Adolescence is a critical time of development on many different levels, but especially concerning the initiation and escalation of alcohol use. For example, the proportion of American adolescents who regularly drink alcohol roughly doubles during secondary-school years. New findings show that parental drinking both directly influences adolescent drinking, as well as indirectly through adolescent perceptions of parenting, especially monitoring and discipline received.
Results are published in the February issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
“We wanted to, first, examine the extent of the relationship between the drinking behaviors of parents and those of their adolescent offspring at 14 and 17.5 years of age,” said Shawn J. Latendresse, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University, and corresponding author for the study. “Second, we wanted to determine how much of that association was due to parents' drinking behaviors affecting their ability to parent responsibly, which translated into a risky or protective environment.”
“There is little question that parental behaviors influence adolescent alcohol use,” added Michael Windle, Rollins Professor and chair of the department of behavioral sciences and health education at Emory University. “However, much remains to be known about how, specifically, parental influences impact adolescent behaviors, including alcohol use.”
Researchers examined data from 4,731 adolescents (2,402 males, 2,329 females) and their parents (87% with data from both parents, 13% with data from only one parent), gathered through an ongoing Finnish population-based, developmental twin study of health-related behaviors and correlated risk factors. Parents were asked about their frequencies of alcohol use and intoxication, as well as their lifetime prevalence of alcohol-related problems. Adolescents reported on perceptions of the parenting that they received, as well as their own prevalence of alcohol use and intoxication at 14 and 17.5 years of age.
The findings were twofold: first, among the parenting dimensions examined, monitoring and discipline played the strongest intermediary role in associations between parental and adolescent drinking behaviors; and second, the magnitude of this mediating role was much stronger during early adolescence, whereas parental drinking had more direct associations with their offspring's drinking in later adolescence.