Parenting Styles as a Moderator of the Association between Pubertal Timing and Chinese Adolescents’ Drinking Behavior

Abstract

Background: Previous work has indicated that pubertal timing and parenting styles are associated with adolescents’ drinking behavior, but studies on the relationship between the above three variables are lacking. Methods: Participants were 1408 Chinese adolescents aged 11–16 years old (46.52% girls). The data emphasized pubertal timing, parenting styles, drinking behavior, and socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the adolescent and his or her family. Results: Early pubertal timing was related to drinking behavior; however, parenting styles played a moderating role. For male adolescents, father emotional warmth, mother rejection, and mother emotional warmth moderated the relationship between early pubertal timing and drinking behavior. For female adolescents, mother rejection, mother emotional warmth, and mother over-protection moderated the relationship between pubertal timing and drinking behavior. Conclusions: Parenting styles that include emotional warmth, rejection, and over-protection appear to influence the negative outcomes associated with early pubertal timing, and may be useful in reducing adolescents’ drinking behavior.

The association between pubertal timing and quality of life among children and adolescents: a cross-sectional study in Chongqing, China

“…Our results showed that the early pubertal timing was associated with poorer QOL in children and adolescents, which is similar to the results of the study of Japanese students by Fujimura et al [34]. Compared to previous studies [16,18,34], our study made some advances: First, this study used the PDS and the QOL scale for pubescent children to further explore the relationship between pubertal timing and the dimensions of QOL. Furthermore, our survey was conducted among students in grades 3 through 9 (8 to 15 years old), covering almost all age groups in early and middle adolescence.…”

“…According to the PDS score, the rate of early pubertal timing among children and adolescents aged 8-15 years in this study was 16.07% (1161/7223), which was lower than that in students aged 11-16 years in Hunan Province (19.1%) [18] but close to the rates in Taiwan (16.6%) [41] and Chongqing (16.4%) [42]. This might be due to the difference in the study subject.…”

“…There are many adverse effects of early pubertal timing on children's physical and mental health. Previous studies have shown that early pubertal timing has been associated with depression, low self-esteem, and other mental health problems [13][14][15], as well as smoking [16] and alcohol consumption [17,18]. It also increases the risk of obesity [19], metabolic syndrome, and cardiovascular disease [20,21] in children and adolescents.…”

Fathers’ presence and adolescents’ interpersonal relationship quality: Moderated mediation model

“…Fathers' presence promote social responsibility in adolescents, and parenting styles play a moderating role (Liu, 2017;Krohn et al, 2019;Xia et al, 2020;Hehman and Salmon, 2021). Meanwhile, parenting styles play a regulatory role in many fields, such as early puberty and drinking behavior (Ling et al, 2022), perceived father-child facial resemblance and academic performance (Tu et al, 2021), and teenagers' psychological flexibility (Bibi et al, 2022). Therefore, we proposed the following research hypothesis: Hypothesis 3: Parenting styles play a moderating role in the first half of the fathers' presence on social responsibility and the quality of interpersonal relationships.…”

“…Fathers’ presence promote social responsibility in adolescents, and parenting styles play a moderating role ( Liu, 2017 ; Krohn et al, 2019 ; Xia et al, 2020 ; Hehman and Salmon, 2021 ). Meanwhile, parenting styles play a regulatory role in many fields, such as early puberty and drinking behavior ( Ling et al, 2022 ), perceived father-child facial resemblance and academic performance ( Tu et al, 2021 ), and teenagers’ psychological flexibility ( Bibi et al, 2022 ).…”