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The Role of Parents in Preventing and Addressing Underage Drinking

During adolescence, young people begin to take risks and test limits. They do so because they are moving from a family-centered world to the larger community, within which they will begin to define their own identity. It is also during this time that parents have an especially important role in preventing and addressing underage drinking.

Parenting Skills

• Parents who communicated and were involved with their children at ages 10 and 11, set clear expectations for their children’s behavior, practiced good supervision and consistent discipline, and minimized conflict in the family had children who, at ages 11 and 12, were more likely to see alcohol use as harmful and less likely to initiate alcohol use early. They were also less likely to misuse alcohol at ages 17 to 18.¹
  
  
• Lack of parental support, monitoring, and communication and lack of feeling close to their parents have been significantly related to frequency of drinking, heavy drinking, and drunkenness among adolescents.²
  
  
• Harsh, inconsistent discipline and hostility or rejection toward children have also been found to significantly predict adolescent drinking and alcohol-related problems.³
  
  
• Some research suggests that poor parenting practices are associated with early childhood deficits in social skills and self-regulation, particularly with regard to aggressive behavior, which result in early minor delinquency and rejection from mainstream peer groups. Children who feel rejected then affiliate with deviant peers; in turn, participation in deviant peer networks increases the risk for drinking and other forms of substance use.⁴

Social Influences

• Family and peers can influence drinking behavior actively, by explicitly discouraging alcohol use, or passively, by providing models of drinking behavior.⁵
  
  
• A Columbia University study reports that adolescents whose fathers have more than two drinks a day have a 71 percent greater risk of substance abuse.⁶
  
  
• As adolescents develop, drinking behavior becomes less influenced by parents and more influenced by peers.⁷
• Perceptions of how much peers drink may exert a stronger influence on an individual’s drinking behavior than the actual level of peer drinking.⁸
  
  
• Parents can exert a moderating influence on the drinking behavior of their adolescent children by actively monitoring their alcohol use.⁹
  
  
• Studies have shown that a positive relationship between parents and adolescents can serve as a protective factor, offsetting the risk of alcohol use associated with peer alcohol use.¹⁰

Family Structures

• Among youth, ages 12 to 17, the highest risk of alcohol dependence is found among boys and among white non-Hispanic youth living with no other parent figure other than their father.¹¹
• Older siblings’ alcohol use can influence the alcohol use of younger siblings in the family, particularly for same sex siblings.¹²
• An estimated 11 million children under the age of 18 live in households with at least one alcohol parent.¹³

Parental Attitudes and Behaviors Toward Drinking

• Parents’ drinking behavior and favorable attitudes about drinking have been positively associated with adolescents’ initiating and continuing drinking.¹⁴
• Children of drinking parents were less likely to see drinking as harmful and more likely to start drinking earlier. Both these attitudes and behaviors, in turn, predicted greater alcohol misuse at age 17 to 18.¹⁵
• Children of drinking parents are more likely to associate with peers who have tried alcohol at ages 10 to 11, which increases the risk for alcohol use and misuse by the child.¹⁶

  Sources

  ¹Hawkins, J.D., Graham, J.W., Maguin, E., Abbot, R., Hill, K.G., and Catalano, R., Exploring the effects of age of alcohol use initiation and psychosocial risk factors on subsequent alcohol misuse, Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 1997.

  ²National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Youth Drinking: Risk Factors and Consequences, Alcohol Alert No. 37, 1997.

  ³Ibid.

  ⁴Chassin, L., and DeLuca, C., Drinking during adolescence, Life-Stage Issues, Volume 20, 1996.

  ⁵National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Ninth Special Report to the U.S. Congress on Alcohol and Health, Bethesda, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1997.

  ⁶National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, 1999 Survey of American Attitudes and Substance Abuse V: Teens and Their Parents, Columbia University, New York, 1999.

  ⁷National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Ninth Special Report to the U.S. Congress on Alcohol and Health, Bethesda, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1997.

  ⁸Ibid.

  ⁹Ibid.

  ¹⁰Jacob, T., and Johnson, S., Parenting Influences on the Development of Alcohol Abuse and Dependence, Alcohol Health and Research World, Volume 21, 1997.

  ¹¹Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Office of Applied Studies, The Relationship Between Family Structure and Adolescent Substance Abuse, Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1996.

  ¹² McGue, M., Sharma, A., and P. Benson, Parent and sibling influences on adolescent alcohol use and misuse: Evidence from a U.S. adoption cohort, Journal of Studies on Alcohol, Volume 57, 1996.

  ¹³ Eigen, L. and Rowden, D., A Methodology and Current Estimate of the Number of Children of Alcoholics in the United States, Children of Alcoholics: Selected Readings, National Association of Children of Alcoholics, Rockville, MD, 1996.

  ¹⁴ National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Youth Drinking: Risk Factors and Consequences, Alcohol Alert No. 37, 1997.

  ¹⁵ Hawkins, J.D., Graham, J.W., Maguin, E., Abbot, R., Hill, K.G., and Catalano, R., Exploring the effects of age of alcohol use initiation and psychosocial risk factors on subsequent alcohol misuse, Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 1997.

  ¹⁶ Ibid.

  ¹⁷ National Institute on Drug Abuse, Preventing Drug Use Among Children and Adolescents, A Research-Based Guide, Bethesda, MD: National Institutes of Health Publication 97 – 4212, 1997.

  ¹⁸ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, The Fact Is…Alcoholism Tends to Run in Families, Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1995.

  ¹⁹ Ibid.

  SAMHSA, a public health agency in the Department of Health and Human Services, is the Federal Government’s lead agency for improving the quality and availability of substance abuse prevention, addiction treatment, and mental health services in the United States. Further information about SAMHSA is available on the Internet at www.samhsa.gov.
    

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