Purpose: To assess the characteristics of youths with a poor relationship with their parents and possible associations with risk behaviors.
Methods: Data were drawn from the second wave of the GenerationFRee study, a Swiss longitudinal in-school survey including 2627 youths aged 15-22. Using a scale from 1 [poor] to 10 [excellent], participants evaluated their relationship with their mother and father. A poor relationship was defined with a score ≤5. Data were available for 2533 participants: 82.1% reported a good relationship with both parents, 12.3% a poor relationship only with their father, 3.3% only with their mother and 2.3% with both parents. The four groups were compared on demographic, family composition and academic data, emotional well-being and risk behaviors (current smoking, alcohol misuse, cannabis and illegal drugs use, violent and antisocial acts). All significant variables (p<.05) at the bivariate level were included in a multinomial regression analysis using a good relationship with both parents as the reference.