Abstract
We assessed to what extent parental depression and parenting style mediate the relationships between different measures of parental socioeconomic status (SES) and both depression and metabolic syndrome (MetS) in adolescents, and whether sex moderates these mechanisms. Data were from the prospective multigenerational Dutch Lifelines Cohort Study. Our sample consisted of 1217 adolescents with an average follow-up of 33.3 (SD = 7.33) months and a median baseline age of 13 (IQR:13–14) years. We used structural equation models to assess the direct and indirect effects of SES on baseline and changes at follow-up in both depression and MetS, and to assess moderation by sex. For each additional year of education, continuous MetS scores were 0.098 (95%CI: 0.020; 0.184) units lower at baseline and decreased 0.079 (95%CI: 0.004; 0.158) units at follow-up. No other direct or indirect effects of SES were found, and there was no moderation by sex. Additionally, warmer parenting style was generally associated with more favorable outcome scores. Therefore, improving parenting style may improve health for all adolescents. However, in this study parental depression and parenting style did not account for adolescent socioeconomic health inequalities. This may be partly due to good access to social services within the Netherlands.
Highlights
IntroductionPublisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations
Data were from the Lifelines Cohort Study, a multi-disciplinary prospective populationbased cohort study examining in a unique three-generation design the health and healthrelated behaviours of 167,729 persons living in the North of The Netherlands [17,18]
We found that neither parental depression nor parenting style accounted for socioeconomic health inequalities amongst adolescents, and these pathways did not differ according to sex
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Socioeconomic inequalities exist across adolescents’ mental and physical health outcomes [1]. Reducing these inequalities would benefit the well-being and growth of both individuals and society [2]. To reduce these inequalities we need more evidence about the pathways that contribute to socioeconomic health inequalities, for depression and metabolic syndrome (MetS), which differentially impact socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals [3,4] and have long-term consequences into adulthood [5,6]
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