Zhuravleva I.V., Lakomova N.V. The role of the family in shaping attitudes towards health and the environment. Sociology of Medicine, 2020, Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 32-42. doi: 10.17816 ...

Abstract

The role of the social institution of the family in the process of forming adolescents' attitudes to health and the environment is analyzed. The relevance of this topic is related to the needs of society for a significant improvement in the health of adolescents. The desire to assess the role of the family in this situation determined the choice of two of its parameters: the socioeconomic status of the parents and the type of families. The empirical basis for the analysis was mainly the results of two cohort studies Adolescent health and the environment carried out by the Institute of Sociology of the Federal Research Center of Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1996 and 2017. Studies have shown that an increase in the socio-economic status and level of education of parents has a positive effect on an increase in the proportion of adolescents who care about the health of adolescents, on their environmental attitudes, on the degree of concern about serious world problems. But the socio-economic parameters of parents turn out to be insignificant when adolescents choose motives and factors of health care. The type of family (with whom the adolescent lives and the number of children in the family) does not affect the self-esteem of health, the choice of factors and motives for health care, and the environmental attitudes of adolescents. Comparison of the results of the two studies indicates a small number of changes associated with the formation of adolescents' attitudes towards health and the environment within the family. This process in the family occurs spontaneously, much depends on the cultural and educational level of the parents. Such stability could be considered positive if it were not for the progressive deterioration in the health of adolescents, recorded by statistics. The main differences between the two studies in the temporal context were recorded, firstly, a significant increase in the proportion of respondents' answers with “good” self-esteem of health, which is associated with changes in social norms in the health sector. Secondly, the violation of habitual dependence: the higher the status and level of education of the parents, the higher the self-esteem of children's health. This can be explained both by the decline in the economic status of specialists with higher education in recent years, and by the leveling of the general level of health culture in all status groups of society. In addition, the results indicate that the ecological culture of adolescent behavior has increased over the decades.