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Introduction: The limited research examining weight conversations (i.e., conversations about weight, body shape, or size) in adult romantic relationships has shown associations between engaging in these conversations and disordered eating [...]

Background: To date there has been limited success with childhood obesity prevention interventions. This may be due in part, to the challenge of reaching and engaging parents in interventions. The [...]

Objective: To explore multiple family members' perceptions of risk and protective factors for healthful eating and physical activity in the home. Design: Ten multifamily focus groups were conducted with 26 families. Setting and Participants: Community setting with primarily black and white families. Family members (n = 103) were aged 8 to 61 years. Main Outcome Measures: Risk and protective factors for healthful eating and physical activity in the home environment. Analysis: A grounded hermeneutic approach. Results: Ten major themes were identified by family members related to health behaviors in the home environment, including accessibility to healthful foods and activity, time constraints, stage of youth development, individual investment in health behaviors, family investment in health behaviors, family meals and shared activities, parent modeling, making health behaviors fun, making health behaviors part of the family lifestyle, and community investment in family health behaviors. Conclusions and Implications: This study identified the importance of the family system and the reciprocal influences within the home environment on health behaviors. In addition, individual and community-level suggestions were identified. Insights from the families provide leads for future research and ideas for the prevention of youth obesity. (Contains 2 tables.)

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is an action research approach that emphasizes collaborative partnerships between community members, community organizations, health care providers, and researchers to generate knowledge and solve local problems. Although relatively new to the field of family social science, family and health researchers have been using CBPR for over a decade. This paper introduces CBPR methods, illustrates the usefulness of CBPR methods in families and health research, describes two CBPR projects related to diabetes, and concludes with lessons learned and strengths and weaknesses of CBPR.

This article integrates theory and research related to boundary ambiguity in parents of children with a chronic health condition. We propose that boundary ambiguity is a risk factor for psychological distress in these parents. Clinical applications and a case example highlight how boundary ambiguity can be assessed and managed in clinical settings by professionals working with parents with chronically ill children. Questions are provided for assessing boundary ambiguity in clinical and research settings, and implications for research are discussed.

Adoption research commonly uses parents' reports of satisfaction when examining openness in adoption arrangements. This qualitative study aimed to fill a gap in the adoption research by using adolescents' voices to gain a better understanding of their adoption experiences. Adopted adolescents (n = 152) were interviewed concerning their satisfaction with the openness in their adoption arrangements with their birthmother. Results and implications are discussed in relation to how adoption agencies can use this information to further their work with adopted adolescents and their families and to understand more fully the recent trend towards adoption agencies offering more open adoption arrangements.

Introduction: Understanding parental health is an important part of understanding family health. Previous research suggests that family meals, familial relationship satisfaction, and family physical activity may separately be related to [...]

This paper aims to describe the prevalence of parent-adolescent conversations about eating, physical activity and weight across sociodemographic characteristics and to examine associations with adolescent body mass index (BMI), dietary intake, physical activity and sedentary behaviors. Data from two linked epidemiological studies were used for cross-sectional analysis. Parents (n = 3,424; 62% females) and adolescents (n = 2,182; 53.2% girls) were socioeconomically and racially/ethnically diverse. Fathers reported more parent-adolescent conversations about healthful eating and physical activity with their sons and mothers reported more weight-focused conversations with their daughters. Parents of Hispanic/Latino and Asian/ Hmong youth and parents from lower socioeconomic status categories engaged in more conversations about weight and size. Adolescents whose mothers or fathers had weight-focused conversations with them had higher BMI percentiles. Adolescents who had two parents engaging in weight related conversations had higher BMI percentiles. Healthcare providers may want to talk about the types of weight-related conversations parents are having with their adolescents and emphasize avoiding conversations about weight specifically. Keywords Weight conversations * Parents * Adolescents * Obesity * Dietary intake * Physical activity, Introduction Given the high prevalence and adverse consequences associated with obesity in adolescents (Daniels, 2009; Ogden et al., 2012), it is important for parents to understand how to approach parent-adolescent [...]

Research on the social determinants of obesity describes the importance of family dynamics and how they can influence an individual's weight and weight‐related behaviors. These proximal influences include parent–child, couple, and limited research on intergenerational and sibling dynamics. However, familial research is often isolated to one relationship subsystem (i.e., parent–child or couple) and is not integrated into the larger Family Systems Theory (FST) framework. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to present recommendations for future work by expounding on FST concepts for weight management and obesity prevention, and to provide a review of the theoretical and empirical evidence for each family system and subsystem, including (a) the extended family, (b) family environment, (c) couple, (d) parent–child, and (e) sibling, and present methodological and analytical considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To examine the unique and additive associations of family functioning and parenting practices with adolescent disordered eating behaviors (i.e., dieting, unhealthy weight control behaviors, binge eating). Data from EAT (Eating and Activity in Teens) 2010, a population-based study assessing eating and activity among racially/ethnically and socio-economically diverse adolescents (n = 2,793; mean age = 14.4, SD = 2.0; age range = 11-19) was used. Logistic regression models were used to examine associations between adolescent dieting and disordered eating behaviors and family functioning and parenting variables, including interactions. All analyses controlled for demographics and body mass index. Higher family functioning, parent connection, and parental knowledge about child's whereabouts (e.g. who child is with, what they are doing, where they are at) were significantly associated with lower odds of engaging in dieting and disordered eating behaviors in adolescents, while parent psychological control was associated with greater odds of engaging in dieting and disordered eating behaviors. Although the majority of interactions were non-significant, parental psychological control moderated the protective relationship between family functioning and disordered eating behaviors in adolescent girls. Clinicians and health care providers may want to discuss the importance of balancing specific parenting behaviors, such as increasing parent knowledge about child whereabouts while decreasing psychological control in order to enhance the protective relationship between family functioning and disordered eating behaviors in adolescents. Keywords Adolescents * Family functioning * Parenting * Weight control behaviors * Binge eating * Dieting, Introduction Disordered eating behaviors, including frequent dieting, unhealthy weight control behaviors (e.g., fasting, self-induced vomiting, and skipping meals for weight loss) and binge eating are prevalent among adolescents (Ackard & [...]

Previous research has shown strong positive associations between physical and psychological health outcomes and being in a committed relationship, such as marriage; however, little research has investigated whether being in [...]

Although there is a well-established literature showing a positive association between the frequency of family meals and child and adolescent healthful dietary intake and lower body mass index (BMI), little [...]