The Impact of Parenting Strategies on Child Smoking Behavior : The Role of Child Self-Esteem Trajectory

Multi-disciplinary research has documented that parenting strategies influence children’s cigarette use. Extending the extant literature, we develop an integrative model to examine the effect of parenting strategies on children’s smoking progression, in which children’s self-esteem plays the role of mediator. We validate our model using longitudinal panel data from parents and children ages 10 through 17. Our primary findings are that parenting strategies influence children’s smoking development, and that their impact is mediated by the child’s self-esteem trajectory, particularly for the rate of increase in smoking. Parental responsiveness decreases children’s smoking development by enhancing the child’s initial self-esteem and reducing the natural rate of deterioration in self-esteem, while psychological control increases smoking development both directly, and indirectly, by reducing initial self-esteem. Targeting parents via multi-media ad campaigns, to bring about changes in parenting strategies to reduce or avoid teen smoking, offers a fruitful complementary tool to targeting teens themselves. Such campaigns, unlike existing ones, should also emphasize avoiding parental psychological control as a strategy, and begin reaching parents well before their children approach late grade school