A long term study carried out by the British think tank ‘Demos’ which looked at how parenting styles affect the behaviour of children as they grow up showed that teenage binge drinking and its potentially deadly consequences may be caused in part by bad parenting or divorce.
The study included more than 30,000 children (or erstwhile children) born in the U.K. over the last 40 years. They found that 16-year-olds with “disengaged parents” were more than eight times more likely to drink excessively than children with more involved parents. Additionally, children whose parents divorced were more likely to have “problematic drinking behaviours.”
They note that there is a strong correlation that suggests that kids whose parents divorce are more likely to drink excessively. “Divorce won't make your child a drinker, but instability and stress around relationship breakdown takes its toll on parents and children,” says researcher Jamie Bartlett. “Difficult relationships and high levels of stress for parents with young children have been shown to affect children later on and their relationship with alcohol is no exception. Setting strong rules around alcohol consumption as children get older will be crucial to ensuring that we are not raising a generation of binge drinkers,” he added.
The researchers divided parents into four camps: Authoritarian, disengaged, laissez-faire and tough love. A tough-love style of parenting helped to ensure that children drank more responsibly when they were older. Being too authoritarian with children, however, could be as problematic as being too casual. The study advised parents not appear drunk in front of their children, and that parents discuss setting firm boundaries with teenagers about “sensible and responsible” alcohol use.
The Department of Health’s recommendation for alcohol consumption is 21 units a week for men and 14 for women. Demos’s findings could to be taken into account when the Department of Health publishes its new alcohol strategy later this year. The strategy is expected to give local authorities greater powers to tackle alcohol-related problems.
“Simply put, if a set of parents spends a lot of time with the child, while also enforcing rules and discipline, the child is much less likely to drink excessively as an adolescent and as an adult, compared with children whose parents did not,” says the think tank in the report, called Under the Influence.
Mr Bartlett said that it is “vital” that parents with young children have strong support networks around them if they separate.
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