The Impact of Parenting on Risk Cognitions and Risk Behavior: A Study of Mediation and Moderation in a Panel of African American Adolescents

Abstract

Hypotheses concerning the extent to which adolescents' cognitions mediate the relation between parenting behaviors and adolescent substance use were examined in a panel of African American adolescents (N = 714, M age at Time 1 = 10.51 years) and their primary caregivers. A nested-model approach indicated that effective parenting (i.e., monitoring of the child's activities, communication about substances, and parental warmth) was related to adolescent substance use more than 5 years later. The parenting behaviors protected the adolescent from subsequent alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use through associations with two cognitive elements from the prototype/willingness model: favorable risk images (prototypes) and behavioral willingness. Additional analyses indicated that these protective effects were strongest among families residing in high-risk neighborhoods.

Parent–child connectedness and communication in relation to alcohol, tobacco and drug use in adolescence: An integrative review of the literature

“…Adolescents are more likely to display open communication with their parents about general topics when they have high PCC (Luk, Farhat, Iannotti, & Simons-Morton, 2010). Parents are more likely to have the opportunity to have frequent conversations and set rules effectively when PCC is high (Cleveland, Gibbons, Gerrard, Pomery, & Brody, 2005;Guilamo-Ramos et al, 2008;Harakeh, Scholte, Vermulst, de Vries, & Engels, 2010;Koning, Van den Eijnden, & Vollebergh, 2014;Maggi et al, 2014). In Chaplin and colleagues' (Chaplin et al, 2014) observational study adolescents' physiological responses were measured during conversations with parents; when parents displayed behaviours suggestive of low PCC, such as criticism and sarcasm, adolescents tended to display higher cortisol levels, which were indicative of greater feelings of discomfort.…”

The Effects of Parental Monitoring and Communication on Adolescent Substance Use and Risky Sexual Activity: A Systematic Review

“…Of the final twenty articles included in the study, thirteen used cross-sectional study designs [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34] and seven had longitudinal study designs [35][36][37][38][39][40][41]. The majority of the studies (12/20) were conducted in the USA [22-26, 29, 31, 33, 34, 38, 40, 41].…”

“…However, one study consisted of an equal split in male/female adolescent respondents [38], while another study had only female caregiver respondents [26]. Four of the twenty studies sought a parent-child dyad for the sample [29,34,36,38,40], all of which were mother-child respondents even though both parents were recruited.…”

“…Other tests used were the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) [36], Drug Involvements Scale (DISA) [38], the University of Michigan Composite International Diagnostic Instrument (assesses problematic alcohol use) [40], Eysenck and Eysenck Inventory (assess risk taking) [40] and the Youth Health Risk Behaviour Inventory [29]. 1 Was the sampling method representative of the population intended to the study?…”

“…Parental monitoring was shown to promote low substance use, with the greatest impact documented on alcohol and marijuana use [22,40]. Additionally, it decreased the likelihood of drug use initiation and lowered substance use amongst female high risk takers [23].…”