Parenting Patterns and Adolescents' Avoidance of Risky Behaviors

Sharon Vandivere, Child Trends

How do adolescents successfully transition to adulthood? This question would be of little concern if risky behaviors were not so common among adolescents, or were not a threat to adolescents' positive development. However, by age 14, a third of adolescents have engaged in at least two or more delinquent behaviors (for example, carrying a handgun, selling drugs, or stealing), and 14 percent have engaged in two or more health risk behaviors (for example, binge or frequent drinking, cigarette smoking, or having unprotected sex).[1] Also of concern is that adolescents with certain characteristics-for example, those who are members of racial or ethnic groups, who are poor, or who come from single-parent families-are disproportionately likely to engage in health risk or delinquent behaviors that may compromise their successful transition to adulthood.[2] The present study analyzes nationally representative data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) to look at the prevalence of multiple risky behaviors among adolescents between 1997 and 2000, and to examine how socio-economic, demographic, and contextual factors may be associated with a reduced likelihood of these risky behaviors. The paper focuses on two types of parenting behaviors-maternal monitoring and maternal support[3]-and their association with risky behaviors. The NLSY97 is a survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to follow the school-to-work transition of adolescents ages 12 to 16 as of the end of 1996. The sample studied here consists of over 5,000 adolescents who were ages 12 to 14 in 1996 and reported on their own behaviors and their perceptions of parenting behaviors. The survey includes a set of questions designed for use in a parent-youth relationship scale of supportiveness and in a parental monitoring scale.[4] For example, to assess parental supportiveness, adolescents answer questions such as "how often does your mother criticize you or your ideas?" and "I really enjoy spending time with my mother." To assess parental monitoring, adolescents responded to items such as "How much does your mother know about your close friends?" and "How much does your mother know about who your teachers are and what you are doing in school?" The paper begins by examining three types of risky behaviors: 1) life "missteps," 2) delinquent behaviors, and 3) health risk behaviors. The specific behaviors considered within each set of behaviors are listed below: Health risk behaviors · Smoked cigarettes every day in the last 30 days · Drank on 4+ days in last 30 days · Drank 5+ drinks per day at least once in last 30 days · Ever used cocaine or other hard drugs · Ever attacked someone · Ever carried a handgun · High level of behavioral and emotional problems · Ever had unprotected sex Delinquent behaviors · Ever run away · Ever (help) sell drugs · Ever been arrested · Ever carried a handgun · Ever belonged to a gang · Ever purposely destroyed or damaged property · Ever stolen something worth < $50 · Ever stolen something worth ³ $50 · Ever committed other property crimes · Ever attacked someone Life missteps · Ever run away · Ever had or birth father of any children · Dropped out of school · Ever used cocaine or other hard drugs · Ever (helped) sell drugs · Ever arrested for illegal or delinquent offense · Ever attacked someone Looking at several domains of risks helps paint a picture not only of adolescents' current well-being, but also of their future well-becoming (a term used by Ben-Arieh[5] to describe children who are likely to experience positive outcomes as adults). Adolescents who avoid life missteps exhibit well-being, while adolescents who avoid health risk behaviors-associated with later morbidity and mortality-exhibit well-becoming. Those who avoid delinquent behaviors exhibit both well-being and well-becoming, since delinquent behavior is associated with future problems, but also indicates that an adolescent is currently in trouble. By looking at the co-occurrence of risky behaviors, one can identify adolescents who succeed in steering clear of multiple problematic behaviors. Studying each of the three domains of risk separately, I identify adolescents who engage in zero, one, or more than one risky behavior. For example, I compare adolescents who have avoided all health risk behaviors with those who have participated in one health risk behavior and with those who have engaged in more than one health risk behavior. Monitoring and supervision are two types of parenting behaviors that may be associated with adolescents' avoidance of risky behaviors, particularly among disadvantaged children. Previous research has indicated that parent-family connectedness may be related to a reduced incidence of a variety of adolescent health risk behaviors.[6] Similarly, youth who have close or warm relationships with their parents have a relatively low hazard of engaging in any of five "missteps" before age 18.[7] Analyses using the initial wave of the NLSY97 indicate that maternal supportiveness and monitoring are indeed associated with adolescents' avoidance of multiple risky behaviors within each of the three domains, net of socio-economic and demographic factors.[8] The present study builds on this finding to examine whether support and monitoring are associated with adolescents' patterns of risky behaviors four years later. Conducting descriptive analyses separately for each of the three domains of risky behaviors, I first compare the percentages of adolescents who engage in zero, one, or more than one risky behavior across subgroups of adolescents (for example, groups reporting different levels of parental monitoring, groups reporting different levels of parental support, and groups with different socio-economic and demographic characteristics). Next, I estimate a separate multinomial ordinal logistic regression for each of the three domains of risk. These equations estimate the effects of maternal monitoring and support on the likelihood that an adolescent will engage in zero, one, or more than one risky behaviors, controlling for socio-economic and demographic factors. Further, to investigate whether parental support and monitoring mediate the negative effects associated with disadvantaged socio-economic and demographic contexts, I compare hierarchical regression models predicting risk avoidance before and after parenting variables are included. I also examine whether parental support or monitoring is particularly protective for boys, who are more likely to engage in risky behaviors than are girls, by examining interactions between the parenting variables and adolescent gender. Additionally, this paper identifies the levels of parental monitoring and support that are most strongly related to adolescent risk avoidance: moderate, rather than very high, levels may be best. Some research suggests that "indulgent" (overly responsive) parenting, and "authoritarian" (overly demanding) parenting, may not be ideal.[9] Since parental monitoring and parental support are measured using scales in the NLSY97, I examine whether these scales exhibit threshold effects in their relationships with adolescent risk avoidance. Finally, I discuss the implications of the results for policy and the development of child well-being indicators. Family-level measures such as parental monitoring and supervision could be useful both as indicators of adolescent well-being and positive development and as criteria for policymaking and evaluation. ENDNOTES 1. Author's analyses of data from the first wave of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997. 2. National Academy of Sciences. 1993. Losing Generations: Adolescents in High-Risk Settings. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. 3. Note that the NLSY97 also measures paternal monitoring and support, but the effect of father behaviors cannot be examined in the same model as mother behaviors, unless the sample were restricted to two-parent families. 4. Child Trends and Ohio State University Center for Human Resource Research. 1999. NLSY97 Codebook Supplement, Main File Round 1, Appendix 9: Family Process and Adolescent Outcome Measures. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Labor. 5. Ben-Arieh, Asher. 1999. Monitoring and measuring child well being: The international project. Presentation made on Nov. 23, 1999, at Child Trends, Washington, DC. 6. Resnick, M.D., P.S. Bearman, R.W. Blum, K.E. Bauman, K.M. Harris, J. Jones, J. Tabor, T. Beauhring, R.E. Sieving, M. Shew, M. Ireland, L. Bearinger, and J.R. Udry. 1997. "Protecting adolescents from harm." Journal of the American Medical Association, 278(10): 823-832; Council of Economic Advisers. 2000. Teens and Their Parents in the 21st Century: An Examination of the Trends in Teen Behavior and the Role of Parental Involvement. Available online at http://clinton3.nara.gov/WH/EOP/CEA/html/Teens_Paper_Final.pdf. 7. Moore, Kristin A. and Dana A. Glei. 1995. Taking the plunge: An examination of positive youth development. Journal of Adolescent Research 10(1): 15-40. 8. Author's analyses of data from the first wave of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997. 9. Maccoby, E.E. and J.A. Martin. 1983. Socialization in the context of the family: Parent-child interaction. P. 1-101 in P.H. Mussen (series ed.) and E.M. Hetherington (vol. ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 4. New York: John Wiley and Sons.