Parental Misperceptions, Communication, and Parent-Child Relational Factors: A Matched Parent-Child Study on Youth...

While efforts have been made to reduce youth vaping rates through regulation, public health, and school initiatives, it is important to focus on the role of parents in vaping prevention.

A US national, matched parent-child survey with 1,792 middle school youth and their parents was conducted to determine whether child age and gender, parental smoking and/or vaping, and parent-child relational factors, including parenting style and experience communicating and difficulty communicating about vaping, are associated with the odds of parental misperceptions of whether their own child knows and is curious about vaping and has tried vaping and currently vapes.

Parents with higher communication difficulty had higher odds of misperceiving whether their child tried vaping [odds ratio {OR}: 1.17 (confidence interval {CI}: 1.05-1.30)] and their child was more likely to have tried vaping [OR: 1.52 (CI: 1.39-1.66)] and vaped in the past 30 days [OR: 1.60 (CI: 1.43-1.78)]. Experience communicating about vaping was associated with lower parental misperceptions about their child's vaping knowledge [OR: 0.82 (CI: 0.75-0.90)] and a higher likelihood the child has tried [OR: 1.28 (CI: 1.13-1.45)] and currently vapes [OR: 1.21 (CI: 1.04-1.44)]. An authoritative parenting style was associated with a lower likelihood of parental misperceptions about their child's knowledge [OR: 0.64 (CI: 0.53-0.77)], curiosity [OR: 0.70 (CI: 0.58-0.83)], and use [OR: 0.72 (CI: 0.57-0.93)], while an authoritarian parenting style was associated with a higher likelihood the child currently vapes [OR: 1.32 (CI: 1.03-1.69)]. Parents who smoked and vaped (compared to those who did not) were more likely to have misperceptions about their child's curiosity [OR: 1.44 (CI: 1.13-1.84)] and use [OR: 2.45 (CI: 1.71-3.55)] and more likely to have a child who has tried vaping [OR: 3.73 (CI: 2.74-5.11)] and currently vapes [OR: 5.95 (CI: 3.79-9.68)].

Strategies to facilitate parent-child communication about vaping and reduce parental use of tobacco/nicotine products may lower parental misperceptions and decrease the likelihood of youth vaping.