Family Communication Environments and Rule-Based Social Control of Adolescents' Healthy Lifestyle Choices

Abstract

To describe further the contribution of family interaction to adolescent members' health, 164 parent-college student child dyads completed questionnaires regarding perceptions of Family Communication Environment (FCE), healthy lifestyle rules in the family during the child's adolescence, and child compliance with those rules. Families higher in Expressiveness reported lower child compliance to rules, lower parent articulation of rules, and lower parental sanctioning of rule violations. Families higher in Structural Traditionalism displayed greater agreement between parents and children in the identification of rules. Families higher in Avoidance scored higher in rule scope, the extent to which rules applied to all of the children in a family rather than being individuated by child. The findings support the integrity of the tripartite conceptualization of the FCE construct. Findings further suggest that parental socialization on health-related matters, especially the enactment of rule-governed social control, cannot be viewed as a unitary process: different family communication environments use rules differently in socializing adolescents to make healthy lifestyle choices. Future research should examine other kinds of social control and possible relationships with FCE.