Parenting practices as predictors of substance use, delinquency, and aggression among urban minority youth: Moderating effects of family structure and gender

Abstract

This study examined how parenting factors were associated with adolescent problem behaviors among urban minority youth and to what extent these relationships were moderated by family structure and gender.Sixth-grade students (N = 228) reported how often they use alcohol, smoke cigarettes, or engage in aggressive or delinquent behaviors; a parent or guardian reported their monitoring and other parenting practices.Findings indicated that boys and those from singleparent families engaged in the highest rates of problem behavior.More parental monitoring was associated with less delinquency overall, as well as less drinking in boys only.Eating family dinners together was associated with less aggression overall, as well as less delinquency in youth from single-parent families and in girls.Unsupervised time at home alone was associated with more smoking for girls only.Implications for prevention interventions are discussed.Research and theory on the etiology of problem behavior in childhood and adolescence often focus on the role of the family in the development of antisocial behavior (e.g., Hirschi, 1969;Jessor & Jessor, 1977;Patterson, DeBaryshe, & Ramsey, 1989; Steinberg, 1987a).An important factor examined in past studies has been family structure, and this research has shown that youth from single-parent families often have higher rates of problem behaviors including substance use (Hoffman, 1993;Turner, Irwin, & Millstein, 1991), aggression (Vaden-Kiernan, Ialongno, Pearson, & Kellam, 1995), school dropout (Astone & McLanahan, 1991), and teenage pregnancy (Hogan & Kitagawa, 1985).Although the reasons for the higher rates of problem behavior among single-parent families remain unclear, a number of factors are likely to contribute.For example, single parents often have limited financial resources, greater social isolation, and fewer coping resources compared with parents in traditional two-parent families (Elder, Eccles, Ardelt, & Lord, 1995;Gabel, 1992;Norton & Glick, 1986).Also, youth from single-parent families appear to be more susceptible to peer pressure (Steinberg, 1987b) and more likely to make decisions without consulting a parent (Dornbusch et al., 1985).A separate body of research has shown that poor parenting practices are associated with similar negative behavioral outcomes among youth.Poor parental monitoring has been found to be associated with higher rates of adolescent substance use, particularly in terms of initiation of use at earlier ages (Chilcoat & Anthony, 1996;Steinberg, Fletcher, & Darling, 1994), and higher levels of delinquency and aggression (Patterson & Stouthamer-Loeber, 1984).Similarly, poor parent-child communication and poor parental support are frequently