The intergenerational transmission of health-risk behaviors: Adolescent lifestyles and gender moderating effects

The present longitudinal study of 330 adolescents used structural equation models to investigate,whether (1) health-risk lifestyles exist among adults and adolescents, (2) parents' health-risk behaviors influence adolescents' health-risk behaviors, and (3) intergenerational transmission occurs by wa y of a health-risk lifestyle, by direct transmission of specific behaviors, or through both mechanisms. To address these questions, we estimated sever al models. The findings were generally supportive of the expectations. Resu lts of single factor measurement models provided modest evidence for the ex istence of an underlying health-risk lifestyle factor among parents and ado lescents. Results of structural equation models also demonstrated that pare nts' health-risk behaviors were transmitted to adolescents both at the life style factor level and the unique component level. These associations preva iled even after controlling for family social status. However parents' heal th-risk lifestyles mediated the effect of family social status on adolescen ts' lifestyles, net of the direct effect of family social status on adolesc ents' lifestyles. In these two-parent families, the effects of parents' hea lth-risk lifestyles on adolescents seems to have gender symmetry The findin gs of the separate models for boys and girls demonstrated that (I)fathers' health-risk lifestyle affected only boys' health-risk lifestyle, whereas (2 ) mother's health-risk lifestyle affected only girls' health-risk lifestyle . A similar gender moderating effect was not found for specific health-risk behaviors. Implications of these findings for future research and theoreti cal development are discussed.