The health of children and adolescents is influenced by the variety of factors. These factors can be generally grouped into three categories: environmental, biological, and behavioral. Statistics indicate that children and adolescents are generally healthy; however, this period is characterized by the rapid development which makes them sensitive to the environmental impacts. The most significant components of the environment comprise physical environment and social environment. Namely, physical environment entails the pollutants of air and water as well as chemical and infectious agents. Talking about social environment, it incorporates such factors as school, family and community, peer relationships, culture, and neighborhood. In fact, the physical and social environments that children grow up in can either increase or reduce their health risks. The paper discusses the family influences as one of the social environmental factors.
The family effects that the health conditions of children and adolescents are exposed to can be either direct or indirect. A study conducted by the United States National Institute of Health classifies family influence factors into family demography and family processes. To clarify, family demography defines the composition, parental education and economic status of a family whereas family processes represent family environments, family health habits, parenting styles and the mental health of the parents. Markedly, poverty has a profound negative impact on the health of the children since families that are poor cannot access a basic healthcare such as immunization and vaccination services. Provided that vaccination is a major preventive treatment of many diseases, the lack of it augments the risk for children to contract the diseases like polio. Low - income parents are also at a higher risk of mental illnesses such as depression and low self-esteem. Consequently, this eventually makes them incapable to take a good care of their children. Over and above, poverty has a direct influence on a diet since children from poor families are always eating little thus developing dangerous diseases.
Moreover, the well-being of children is directly impacted by the size of their families. Children from the large families tend to have worse health state than their counterparts from the small families. In a large family set up resources are stretched as more children means less time and expenditure of money per child. It becomes hard to monitor behavior of each child accordingly. To demonstrate, a study has shown that children who are well bonded with their parents are unlikely to engage in a risky behavior. Another research has proved that divorce has a negative impact on the preschool children, especially mental and psychological effects. Furthermore, the work has also confirmed that adolescents from single parents tend to engage in risky behaviors such as smoking and drinking because of the little supervision.
Such trend is an indication that parenting style has a huge impact on the health of a child. It is categorized into three groups: permissive, authoritative, and authoritarian. Children raised by the authoritative parents are prone to experience good health whereas those reared by the authoritarian parenting style stand higher risk of developing mental disorder and other psychological diseases. On the other hand, children whose parents engage in the unhealthy behaviors such as smoking and substance abuse are also susceptible to a poor health. In addition, parents suffering from the diseases such as tuberculosis and other contagious sicknesses can affect the health of their children by spreading these diseases to them directly.
Finally, the health of the children is also influenced by the parent’s education status. Highly educated parents tend to possess vast knowledge on the health matters and healthy living which impacts their children positively. Conversely, illiterate parents usually lack the basic health knowledge and apply a number of traditional practices that increase the risks of the diseases development. What is more, parents’ cultural practices play a vital role in a child progress which directly influences the health of the child.
In conclusion, it is evident that among the major factors that affect the health of children and adolescents is the family unit. It goes without saying that factors such as the family’s parenting style, financial status, size, education level and cultural beliefs and practices all have impact on the health of the children.
Kate Willimason, writer at https://topwritingservice.com/ and a blogger
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