Binge drinking among middle schoolers tied to parental involvement

Binge drinking in middle school sets the stage for binge drinking in high school, yet parents can have a profound impact in stopping the destructive behavior.

A study of 5,300 7th and 8th graders, 9 percent of the 7th graders and 19 percent of the 8th graders said they had "engaged in binge drinking" in the past 12 months. Binge drinking was defined as consuming five or more drinks in a row on any given day.

Students who said their parents communicated well with each other and seemed to care about their children were far less likely to report binge drinking, researchers found. Binge drinking among the middle schoolers studied was more common among boys than girls. Black and Asian students reported less binge drinking than white and Latino students. Believed to be the first large-scale study of binge drinking among middle schoolers, the results also showed those who reported binge drinking in middle school were 11 times as likely to repeat that behavior in high school.

[From: "Parental and School Correlates of Binge Drinking in Middle School." Contact: Vincent Guilamo-Ramos, PhD, Columbia University School of Social Work and Department of Population and Family Health, New York, [email protected].]