Associations of Parental General Monitoring with Adolescent Weight‐Related Behaviors and Weight Status

Abstract

Objective: This study examined how parental general monitoring (PGM), which refers to parental awareness of adolescents' activities in various domains, is associated with adolescents' weight status and related behaviors and whether these relationships differ among racial/ethnic groups. Methods: Data are from 4,088 Black, Latino, and White youth assessed in seventh grade (mean age = 13.06). BMI percentile based on measured height and weight indicated weight status. PGM was assessed by adolescent report of parents' awareness of money spending, friends, and whereabouts. Adolescents reported both healthy and unhealthy dietary intake (DI), physical activity, and screen time over the past 7 days. Total sample and multigroup structural models were estimated. Results: PGM was associated with lower weight status for the total sample, as well as being positively associated with healthy DI and physical activity and inversely associated with screen time across racial/ethnic groups. PGM was also inversely associated with unhealthy DI, except for in Black adolescents. There was an indirect effect from PGM to lower weight status via reduced screen time among Latino and White adolescents. Conclusions: Positive outcomes associated with PGM are extended to weight status and related behaviors. Efforts at improving weight status and related behaviors could benefit from addressing general parenting practices with their children.

Children’s healthy and unhealthy food intake related to parental fear of the COVID-19, family communication patterns, and parental controlling feeding practices

“…Furthermore, we found no associations with children's healthy food intake, which could suggest that the in uences of parental and family factors are more salient in health-risk behaviors, such as unhealthy eating than in health-promoting behaviors, such as healthy eating [24]. Alternatively, families adopted more distinctive eating patterns around unhealthy food in general during the pandemic.…”

“…The positive indirect effect of CONF communication to children's unhealthy food intake suggests that this type of rigid communication of expecting children to follow their parents' direction may interfere with children's diet quality. Similarly, increased CONV communication, which emphasizes open and honest communication among family members, signi cantly correlated with children's decreased unhealthy food intake, suggesting that bi-directional communication and a positive interaction climate in the family and similar parenting behaviors may affect children's food intake [24]. Thus, this study suggests that broader family factors may exert more in uence on children's diets than speci c food-focused feeding practices, which was consistent with our Hypothesis 1 and prior research [24].…”

“…There is growing literature that broader parental factors are equally as or more important than speci c feeding practices in in uencing children's food intake [24]. For instance, authoritative parenting styles that focus on warmth and provide control seemed to promote healthy eating among children [25], whereas permissive parenting was associated with children's eating fewer fruits and vegetables [26].…”

Associations of Broader Parental Factors with Children’s Happiness and Weight Status through Child Food Intake, Physical Activity, and Screen Time: A Longitudinal Modeling Analysis of South Korean Families

“…However, recent studies have focused on broader approaches that parents use to provide parenting more generally that are not specifically targeting the children's ERBs. Examples of such broader parenting factors are fostering cohesion in the family, applying the authoritative/democratic parenting style, and general monitoring of children [14]. Parents contribute to creating a nurturing emotional atmosphere in the home based on their own perceptions and experiences, particularly during children's formative years [15], that are in part reflected by their approach to their children's ERBs.…”

“…Despite the central role of parent-child play in children's development, to our knowledge, no study has examined its association with children's ERB. We hypothesize that it can provide a practical avenue for enhancing the parent-child relationship, which we argue is foundational for influencing child ERBs [14].…”