Parenting

"Since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020, 18 times more U.S. teenagers have died from deaths of despair than from COVID-19...." That quotation is from the introduction to a study considering the role parenting plays in the mental health of adolescents. I'm not a parent but I did teach secondary school classes for thirty-five years and don't find these results surprising.  A few excerpts that seem to summarize the studies:

...[O]ver 1000 published studies have tested the relationship between parenting styles and internalizing symptoms of mental illness—such as anxiety and depression—as well as externalizing behavior, such as aggression and delinquency. The results—summarized in meta-analyses—are clear: Authoritative parenting predicts fewer mental health problems and delinquent behavior, both at the time of measurement and in the future. Both harsh and overly permissive parenting predicts higher risk of mental health problems and problematic behaviors, as does neglectful parenting. ....

...[F]our distinct factors related to parenting cluster together: responsive regulation, enforcement of rules, and the absence of traumatic experiences— such as parental alcohol abuse, death, or abandonment, and the quality of the overall child-parent relationship. ....

Parents who set boundaries, establish routines, convey warmth and affection, and enforce rules effectively report a less contentious relationship with their adolescent child than parents who do not do these things, and this relationship is recognized by that child to be stronger and more loving. ....

The most powerful parenting practices identified in the survey relate to regulation and enforcement. The percentage that an adolescent is in good mental health is 8 percentage points lower when the parents agree that they “find it difficult to discipline their child." Likewise, the likelihood of having good mental health is 7.3 percentage points higher for adolescents of parents who agree that the child “must complete the priorities I set for them before they are allowed to play or relax.” Additionally, whether the child “follows a regular routine” during a typical school day has a large effect on mental health, and if the parent reports that the child gets his or her way in a conflict with the parent, it has a large deleterious association with mental health.

On the side of warm responsiveness, daily displays of affection and responding quickly to the child’s needs both predict better mental health. These practices increase the probability of good mental health by 7 percentage points each. ....

...[B]asic demographics explain almost none of the variation in parenting style: race, ethnicity, household income, education, and the sex of the parent are mostly unrelated to parenting style. There were no significant differences between Black, Hispanic, and White parents. Married scored higher than other parents, but the differences are only significant in comparison to divorced parents and the gap is small. .... (the pdf)

Jonathan Rothwell, "Parenting is the Key to Adolescent Mental Health," Institute for Family Studies, Gallup, November 20, 2023. (pdf)