Parents-Children Relationship and its Influence on the Health State of Children and Teenagers in the Arabic Society
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Abstract
The family acts as a very important agent of socialization for the promotion of
the welfare of both the physical and mental health states of the child. The Arab
society in Israel is undegoing social and economical changes that influence the
Arab family life and the parents-children relationship. The goal of this paper is to
examine the relationships between Arab teenagers and their parents using the
results of the HBSC research of the year 2004. To this end, five indicators were
used: treatment of parent’s knowledge about their children in different domains;
the degree of parents’ support for their children; shared activities of teenagers and
their parents; parents’ involvement in school matters and monitoring their children.
These indicators were tested by background variables (sex, class, father
employment, mother’s education level, religion, religiousness level and family
modernization level); and by different indicators of mental state (happiness,
welling to change the world, mental problems and loneliness/ social rejection). In
addition, they were tested by different physical health indicators (suffering from
physical symptoms, smoking, health and physical activity conception) and by the
children behavior at school and by indicators of violence victims and violent
behavior (low school achievements, high level of absence from school, victims of
nagging and violent behavior).
The results show that the relationship between females and their parents is
stronger than males in all subjects, excluding the monitoring and that parent
relation decreases with the children age.
In addition, for all aspects of parents-children relationship, the state of children
whose parents are working was better than that for children whose parents are not
working and the state of children whose mothers have high-school education and
above was better than that of children whose mothers have lower education level.
A significance relation was found between parents-children relationships and
different aspects of child’s mental welfare, behavior and functioning at school.
Another significance and positive relation were found between the parents-children
relationship and the child’s health state and conception. It was further found that
the over-monitoring of parents negatively influences health indicators, while shared
activities with parents positively influences the child’s conception about his health,
smoking reduction and sport activity.