Interparental Relationship Adjustment, Parenting, and Offspring’s Cigarette Smoking at the 10‐Year Follow‐up

Abstract

Familial influences on children's cigarette smoking have been established, yet little is known about whether these influences in childhood relate to offspring's smoking behavior in adolescence. Drawing on prior work showing that children's emotional and behavioral problems (i.e., internalizing and externalizing behavior problems) are influenced by both interparental and parent-child relationships, we examined whether children's emotional and behavioral problems would further predict their smoking behavior in adolescence. Two hundred and twenty-one families were followed from early childhood (M age = 4.05 years) to the 10-year follow-up. Interparental relationship adjustment and disagreement, dysfunctional parenting, and children's emotional and behavioral problems were reported by both mothers and fathers. Adolescents' self-reported cigarette smoking status was assessed along with other demographic variables. Using structural equation modeling, the hypothesis was only supported based on mothers' reports, suggesting that early couple relationship adjustment and parenting relate to children's emotional and behavioral problems, which associate with smoking behavior in adolescence. When the hypothesized model was tested with emotional and behavioral problems separately, only behavioral problems were related to adolescent smoking for both parents. Findings from this study support models of family environment and children's behavioral problems, providing evidence of the long-term links with adolescent cigarette smoking behaviors. Further family-focused research and preventive work, for instance, testing the combination of partner support and parent training, are needed.

Interplay of Depression, Smoking Intention, and Smoking Behavior in Chinese Dai Adolescents

“…Another promising direction is sex-specific education and intervention, for example, by focusing more on volitional control for men and negative emotions for women, as few antismoking interventions for people with depression consider sex-specific smoking and depression interaction (Gierisch et al, 2012). Given the longitudinal relationships found between children's internalizing disorders and their smoking attempts in adolescence (Zhao et al, 2021), future studies and therapies with a family and developmental focus may assist in effective smoking prevention programs in China.…”

Different families, diverse strengths: Long-term implications of early childhood family processes on adolescent positive functioning.

“…Affectionate behaviors between parents provide emotional security and role models of interpersonal interactions for children in the early years, which may affect children’s biological response to novel and stressful experiences and have concurrent and long-term implications for their socioemotional development (Davies & Woitach, 2008; Graham et al, 2010; Lucas-Thompson & Clarke-Stewart, 2007). There may also be a positive spillover process in the family where affective interparental interactions influence how parents interact with the child (e.g., parenting, response to children’s characteristics), which indirectly impacts children’s later adjustment (Erel & Burman, 1995; Latham, 2018; Spjeldnes & Choi, 2008; Zhao et al, 2021).…”

Emerging ideas. Filial piety, substance use, adverse childhood experiences, and parental support: An intergenerational perspective

“…alcohol use, Austria, authoritarian parenting, correlational analysis, developmental cascades, filial piety, intergenerational reciprocity, tobacco smoking Studies of familial influences upon substance use mostly center on parental characteristics (e.g., parental substance use, personality, substance-specific norms), family structures (e.g., single-parent family), genetic influences, and parenting behaviors (Avenevoli & Merikangas, 2003;Chassin et al, 2016;Zhao et al, 2021), whereas less work has explicitly focused on other characteristics of the parent-child relationship. There are findings supporting parent-child attachment as a protective factor for child's substance use (Bell et al, 2000;Fairbairn et al, 2018).…”