Parental Knowledge as a Mediator of the Relation Between Adolescent Summer Care Arrangement Configurations and Adjustment the Following School Year

Maria Parente, Ph.D.
Adam Sheppard
Joseph Mahoney, Associate Professor
University of California, Irvine

Abstract

The current study is one of the first to explore adolescent summer arrangements (e.g., organized activities, self-care, parent care, and/or other adult care), their associated developmental impacts, and the process by which this relation may occur. Main objectives include examining (1) the associated impacts of summer organized activity participation on adolescent emotional well-being, externalizing behavior, body mass index, and academic performance in math and reading; (2) whether or not these relations were mediated by parental knowledge of youth whereabouts and activities; and (3) whether or not these relations differed for subgroups of youth regularly involved in self-care, parent care, or other adult care in the summer. Participants were from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Supplement (1997, 2002) and were a large, national sample of 1,631 adolescents ages 10-18. Results showed that, controlling for individual and demographic characteristics as well as prior measures of outcomes, summer organized activity participation is related to higher emotional well-being, math and reading performance and lower externalizing behavior and body mass index the following school year. Moreover, the relation between summer organized activity participation and adolescent outcomes was mediated by high levels of parental knowledge for emotional well-being, reading, math, and externalizing behavior, but not obesity. These associations held for subgroups of adolescents in self-care, but not for those in parent or other adult care. Implications of these findings are discussed.