Harsh Parenting and Food Insecurity in Adolescence: The Association With Emerging Adult Obesity.

Purpose: As the first study of its kind, the overall purpose of this article was to examine the relationships and interactions between harsh parenting (HP) and food insecurity (FI) in adolescence on the development of overweight/obesity (OW/OB) in emerging adulthood.

Methods: Data came from the Iowa Youth and Families Project, a longitudinal study of 451 adolescent youth and their families that began in 1989 in the rural Midwest. Adolescents were aged 13 years at the initial assessment, and weight status in emerging adulthood was measured 10 years later at age 23.

Results: Experiencing HP in adolescence predicted greater odds of OW/OB at 23 years old. Higher body mass indexes of the adolescent and his or her father in adolescence also increased the odds of being OW/OB at 23 years. Having parents with higher levels of education lowered the odds of being OW/OB in emerging adulthood. Finally, females who experienced high levels of FI and HP in adolescence had higher odds of OW/OB at 23 years in comparison to males.

Conclusions: HP, in combination with FI in adolescence, predicted OW/OB for females in emerging adulthood but not for males. This study contributes to an understanding of the interplay between multiple influences in adolescence: namely, parenting and economic influences. Assessing antecedents to OW/OB in emerging adulthood via multiple pathways provides a more complex understanding of how and why adolescents turn into OW/OB adults.