The Association between Parental Warmth and Control in Thirteen Cultural Groups

The goal of the current study was to investigate potential cross-cultural differences in the covariation between two of the major dimensions of parenting behavior: control and warmth. Participants included 1,421 (51% female) 7- to 10-year-old (M 8.29, SD .67 years) children and their mothers and fathers representing 13 cultural groups in nine countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America. Children and parents completed questionnaires and interviews regarding mother and father control and warmth. Greater warmth was associated with more control, but this association varied widely between cultural groups

Positive parenting, adolescent adjustment, and quality of adolescent diet in nine countries

Introduction We sought to understand the relation between positive parenting and adolescent diet, whether adolescents’ internalizing and externalizing behaviors mediate relations between positive parenting and adolescent diet, and whether the same associations hold for both boys and girls and across cultural groups. Methods Adolescents (N = 1334) in 12 cultural groups in nine countries were followed longitudinally from age 12 to 15. We estimated two sets of multiple group structural equation models, one by gender and one by cultural group. Results Modeling by gender, our findings suggest a direct effect of positive parenting at age 12 on a higher quality diet at age 15 for males (beta = .140; 95% CI: 0.057, 0.229), but an indirect effect of positive parenting at age 12 on a higher quality diet at age 15 by decreasing externalizing behaviors at age 14 for females (beta = .011; 95% CI: 0.002, 0.029). Modeling by cultural group, we found no significant direct effect of positive parenting at age 12 on the quality of adolescent diet at age 15. There was a significant negative effect of positive parenting at age 12 on internalizing (beta = -.065; 95% CI: -0.119, -0.009) and externalizing at age 14 (beta = -.033; 95% CI: -0.086, -0.018). Conclusions We founder gender differences in the relations among positive parenting, adolescents’ externalizing and internalizing behaviors, and adolescent diet. Our findings indicate that quality of parenting is important not only in promoting adolescent mental health but potentially also in promoting the quality of adolescents’ diet.This study has been funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development grant RO1‐HD054805 and Fogarty International Center grant RO3‐TW008141. This study also was supported by National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Grant P30 DA023026, the Intramural Research Program of the NIH/NICHD, USA, and an International Research Fellowship at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), London, UK, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 695300‐HKADeC‐ERC‐2015‐AdG). S. Z. was supported by theEunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development grant F32HD100159.CC-BY </p