Dating involvement among Turkish adolescents: The role of parental attitudes about dating, social anxiety and social physique anxiety

Associations among relationship status, gender, and sexual attraction in Australian adolescents' eating pathology

OBJECTIVE

Engaging in romantic relationships in adolescence may inadvertently increase participation in appearance culture and the risk for eating pathology. Little research has considered this effect, particularly as it relates to adolescents' gender identity and sexual attraction. Therefore, this study examined the associations among relationship status, gender, and sexual attraction in adolescents' eating pathology.

METHODS

Data from the first wave of the EveryBODY study, a large sample of Australian adolescents aged 11-19 years (n = 3262, M_age  = 15.00, 53.80% girls), were used. Participants reported their relationship status and eating pathology (fasting, purging, binge eating, driven exercise, steroid use, and shape/weight concerns) using an online survey.

RESULTS

Logistic regressions adjusting for age and BMI percentile revealed that romantic relationships were associated with higher adjusted odds (AORs) for reporting clinical frequency/severity threshold of fasting, purging, steroid use, and shape and weight concerns (AORs: 1.34-3.68). Relative to boys, girls had higher adjusted odds of reporting clinical frequency/severity threshold of all eating disorder features (AORs: 1.47-7.40), except for steroid use for muscle gain. Adolescents who reported same-sex attraction, were unsure of their sexual attraction, or did not endorse any sexual attraction had greater adjusted odds of reporting clinical frequency/severity threshold of fasting, purging, and shape and weight concerns (AORs: 1.35-1.83) than those with only other-sex sexual attraction. Interactions among relationship status, gender, and sexual attraction were nonsignificant.

CONCLUSIONS

Romantic experience emerged as a novel correlate for adolescents' eating pathology. Future research should uncover the contextual factors within relationships that may contribute to this association.

PUBLIC SIGNIFICANCE

The initiation of romantic relationships is normative during adolescence. However, adolescents' romantic desirability is often determined by their physical appearance, increasing the risk for eating pathology. Among a large sample of Australian adolescents, romantic involvement was associated with greater likelihood of clinical threshold eating pathology for adolescent boys and girls, regardless of sexual attraction. It is urgent to identify the factors within romantic relationships that are associated with eating pathology.

What goes around comes around: The loop of physical teen dating violence perpetration among Turkish adolescents

Compared to Western literature, little is known about teen dating violence perpetration (DVP) in Turkey. One risk factor of physical teen DVP may lie within teens' witnessing interparental physical violence perpetration and subsequent accepting attitudes toward physical partner violence as a risk factor. Informed by the intergenerational transmission (IGT) of violence theory, we investigated attitudes toward physical partner violence as a likely mechanism that might account for the association between witnessing interparental physical violence perpetration and physical teen DVP. In a sample of 242 Turkish teens, the prevalence of teen DVP was 32.0% for females and 28.4% for males, with no significant gender difference. The results of the moderated mediation analyses confirmed the hypothesized model for men only. IGT of violence theory offers good guidance in understanding the etiology of physical teen DVP. For prevention practices, accepting attitudes toward physical partner violence seems a hurdle that needs to be breached.

Validation of the Turkish version of the Parental Burnout Assessment (PBA)

Parental Burnout (PB) is an exhaustion syndrome resulting from exposure to overwhelming parenting stress. The current gold-standard instrument, namely, Parental Burnout Assessment (PBA) was used in the International Investigation of Parental Burnout (IIPB), a 40-country study of the prevalence of PB around the world. The IIPB study has stimulated worldwide interest, but efforts are still needed to validate the PBA in different cultures. This study is the first on PB in a collectivist, predominantly Islamic country. It aims to examine the psychometric properties of the Turkish translation of the PBA. The PBA-Turkish was administered to 452 Turkish parents (60% mothers). The results showed that the PBA is a relevant construct in Turkish culture. We replicated the original four-factor structure of the PBA and tested a second-order factor structure through confirmatory factor analyses. The first- and second-order factor models fit the data well. The Emotional Distancing subscale, however, demonstrated lower reliability than the other subscales. We then attained measurement invariance across genders in a set of nested models with gradually increasing parameter constraints. Finally, non-working and single parents reported higher PB, pointing to the possible role of relationships and support as protective factors for Turkish parents.