Father-youth closeness and adolescent self-rated health: The mediating role of mental health

Parent-youth relationship quality has been shown to affect adolescent mental health, yet less is known regarding the mechanisms by which father-youth relationships affect adolescent physical health. This study utilizes secondary data from the Year-15 follow-up wave of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 3321) to attempted to unravel the interconnections between father-youth closeness and adolescent mental and self-rated health. We conducted linear regression analyses to investigate whether 15-year-old adolescent mental health, operationalized as symptoms of anxiety and depression, mediated the relations between adolescent perceived closeness with fathers and self-rated health. We found that father-youth closeness was directly related to self rated health (b = 0.052, p < .01), and that the relationship was fully explained by adolescent mental health for boys and partially explained by mental health for girls. Our findings expand our understanding of the complex pathways through which father-youth relationships affect the health and wellbeing of adolescents. Implications for clinical practice and future longitudinal research are discussed.