This appears to be an attention grabbing study! My hunch is that it is more junk science than science! My parents did it too.
What is the alternative to introduce or educate adolescents to/about alcohol (and smoking)?
Here are some of the issues with this study:
- A very small sample
- No information about the alcohol use of the parents. What if one of the parents or both parents are alcoholics or heavy drinkers?
- What about the influence of peers, friends etc. on young age drinking? Or the influence of other parents?
Caveat: I did not read the study.
"Children and teenagers of any age who sip or taste alcohol with their parents’ permission are more likely to engage in risky drinking in young adulthood. That was the finding of a new study my colleagues and I published in the journal Addictive Behaviors. ..."
From the highlights and abstract:
"Highlights
• Adolescent drinking with parental permission (PP) predicts later alcohol-harms.
• How age of onset of drinking with PP effects later outcomes is poorly understood.
• This is the first study of age of onset of PP in a US sample.
• Drinking with PP is risky and did not depend on age of onset.
• Important to convey that parental provision is risky, regardless of adolescent age.
Abstract
Parental permission to use alcohol is common in adolescence, and many parents believe it to be an effective harm reduction strategy because it provides an opportunity to supervise drinking.
Contrary to this belief, prior research has consistently linked parental provision of alcohol and permission to drink to increases in future alcohol-related harms. Whether the age of onset of parental permission to use alcohol influences these outcomes is poorly understood.
This study is the first to investigate the impact of age of onset of parental permission to use alcohol on later drinking outcomes, utilizing a longitudinal US community sample of adolescents (n = 387). The analysis included nine annual waves of data and accounted for risk and protective factors at the individual, peer, and family levels.
Consistent with prior research, a robust relationship was found between parental permission to use alcohol during adolescence and increased alcohol use frequency and quantity, alcohol use disorder symptoms, and alcohol-related harms in young adulthood.
Age of onset of parental permission was not associated with later alcohol use outcomes, suggesting a uniform risk effect of parental permission to drink.
Public health messaging to parents should seek to correct perceptions of supervised alcohol use as a harm reduction strategy and emphasize the harm of parental permission to use alcohol, regardless of age."
Age of onset of adolescent alcohol use with parental permission and its impact on drinking and alcohol-harms in young adulthood: A longitudinal study (no public access)
Graphical abstract
No comments:
Post a Comment