Elsevier

Drug and Alcohol Dependence

Volume 134, 1 January 2014, Pages 178-184
Drug and Alcohol Dependence

The role of parental alcohol use, parental discipline and antisocial behaviour on adolescent drinking trajectories

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2013.09.030Get rights and content

Abstract

Backgrounds

: Parental drinking, harsh parental discipline and adolescent antisocial behaviour have been independently implicated in adolescent alcohol use. Robust prospective studies are required to examine developmental relationships between these factors and their effect on trajectories of alcohol use across adolescence.

Methods

Data were ascertained at three consecutive adolescent waves (13.5, 15.5 and 17.5 years) from the Australian Temperament Project, a 15-wave (30 year) general population birth cohort in Victoria, Australia. Adolescent alcohol trajectories, adjusted for time-varying measures of parenting and antisocial behaviour, were regressed on time-stable measures of parental alcohol use. The full case analysis comprised 751 individuals with complete data.

Results

Two distinct alcohol trajectories were identified across the three adolescent waves after adjusting for time-varying factors: a higher and lower drinking group. Both trajectories increased linearly over the study period. Antisocial behaviour was positively associated with both trajectories while harsh parental discipline was positively associated with alcohol use in the lower-use group only. Increased maternal and paternal drinking at 13.5 years placed teenagers at a greater risk of being included in the high-risk trajectory.

Conclusion

Parental drinking was the strongest predictor of different drinking trajectories in adolescence. This finding underscores the importance of comprehensive public heath approaches that target both parental and adolescent drinking attitudes and behaviour.

Introduction

Alcohol consumption is involved with 1 in every 26 deaths worldwide, mostly resulting from injury, cancer, cardiovascular disease and liver cirrhosis (Rehm et al., 2009). Reducing this avoidable disease burden is an international priority. Early adolescence is the key period for the initiation of alcohol consumption, with 83% of adolescents aged between 12 and 15 reporting having consumed alcohol in Australia (Kelly et al., 2011). A recent UK study identified the majority of adult heavy drinkers were consuming alcohol weekly by 15 years of age, and that almost a third of the sample were consuming at levels considered harmful to adults by age 16 (Heron et al., 2012). Not only do high levels of early drinking place teenagers at a greater risk of unsafe sexual behaviour, physical violence, affective disorders, accidents and other health problems (Danielsson et al., 2012, Danielsson et al., 2010), they are also a key predictor of adult alcohol use disorders (Englund et al., 2008, Pitkanen et al., 2008). Studies that have applied longitudinal mixture modelling have increased in prevalence and suggest both an insidious onset and broad aetiology of alcohol use disorders (Casswell et al., 2002, Colder et al., 2002, Danielsson et al., 2010, Vermeulen-Smit et al., 2012). These studies have implicated parenting, family environment, peer groups and psychological/behavioural problems during adolescence as important predictors of alcohol misuse (Ryan et al., 2010, Zucker, 2008).

The influence of parental alcohol use on adolescent drinking patterns is well documented (Latendresse et al., 2008, Mares et al., 2012, Mares et al., 2011, Ryan et al., 2010, Seljamo et al., 2006, Vermeulen-Smit et al., 2012). Alati et al. (2005) found that even moderate maternal alcohol use during the offspring's adolescence was the strongest predictor of developing alcohol disorders in early adulthood, accounting for over one-fifth of the alcohol use disorder risk in males (Alati et al., 2005). An Australian systematic review concluded that lower levels of parental alcohol consumption were protective of lower levels and later onset of teen drinking (Ryan et al., 2010). More recently, heavy parental episodic drinking (but not frequency of drinking) has been identified as a key marker of early alcohol initiation and an increased heavy drinking trajectory in 12–15 year olds (Vermeulen-Smit et al., 2012). Investigations into the impact of parental alcohol use on the longitudinal development of alcohol use in their adolescent offspring should account for longitudinal factors known to develop alongside alcohol use in a way that accounts for the complex interrelationships among these factors.

Evidence points to the importance of parenting skills and adolescent-parent communication in the relationship between early initiation and progression to heavy alcohol use (Latendresse et al., 2008, Luyckx et al., 2011, Mares et al., 2011). In general studies show that positive parenting has an important independent effect on teen drinking (Koning et al., 2012, Mares et al., 2012, Ryan et al., 2010), and there is evidence that early parental control at five years may reduce later problematic patterns of drinking (Alati et al., 2010). In contrast, harsh and inconsistent parenting, lax parental monitoring, and parent-child conflict has been linked to increased use of alcohol use in two longitudinal studies (Brody and Ge, 2001, Duncan et al., 1998). Longitudinal studies have confirmed that youth drinking trajectories during later childhood (Mayzer et al., 2009) and adolescence (Young et al., 2008) are associated with antisocial behaviour. Furthermore, epidemiological studies report that DSM-IV adult antisocial personality disorder is highly associated with chronic alcohol dependence (AOR 3.51; Hasin et al., 2011), and that adolescent antisocial behaviour is associated with earlier drinking onset (Strat et al., 2010) and accelerated risky drinking (Buchmann et al., 2009). Thus it is important to understand how harsh parenting and child/adolescent antisocial behaviour in addition to adolescent alcohol use develop together over time.

Importantly, most studies which have investigated these interrelationships do not include parental alcohol use, which is likely to be a decisive factor (Latendresse et al., 2008, Mares et al., 2012, Mares et al., 2011, Ryan et al., 2010, Seljamo et al., 2006, Vermeulen-Smit et al., 2012). It follow that large scale prospective studies attempting to gauge the impact of parental drinking on adolescent alcohol use are needed which disentangle the dynamic and longitudinal relationships among the factors outlined above (Jones et al., 2001a). Finally, there is little research on the influence of familial stress on the development of adolescent drinking. Family stress has been found to relate to parent-child relationship and to predict alcohol use (Baer et al., 1987), and is therefore likely an important factor in the development of alcohol use. In this study we take a new approach to more effectively account for this multifaceted relationship. Specifically, our aims are to (1) use time varying factors (e.g., parenting, family stress and adolescent antisocial behaviour) to inform the development of adolescent drinking trajectories and predict variation within trajectories, thereby accounting for the complexity of the relationships, and (2) examine associations between parental drinking and adolescent drinking trajectories.

Section snippets

Sample

The sample was drawn from three consecutive adolescent waves of the Australian Temperament Project (ATP), a longitudinal, general population study beginning in 1983. At baseline, 2,443 4–8 month olds and their parents were recruited during a two week period from infant health centres across Victoria. Clinics were selected to reflect the urban/rural population balance, and the 80% participation rate led to a sample representative of the Victorian general population (Prior et al., 2000). A total

Results

Table 1 includes all participants with measures at T1 and presents the characteristics tabulated by adolescent drinking scores at T1. Males were drinking at higher levels at age 13.5. Harsh parental discipline and adolescent antisocial behaviour were positively associated with adolescent drinking level, and interestingly adolescent drinking was unrelated to father's occupation but related to mother's employment. Table 2 reveals that adolescent drinking was related to mothers’ but not fathers’

Discussion

The strength of this large scale, prospective study is its capacity to robustly and simultaneously examine the impact of paternal and maternal drinking, parenting and antisocial behaviour on adolescent trajectories of alcohol use prior to the legal age of drinking. Data for this study was drawn directly from family units, with information provided separately by parents or caregivers and offspring, an improvement over many previous studies which have used a single source for adolescent and

Role of the funding source

Neither we nor anyone else, has published, or is attempting to publish the article we have submitted to you in whole or in part.

Contributor

R.A. is supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Career Development Fellowship L2 (APP1012485). J.P.C. is supported by a NHMRC Career Development Fellowship L2 (APP1031909). C.A.O. is supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Outstanding Researcher Award L2 (DP1311459). We thank John Toumbourou and Diana Smart for facilitating access to the Australian Temperament Project and advising on data measurements.

Conflicts of interest

All authors declare no financial conflicts of interest exist.

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