A Review of Parenting Style, and Its Effects on Adolescent Smoking and School Achievement Joseph J. Lee The College of New Jersey Author Note This literature review was completed as an assignment for an Introduction to Counseling class at The College of New Jersey under Dr. Atsuko Seto. The use of correct APA format in both citations and general formatting, although has been evaluated prior to being turned in for grading, is not guaranteed. I would like to thank Dr. Seto and the entire Counselor Education Program at The College of New Jersey for being patient, informative, and overall very effective instructors.
Abstract A literature review on the affects of parenting styles on adolescent smoking and school achievement. The parenting style major components are measured to see if they are independent risk factors or independent protective factors for adolescent smoking. Results vary from study to study; however, it is generally agreed across all studies that the authoritarian parenting style is the most effective. It has been found that the monitoring, a part of the demandingness aspect of Daumrind’s (2005) three identified parenting styles is the most controversial independent variable in relation to adolescent smoking.
This literature review was aimed to help inform school counselors thus, a section on how parenting involvement affected school achievement. Keywords: literature review, parenting style, adolescent smoking. School achievement Adolescent Smoking Adolescent smoking is a problem that many school counselors are confronted with. It would be advantageous for school counselors to understand from different perspectives as to why adolescents begin to and continue to smoke. In this section we will look at how parenting styles, characterized by responsiveness and demandingness as well as other factors affect adolescent smoking.
Baumrind (2005) defines responsiveness as “the extent to which parents foster individuality and self-assertion by being attuned, supportive and acquiescent to children’s requests; it includes warmth, autonomy support and reasoned communication”, and demandingness as “the calims parents make on children to become integrated into society by behavior regulation, direct confrontation, and maturity demands (behavioral control) and supervision of children’s activities (monitoring)” (as cited in Areepattamannil, 2010).
It would be to the counselor’s benefit to have an understanding of how parental styles influence adolescent smoking for when working with parents themselves and in the creation of prevention programs. Research Authoritative parenting style and adolescent smoking and drinking. In a research article by Piko and Balazs (2012), it was hypothesized that the authoritative parenting style characterized high responsiveness and high demandingness served as protective factors against adolescent substance use, for the purpose of this review focus was put on smoking.
Other factors were also considered including gender, age, negative family interactions and positive identifications with parents were also considered as protective and risk factors. The authoritative parenting index was used to measure both responsiveness and demandingness. Negative family interactions and positive identification with parents were measured via questions such as “During the past month, how often have your parents yelled at you? ” and “How much do you respect your parents? ” respectively.
This study also hypothesized that “parental control might play a more important role in late adolescent’s behavior” (Piko & Balazs, 2005), thus lifetime and monthly prevalence of smoking and drinking were also measured in the study. The results of this study showed that gender was not a significant factor in smoking, both boys and girls, regardless of age, smoked at the same rates. Piko and Balazs (2005) also found that regardless of age, lifetime prevalence and monthly prevalence more ‘negative family interactions’ and less ‘positive identification with parents’ was highly correlated with more cigarette use.
However, Age alone turned out to be the single greatest risk factor where 71. 5% of high schoolers reported ever smoking. It was here where parental control (demandingness) was a significant protective factor, even though this was not the case in younger adolescents. Thus, both aspects of authoritative parenting, responsiveness and demandingness were confirmed to be protective factors in both males and females across age groups. Parenting style and adolescent smoking.
O’Byrne, Haddock, Poston, and Mid America Heart Institute (2002) investigated whether parenting style was a risk factor of smoking initiation and experimentation among adolescents and whether there was a relationship between parenting style and readiness to quit, and nicotine dependence among smokers. O’Byrne et al. (2002) defined current smokers as those who smoke regularly, experimenters as individuals who have smoked on one or two occasions, but have not smoked in the past month. Initiated smokers were considered both current smokers and individuals who smoked regularly in the past and then quit.
Readiness to quit was categorized into four stages: precontemplation, for those who had no intent on quitting, contemplation, for those who may quit but not within the next 6 months, preparation, for those who will quit within the next 6 months and action, for those who will quit next month. Parenting style was measure by the Family of Origin Scale (FOS) which measured family intimacy and autonomy. This scale “attempts to measure the perceived level of healthy functioning in the participant’s family of origin” (O’Byrne et al. , 2005).
Intimacy is defined by encouraging openness, expression of feelings, dealing with conflicts, and promoting sensitivity. Autonomy is defined as an emphasis on clarity of expression, personal responsibility, respect for others, and dealing openly with issues. The FOS measure of autonomy and intimacy is considered similar to Baumrind’s responsiveness and demandingness conceptualization of optimal parenting. O’Byrne et al. (2002) found that parenting style (FOS score) was not a significant predictor of adolescent smoking experimentation.
However, the study did find that having a high percentage of friends who smoke, a lower grade point average and rebelliousness and reported alcohol use were significant predictors of experimentation. These same odds also significantly increased the odds of initiation, but in the case of initiation O’Byrne et al. (2002) found that parenting style was a significant independent predictor of smoking initiation. In fact, “for every one-point decrease in an adolescent’s FOS score, there was a 5% increase in the likelihood that they were a current smoker” (O’Byrne et al. 2002). In terms of readiness to quit those who were in the precontemplative, or not ready to quit stage had a significantly lower FOS score then the other stages and the action, or ready to quit stage had a, although not significant, higher FOS score then the stages below it. Those who had at least one successful 24 quit attempt had a significantly higher FOS score then those who did not have any successful quit attempts or did not attempt at all. For the non-smokers it was recorded that 96. 1% did not plan to smoke in the next 6 months and 89. % did not believe they would smoke within the next year. Also the 89. 5% of non-smokers who would not smoke if their best friend offered them a cigarette had significantly higher FOS score than those who reported they would if offered. The relation of parental practices and self-conceptions to young adolescent problem behaviors and substance use. The aim of this next research was to “determine whether parental child rearing practices serve as protective factors for risk behavior” (Raboteg-Saric, Rijavec, & Brajsa-Zganec, 2001).
This study questioned via questionnaire 144 girls and 142 boys ranging from age 11 to 14. The independent variables used measured parental monitoring, which measured how much their parent knew about their whereabouts, parental support, which measured how much adolescents perceived parental responsiveness and parental use of noncoercive discipline. The questionnaire also measured how often parents engaged in joint decision making and how often parents engaged in children’s school and afterschool activities.
The dependent variables were what how often drank alcohol, smoked, bullied, displayed aggressive and disrespectful behavior, and vandalism. “High parental monitoring was the only aspect of parental behavior that was consistently negatively related to children’s behavior problems and substance use” (Raboteg-Saric et al. , 2001). This raises the question of whether parental monitoring outside of an authoritarian context is a risk factor for smoking and other delinquent behavior or if perhaps it is in fact the inconsistency in parental monitoring that is the risk factor. Discussion
Responsiveness has been proven throughout many research articles that it is a strong protective factor against smoking and other delinquent behaviors. However, research has shown mixed results of the effect of parental demandingness, mainly monitoring. Then why is it that authoritative parenting, which is characterized by high levels of responsiveness and high levels of demandingness show time and time again that it is a more effective parenting strategy than authoritarian parenting, characterized by low responsiveness and high demandingness, and permissive parenting, characterized by high responsiveness and low demandingness.
Perhaps it is because that a high level of demandingness needs to be used in conjunction with high levels of responsiveness. This may be true, but there has been no evidence to support this claim. Thus more research that studies the interactions between responsiveness and demandingness is required. There are clear implications for the use of this information, especially for counselors who work within the school setting. Such information could be used to create prevention programs to lower rates of smoking and other deviant behaviors in schools.
Yang and Schaninger (2010) explain that although parents’ influence as models has been identified; focus primarily still remains on child-oriented prevention strategies. So that brings up the topic of how to shift these prevention programs to be more parent-oriented to more effective influence kids. One point we talked about before was that inconclusive evidence that whether parental monitoring is a risk or protective factor. A study by Fletcher and Darling (1995) suggested that Authoritative parents are careful monitors of their children’s behavior.
This study shows that authoritative parents are also intentionally or inadvertently monitoring their children’s associates as well. Fletcher and Darling (1995) went on to further explain that adolescents with friends have authoritative parents had lower levels of delinquency and substance abuse. This has very good implications of school counselors who would design parent to child prevention programs since having friends who smoke, are rebellious or consume alcohol are such big risk factors, monitoring their own children’s’ associates would be beneficial.
This would also produce the opportunity for other parents who are in the same parent to child prevention program could create support systems, where the parents could support each other throughout the program and carefully monitor each other’s children, while under the careful watch of a trustworthy companion. School Achievement It makes logical sense that parents have a significant influence on how well students do in school. As a school counselor it would be most beneficial to now how parental involvement can help or hurt a student’s success in school. This section will give an overview to some of parental factors that influence a student’s success in school. Research Parenting practices, parenting style, and children’s school achievement. The study conducted by Areepattamannil (2010) looks at how parental involvement affects a child’s success in school. Parental involvement is defined as “parental participation in the educational process and experiences of their children” (Jaynes, 2010, p. 42).
Jaynes (2010) explains that parental involvement can be divided into two constructs parenting practices and parenting style. Parenting practices can be further divided into parental expectations which concerns educational future and parental beliefs which concerns the importance of good grades and school beyond high school. Data was drawn from the 2002 Survey of Approaches to Educational Planning (SAEP). The results of the study found that “family SES, parental encouragement, parental expectations and beliefs were all positive predictors of school achievement” (Areepattamannil, 2010). Parent monitoring was a negative predictor of school achievement and the higher the level of parental monitoring, the lower the level of children’s school achievement” (Areepattamannil, 2010). Areepattamannil (2010) goes on to explain that parental encouragement being positively associated with school achievement indicated that praising pro-learning behaviors would encourage achievement. Jeynes (2010) explains that parental expectations, paternal beliefs, and school achievement is intuitive because parents who highly regard education would instill the same beliefs into their children.
Alas, although one might think that monitoring students to do their schoolwork would be an effective strategy to improve school performance Rogers, Theule, Ryan, Adams, and Keating (2009) suggest that children may have their academic competence lowered when constantly monitored. Grolnick (2003) also explained that putting pressure and control on a student could decrease motivation, and undermine the learning process. Discussion Mandell and Sweet (2004) stated that “Indubitably, all parents want their children to succeed at school, but not all parents are successful in facilitating success” (as cited in Areepattamannil, 2010).
When working as a school counselor, parents will undoubtedly have questions as to how they may help their child do better in school. Knowing how parenting involvement influences school achievement would be invaluable information. However, Areepattamannil (2010) concludes by explaining that although we know how individual parenting involvement factors further research is “needed to examine the nuanced interplay of parental expectations and parental beliefs in predicting parenting style … [and] the influence of interaction between parental encouragement and parental monitoring on children’s school achievement”.
References Areepattamannil, Shaljan (2010). Parenting practices, parenting style, and children’s schoolachievement. Journal of Advanced Academics, 19(4), 700-743. Baumrind, D. (2005). Patterns of paternal authority and adolescent autonomy. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 108, 61-69. Fletcher, Anne C. , Darling, Nancy, Steinberg, Laurence, & Dornbusch, Sanford (1995). TheCompany theykeep: Relation of adolescents’ adjustment and behavior to their friends’perceptions ofauthoritative parenting in the social network.
Developmental Psychology,31(2), 300-310. Grolnick, W. S. (2003). Control and academics. In W. S. Grolnick (Ed. ), The psychology ofparental control: How well-meant parenting backfires (118-133). Mahwah: LawrenceErlbaum. Jeynes, W. H. (2010). Parental Involvement and academic success. New York, NY: Routledge. Mendell, N. , & Sweet, R. (2004). Parental involvement in the creation of home learningenvironments: Gender and class patterns. In R. Sweet & P. Anisef (Ed. , Preparing forpost-secondary education: New roles for governments and families (249-272). Kingston:Mcgrill-Queen’s University Press. O’Bryne, Kristin Koetting, Haddock, C. Keith, Poston, Walker S. C. , & Mid America HearthInstitute (2002). Parenting style and adolescent Smoking. Journal of Adolescent Health,30, 418-425. Piko, Bettina F. , & Balazs, Mate A. (2012). Authoritative parenting style and adolescentsmoking anddrinking. Addictive Behaviors, 37, 353-356. Raboteg-Saric, Zora, Rijavec, Majda, & Brajsa-Zganec, Andrea (2001).
The relation of parentalpractices and self-conceptions to young adolescent problem behaviors and substance use. Nordic Journal of Psychiatry, 55(3), 203-209. Rogers, M. , Theule, J. , Ryan, B. Adams, G. , & Keating, L. (2009). Parental involvement andchildren’s school achievement. Canadian Journal of School Psychology, 37, 34-57. Yang, Zhiyong, & Schaninger, Charles M. (2010). The impact of parenting strategies on childsmoking behavior: the role of child self-esteem. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing,29(2), 232-247.
