Research and Practice of Health Promotion, Volume 10: Protection or Risk? Family environments reflected in communication between parents and their children

The family has a particular significance in the development of children and young people. It plays a decisive role in the mediation of values, norms and behavioural patterns and offers children protection and support in managing developmental tasks and the risks, which are connected with them. However, deficiencies in development and psychological disturbances can also - in an unfavourable family atmosphere - commence in the family. But, how can a family atmosphere, which is favourable or unfavourable for development, be described concretely?

Volume 10 of the specialist booklet series "Research and Practice of Health Promotion" documents a study which explored this question, with regard to the meaning of the family both as a protective factor and as a risk factor in the development of children and young people. Its aim was to examine more closely communication within the family from a preventative point of view, and to establish its relationship to the family atmospheres, which had been subjectively described by the children.