Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

Depression in Teen Girls Linked to Absent Fathers in Early Childhood

New research out of the UK's University of Bristol indicates that girls whose fathers were absent during their early childhood are more likely to become depressed in their teen years.

The study, published in Psychological Medicine, found that girls whose fathers left when they were between the ages of 0 and 5 were more likely to develop depressive symptoms in adolescence than those whose fathers left when they were between the ages of 5-10 and boys in both age groups (0-5 and 5-10).

The findings are part of the larger "Children of the 90s" longitudinal study, a long-term research project that follows the children of 14,000 mothers who enrolled during their pregnancies in 1991 and 1992. This depression study in particular looked at 5,631 children.

"These findings indicate a need to include fathers in research related to child and adolescent mental health issues," Iryna Culpin, the paper’s lead author, said in a press release.

Source: Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/15/teen-depression-in-girls-_n_3281871.html

Moms Lead Social Media Use

US moms continue to increase their social media usage. According to a March 2013 study by comScore for online parenting resource BabyCenter, more than 90% of US mom internet users reported using social media on a regular basis. BabyCenter estimated that 20% more moms used social media in 2013 than did so in 2010. At this point, moms who do not use social media are becoming practically unheard of.

Moms between 18- to 34-years-old were not only more likely to be on social sites, they also spent considerably more time on Facebook than the general population—24% more time on desktop, and factoring in mobile, young moms spent 260% more time than the average user.

BabyCenter also found that moms overindex in their use of all the other leading social platforms—YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+.

According to BabyCenter, the top reasons moms reported participating in social included connecting with other moms and friends and family, discovering information, and sharing family milestones. Ninety-two percent of social moms said they shared family milestones on Facebook. Getting advice was also an extremely popular reason moms used social media.

Source: eMarketer.com
http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Why-Moms-Social/1009855

Survey: Nearly 1 in 4 Teens Drive While Impaired

Nearly a quarter of teens — 23% — admit to driving under the influence of alcohol, marijuana or prescription drugs used illegally at some point, a new survey finds.

What's worse, they don't view themselves as a danger: Almost 20% of those who drink and drive say it improves their driving, a view shared by 34% of those who drive under the influence of marijuana.

Those are among findings of a new survey of 1,708 11th- and 12th-graders by SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions) and insurer Liberty Mutual.

The survey highlights the vital role of parents in keeping teens safe behind the wheel. It found that teens are more likely to drink around relatively unsupervised events, such as the Fourth of July or during the summer, than during heavily supervised activities like proms or graduations.

About twice as many teens report drinking on summer vacation than teens who admit drinking after prom or graduation, the survey found.

Cathy Chase of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety says the percentage of teens who think they can drive safely after drinking or using marijuana "seems high. But unfortunately, it's not surprising because teens think they're invincible and they thing nothing will happen to them. Unfortunately, sometimes it takes a friend or someone in their school getting killed before the reality kind of hits them."

Source: USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/25/teens-drunken-driving-impaired-survey/2106325/

Each Family Dinner Adds Up to Benefits for Adolescents

Parents have heard it for years: Family dinners help kids avoid risky behaviors and may even help them in school.

But new research shows that the more frequent these dinners, the better the adolescents fare emotionally, says new research published this week in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

"The effect doesn't plateau after three or four dinners a week," says co-author Frank Elgar, an associate professor of psychiatry at McGill University in Montréal. "The more dinners a week the better."

With each additional dinner, researchers found fewer emotional and behavioral problems, greater emotional well-being, more trusting and helpful behaviors toward others and higher life satisfaction, regardless of gender, age or family economics. The study was based on a nationally representative sample of 26,069 Canadian adolescents ages 11 to 15 in 2010.

While researchers see a correlation, they can't say family dinners caused the benefits. "We don't know if family dinners contribute to mental health, or if mental health and other behavioral problems cause some teenagers to avoid the family dinner," Elgar says.

Source: USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/24/family-dinner-adolescent-benefits/2010731/

Current Positive Family Relationships Linked to Healthy Marriages Later

Adolescents who have positive relationships with their parents tend to have stable and satisfying relationships in their early adult marriages as well as romantic relationships, a University of California Davis study has found.

Researchers, who began studying 265 individuals in the 1990s, found that nurturing parents contributed to the future success of their children's young adult romantic relationships.

"Our results indicate that when parenting behaviors are high in warmth and supportiveness, high in levels of child monitoring and positive child management and low in levels of harsh and inconsistent discipline in adolescence, early adult children are more likely to endorse the belief that marriage requires emotional investment," researchers said. "In turn, these emotional investments were associated with more positive romantic relationship interactions with a partner."

The study has practical implications for the importance of premarital and marital counseling that emphasizes the positive aspects of parenting, commitment in marriage and romantic relationships, sharing of relationship beliefs and expectations, and other aspects that can prepare people for romantic partnerships, the authors said.

Source: Daily Democrat
http://www.dailydemocrat.com/news/ci_22759302/uc-davis-study-positive-family-relationships-linked-healthy

Religious Parents' Divorce May Cause Children to Leave the Church

A new study has found that the children of religious couples are much more likely to leave the religion if their parents get divorced.

The study, published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, found that children who had two religious parents who get divorced are twice as likely to become estranged from their church as adults compared to people whose parents didn't get divorced.

"When both parents are religious, the effect of divorce has a negative effect on religiosity," says Jeremy Uecker, a professor at Baylor University and lead author of the study. "They might think their parents' marriage was ordained by God or something and that breakup can have more of an effect on their religiousness in adulthood."

Uecker says the effect of divorce on a child's future religious beliefs was seen across all religions. In the future, he hopes to study why children of divorced parents seem more likely to be less religious.

Source: U.S. News & World Report
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/03/05/study-religious-parents-divorce-may-cause-children-to-leave-the-church

Teens with Learning Disabilities Benefit from Closer Relationships

Many kids with learning disabilities also face social and emotional challenges, which in adolescence can lead to depression, anxiety and isolation.

For these youngsters, more positive relationships with the significant adults in their lives — including parents and teachers — can improve learning and “socioemotional” experiences, said Michal Al-Yagon, Ph.D., of Tel Aviv University in Israel.

In a recent study, Al-Yagon reported that teens with learning disabilities were less likely to have secure attachment relationships to their mothers and teachers compared to peers without learning disabilities.

The study, found in the journal of Journal of Youth and Adolescence, suggests the absence of close and supportive relationships can harm a teens’ social and emotional functioning. In turn, this void can contribute to behavioral problems including isolation, depression, and aggression.

“We found that more secure child-adult attachments may act as a protective factor during this developmental period, whereas insecure attachments are a risk factor” for social and emotional issues, Al-Yagon said.

These results could help researchers design more effective interventions for children and adolescents with learning disabilities. Helping to strengthen their relationships with parents and teachers may decrease their emotional and behavioral problems.

Source: PsychCentral
http://psychcentral.com/news/2013/03/02/teens-with-learning-disabilities-benefit-from-closer-relationships/52087.html

Just Say No to Talking About Your Own Drug Use with Your Kids

Parents who talk to their kids about their own, past drug use may not be helping their kids to avoid drugs.

“Talk to your kids about drugs,” has been a refrain sung to parents by anti-drug activists and in public service message for decades.  But if these conversations include information about your own past drug use, a new study suggests that it could send potentially harmful mixed messages.

Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign studied 561 6th to 8th graders, most of whom were white or Hispanic, about their drug use as well as conversations they had with their parents about drugs.

Reporting in the journal Human Communications Research, the researchers say that youth whose parents discussed the dangers of drugs and their disapproval of drug use had more anti-drug attitudes.  Among the Hispanic students, this was linked with lower levels of reported alcohol use, while among white students it was associated with less reported marijuana use. No effect was found for either group on smoking.

But if parents also discussed their own youthful drinking or drug use, these conversations were linked with a reduction in anti-drug attitudes.  “The more often the parents talked about regret over their own use, the bad things that happened, and that they’d never use it again, the students were more likely to report pro-substance-use beliefs,” lead author Jennifer Kam said to LiveScience.

“Kids might be interpreting it as ‘Mom and Dad used, and they’re still here,’ she told NPR. This confirms prior research that suggested that having former drug addicts tell their stories to teens can glamorize the condition, rather than highlighting the risks and deterring use.

So, what’s a parent to do? Kam does not suggesting lying, but she does caution against volunteering the information unnecessarily.

Source: Time
http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/26/just-say-no-to-talking-about-your-own-drug-use-with-your-kids/

Study: Parents Prefer the Pill Over Condoms for Their Teenage Daughters

"If your teen's doctor found out your daughter was having sex, is it acceptable or unacceptable to you for the doctor to provide birth control to your teen confidentially?" The question was posed to a diverse group of parents of girls aged 12 to 17. On a scale from 1 to 4, researchers at UC San Francisco wanted to know, how comfortable were they with their daughters being given birth control pills? Condoms? Emergency contraception? An intrauterine device (IUD)?

Per the results, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, 59 percent said they'd be okay with birth control pills. Only 51 percent approved of condoms. And way down the scale, past injectables (46 percent), emergency contraception (45 percent), the transdermal patch (43 percent), and the implant (32 percent), was the IUD, with only 18 percent approval.

"The lower than expected acceptability of condoms likely reflects parents' overall low acceptability of contraception in general for their daughters," lead author Lauren Hartman wrote to me in an email. "It also highlights the importance of educating parents about the importance of condoms, both for protection from STIs and pregnancy."

Parents who believed their teenager was likely to have sex in the coming year were more likely to accept their use of emergency contraception and condoms. The authors suspect that they only begrudgingly okay'd those two because "parents may associate these methods with a single episode of sex rather than condoning an ongoing sexual relationship, which would require a more permanent contraceptive method."

Source: The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/02/study-parents-prefer-the-pill-over-condoms-for-their-teenage-daughters/273144/

College Students with Helicopter Parents More Likely to be Depressed

Helicopter parents who still run their university-aged children's schedules, laundry and vacations could be doing more harm than good with a new study showing these students were more likely to be depressed and dissatisfied with life.

Researcher Holly Schiffrin from the University of Mary Washington in Virginia found so-called helicopter parenting negatively affected college students by undermining their need to feel autonomous and competent.

Her study found students with over-controlling parents were more likely to be depressed and less satisfied with their lives while the number of hyper-parents was increasing with economic fears fuelling concerns over youngsters' chances of success.

"You expect parents with younger kids to be very involved but the problem is that these children are old enough to look after themselves and their parents are not backing off," Schiffrin, an associate professor of psychology, told Reuters.

"To find parents so closely involved with their college lives, contacting their tutors and running their schedules, is something new and on the increase. It does not allow independence and the chance to learn from mistakes."

Schiffrin said the increase in technology had changed the involvement of parents in their children's college lives as the once-a-week phone call home was replaced with regular texting, emails and messaging.

The study was published in Springer's Journal of Child and Family Studies.

Source: Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/13/us-parents-students-idUSBRE91C18520130213