scholarly journals Health and Well-Being of Adolescents in Different Family Structures in Germany and the Importance of Family Climate

Author(s):  
Max Herke ◽  
Anja Knöchelmann ◽  
Matthias Richter

The family is of exceptional and lifelong importance to the health of adolescents. Family structure has been linked to children’s and adolescents’ health and well-being; a nuclear family has been shown to be indicative of better health outcomes as compared with a single-parent family or a step-family. Family climate is rarely included in studies on children’s and adolescents’ health and well-being, albeit findings have indicated it is importance. Using data from n = 6838 students aged 12–13 years from the German National Educational Panel Study, this study shows that stronger familial cohesion and better a parent-child relationship are associated with better self-rated health, higher life satisfaction, more prosocial behavior, and less problematic conduct, and that these associations are stronger than those for family structure. Surveys on young people’s health are encouraged to include family climate above and beyond family structure alone.

2008 ◽  
Vol 29 (11) ◽  
pp. 1492-1519 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ming Wen

Using data from the 1999 National Survey of America's Families, this research investigates the association and pathways between family structure and child well-being among children age 6 to 17. Three indicators of child well-being are examined: parent-rated health, limiting health conditions, and child behavior. Results show that both stepfamilies and intact families are advantageous relative to single-parent families. Family socioeconomic status (SES) and social capital are important factors of child well-being and help explain family structure effects. Family SES seems to have a stronger mediating effect than social capital. However, after simultaneously modeling these hypothesized mediators, significant differences in aspects of child well-being across family types persist in most cases. Findings support the idea that differences in child well-being across family types are considerably but not entirely accounted for by family SES, parental participation in religious services, parent–child relationship, and child engagement in extracurricular activities.


2021 ◽  
pp. 001139212199001
Author(s):  
Fiorella Mancini

Social distancing and isolation measures in response to COVID-19 have confined individuals to their homes and produced unexpected side-effects and secondary risks. In Latin America, the measures taken by individual governments to mitigate these new daily and experiential risks have varied significantly as have the responses to social isolation in each country. Given these new social circumstances, the purpose of this article is to investigate, from the sociological approach of risk-taking, the relationship between confinement, secondary risks and social inequality. The author argues that secondary risks, despite their broad scope, are deeply structured by social inequalities in contemporary societies, especially in developing countries. To corroborate this hypothesis, a quantitative comparative analysis is performed for the Argentine case. Using data from a web-survey and correspondence analysis (CA), there are three major findings: (1) there are some widespread experiences similarly distributed across all social strata, especially those related to emotional and subjective matters; (2) other risks follow socio-structural inequalities, especially those corresponding to material and cultural aspects of consumption; (3) for specific vulnerable groups, compulsory confinement causes great dilemmas of decision-making between health and well-being.


10.18060/1881 ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Staci J. Jensen-Hart ◽  
Jeff Christensen ◽  
Lacey Dutka ◽  
J. Corey Leishman

Military families experience increased stress when facing issues of deployment, separation, and reunification. The increased stress impacts the parent-child relationship as well as child behavioral and emotional well-being. Although recognizing the resiliency of military families, research points to the need to monitor parental stress both pre- and post-deployment and highlights the inherent risks that separation and reunification pose for the parent-child relationship bond. This pilot study was designed to explore the effectiveness of the Child Parent Relationship Therapy (CPRT) Training Model as a proactive method of enhancing parent-child relationships, reducing parental stress, and preventing negative impact of military separations on children.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nickola Overall ◽  
Valerie Chang ◽  
Rachel S. T. Low ◽  
Annette M E Henderson ◽  
Caitlin McRae ◽  
...  

Are parents and families struggling with the ongoing demands of the pandemic, or are parents resilient and adjusted to the ‘new normal’? Assessing average risk versus resilience requires examining how parents and families have fared across the pandemic, beyond the initial months examined in prior investigations. The current research examines average levels of risk versus resilience in parents’ health and functioning over the first 1.5 years of the pandemic. Parents (N = 272) who had completed general assessments prior to the pandemic completed reassessments of psychological and physical health, couple and family functioning, and parenting within two lockdowns involving mandatory home confinement: at the beginning of the pandemic (26 March–28 April 2020) and 17 months later (18 August–21 September 2021). On average, parents exhibited declines in psychological and physical health (greater depressive symptoms; reduced well-being, energy and physical health) and in couple and family functioning (reduced commitment and family cohesion; greater problem severity and family chaos). By contrast, parent-child relationship quality and parenting practices were resilient with no average differences across the lockdowns. Declines in health and couple/family functioning generally occurred irrespective of pre-existing vulnerabilities (poor health and functioning prior to the pandemic) and external stress (reported impact of the pandemic). Partner support, however, tended to buffer declines in couple/family functioning. The results emphasize that attending to the challenges parents and couples face in the home will be important targets to mitigate the ongoing risks of the pandemic to parents’ and children’s well-being.


2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 209-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther S. Chang

The current study is based on the responses of 153 married Korean mothers accompanying their youth in the United States or in New Zealand while their spouses remained in Korea. Kirogi means “wild geese” in Korean and has come to refer to split-family transnational living for the sake of children’s education. Spillover, or a positive correlation, between indicators assessing marital and parent–child relationship quality was tested within the transnational family context. It was also hypothesized that mother–child relationship quality and youth’s educational progress would be positively and uniquely predictive of indicators of maternal well-being when compared with marital quality due to education-focused Confucian values among Koreans. Results indicated positive correlations between indicators of marital and parent–child relationship quality; and only measures of marital quality had unique associations with maternal well-being.


2020 ◽  
pp. 016402752096914
Author(s):  
Yingling Liu ◽  
Laura Upenieks

A large body of work has linked marital quality to the health and well-being of older adults, but there is a lack of agreement on how to best measure dimensions of marital quality. Drawing on a stress-process life course perspective, we construct a typology of marriage type that captures the synergistic relationship between positive and negative marital qualities and health. Using data from Wave 1 (2005/2006) and Wave 2 (2010/2011) of the NSHAP survey from the United States, we examine the association between supportive, aversive, ambivalent, and indifferent marriages for older adults that remained married over the study period on multiple indicators of well-being (depression, happiness, and self-rated health; N = 769 males and 461 females). Results suggest that older adults in aversive marriages reported lower happiness (men and women) and physical health (men). There was less evidence that those in ambivalent and indifferent marriages reported worse well-being.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document