The Effect Of Parental Control On The Tobacco And Alcohol Use Among Middle School Students: A Moderated Mediating Model

Recently, the use of tobacco and alcohol(hereinafter referred to as smoking and alcohol use)among middle school students has been rising as a notable public health problem. Tobacco and alcohol use is more common than other substance addiction,and its rate is gradually rising in recent years in China. Tobacco and alcohol use not only has terrible impact on the physical and psychological situation of middle school students but also easily leads to a variety of behavioral and social problems. Therefor,it is of great importance for us to prevent and intervene tobacco and alcohol use scientifically and effectively by studying the influencing factors and occurrence mechanism of it.To explore the relationship of smoking and alcohol use between parental control and middle school students’ smoking and alcohol use and the mediating effect of strategies of emotion regulation(expression inhibition and cognitive regulation)and the moderating effect of stressful life events, this article uses the Parental Control Questionnaire, the Emotion Regulation Scale, the Stressful Life Events Scale and tobacco and alcohol use Questionnaire to research 725 middle school students. The result shows:(1)Parental control on behavior and psychology will affect tobacco and alcohol use of middle school students: behavioral control functions as a protective factor and the psychological control does as a risk factor. The different type of parental control(behavioral control vs. psychological control) has diverse influences on the formation and development of tobacco and alcohol use. Both behavioral control and psychological control are able to explain tobacco and alcohol use separately and there is an accumulative effect(“joint operations”) of them.(2)Expression inhibition and cognitive regulation play a role of complete mediation between behavioral control and middle students’ tobacco and alcohol use,meanwhile, they play an incomplete mediate effect between psychological control and middle students’ tobacco and alcohol use. Both behavioral control and psychological control have unique effect on expression inhibition and cognitive regulation:behavioral control has positive predictable functions on cognitive regulation and passive predictable functions on expression inhibition, in contrast psychological control has positive predictable functions on expression inhibition and passive predictable functions on cognitive regulation.(3)Stressful life events will influence the mediate effect of expression inhibition and cognitive regulation. Compared with those using fewer strategies of cognitive regulation, the middle school students who use more strategies are in less participation of tobacco and alcohol use when they are experiencing less stressful life events. There is no significant difference between the two groups of students when they are undergoing more stressful life events.In a word, There is a mediating model with a regulation that reveals “how” does the parental control influence tobacco and alcohol use and “when” the influence will be stronger or weaker.