also more likely to consume snacks if they spend levels of self-esteem brushing their teeth twice a less time with their parents.32 These patterns may day less frequently.23,34 Self-esteem, a component signal the association between caries and obesity, of behavioural capital, contributed to caries among as recently found by Willershausen et al,16 in the Turkish pre-adolescents. The WHO suggested light of early studies that have found obesity and self-esteem to be an initiative of oral health- higher caries rates to be associated with family- promoting schools toward adoption of positive related economic and social disadvantages health behaviours and enhancement of the oral such as single-parent family and poor parenting health status of school children.14 This approach (e.g., parental punishment, less time spent with may be essential in reducing the gap in oral health child).5,33 inequalities among children and adolescents, To our knowledge, among school-aged children because development of self-esteem is positively the relation between caries and self-esteem has related to better family related characteristics not been investigated before. Studies on the self- such as socio-economic status35 and to positive esteem of children and adolescents in dentistry maternal influence such as in rearing attitudes.36 mostly focus on dental health behaviour and have The present findings are further evidence for the found pre-adolescents and adolescents with low facts that having an increased number of siblings Table 1. Dental health measures of Turkish (n=459) and Finnish (n=155) pre-adolescents along with health and behavioural capital measures and with family-related characteristics. Turkish X=142.7 (±9.3) X=37.7 (±8.8) Pre-adolescents Finnish X=150.7 (±9.9) X=41.9 (±9.2) Statistical evaluation: a: by student t-test, b: by chi-square test, differences by nationality c:coded as low and high by taking the medians as the cut offs. 157 European Journal of Dentistry Health capitalª Height (cm) Weight (kg) Behavioural capitalb Tooth-brushing self-efficacyc Low High Low High Self-esteemc Family-related characteristicsb Number of children in family 1 or 2 More than two Family type Single Two-parent 2 hours or less >2 but < 4 hours 4-6 hours >6 hours July 2008 - Vol.2 Time spend with mother on a school day 54% 46% 59% 41% 64% 36% 6% 94% 12% 21% 33% 34% 51% 49% 57% 43% 65% 35% 23% 77% 17% 31% 42% 10% Cinar, Murtomaa, Tseveenjav P 0.001 0.001 0.479 0.538 0.466 0.001 0.001