Positive relationships with parents
Ethnic differences
Most students in all ethnic groups report positive relationships with their parents.
While the ethnic differences in prevalence of reported positive relationships with parents appear small, some differences were significant after adjustment for age, sex and socio-economic status.
Pacific and New Zealand European students were more likely than other students to report that their Mum and/or Dad cared about them a lot, and that most of the time they feel close to their Mum and/or Dad.
Asian and New Zealand European students were more likely to report that most weeks they get enough time with their Mum and/or Dad.
| Mum and/or Dad care about me a lot (%) |
Most of the time I feel close to Mum and/or Dad (%) |
Most weeks I get enough time to spend with Mum and/or Dad (%) |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| (95% CI) | (95% CI) | (95% CI) | |
| European | 94.4 | 73.7 | 65.3 |
| (93.7, 95.1) | (72.3, 75.1) | (63.7, 66.8) | |
| Māori | 89.7 | 66.4 | 54.6 |
| (88.1, 91.3) | (64.3, 68.5) | (52.2, 57.0) | |
| Pacific | 92.4 | 73.2 | 59.2 |
| (90.3, 94.4) | (69.5, 77.0) | (55.7, 62.6) | |
| Asian | 89.6 | 64.8 | 64.0 |
| (87.2, 92.0) | (60.0, 69.7) | (60.7, 67.4) | |
| Other | 91.3 | 68.2 | 60.0 |
| (88.9, 93.6) | (63.4, 73.0) | (55.3, 64.8) |
Source: Adolescent Health Research Group, 2003.
Note: “95%CI” (95 percent confidence interval) signifies that there is a 95 percent chance that the true value falls within this range. If the respective confidence intervals (in brackets) do not overlap, the difference between rates is likely to be statistically significant.
Notes
We encourage you to be cautious about drawing conclusions from comparisons between ethnic groups. Apparent differences (in unadjusted data) between ethnic groups can often be explained by factors other than ethnicity per se, such as the different age, sex, geographical and socioeconomic distributions of different ethnic populations. In addition, datasets vary in the way that they collect and record ethnicity data.
