flexible in changing family's leadership, roles, and rules (Epstein, Bishop, & Levin, 1978;Olson, 2000). Our communitybased interventions provided experimental evidence that family well-being could be promoted through perceived sufficient time and high quality of family communication (Ho et al, 2018;.…”

“…In a qualitative study, respondents agreed that PSU in particular symptoms of overuse and cyberspace-oriented relationships might hamper family talks and breed loneliness of family members, which may create possible family conflicts (Romero-Ruiz et al, 2017). Another time-diary analysis showed that smartphone use could challenge time both copresent and on family activities in children with parents (Mullan & Chatzitheochari, 2019), and shared family time allows sufficient family communication (Ho et al, 2018). The findings were supported by the social activity displacement hypothesis proposing that physical interactions might be decreased or displaced by prolonged phone use, given the underlying reality that individuals have a limited amount of time (Kraut et al, 1998).…”

Associations of Family Meals with Adolescent Perception of Family Relationship and Compliance with Parental Guidance in Hong Kong: Results of a Representative Cross-Sectional Survey

“…Indeed, it has been reported that poor relationships with parents in childhood and adolescence are associated with greater odds of health and behavioral problems later in life [ 4 , 12 ]. On the other hand, frequent and open communication between parents and children can increase mutual understanding of each other thereby enhancing family relationship [ 13 ].…”

The Multiple Dimensions of Family Meals and Their Associations with Family Strengths from the Perspective of Korean Mothers with School-Aged Children

“…선 행연구를 살펴보면 가족식사의 의례성은 가족의 친밀감과 유대 감 (Compan et al, 2002), 가족생활만족도 (Kim & Park, 2013;Kim & Um, 2014), 가족응집성과 가족적응성 (Bae, 2016;Bae & Park, 2017;Choi, 2018 (Berge, Draxten et al, 2018;Trofholz et al, 2017). 또한 가족식사를 위한 역할분담이 원활하게 이루어 질 때 가족생활만족도 (Fulkerson et al, 2011;Ho et al,…”