Gender, Parental Monitoring and Binge Drinking

The relationships between gender, alcohol consumption and parental monitoring, including television monitoring, were examined. Student volunteers (N = 149; 90% Caucasian, 79% female) participated by reporting retrospective general parental monitoring, television monitoring and recent drinking behaviors. Analyses showed that men received less monitoring than did women growing up concerning overall parental monitoring but not television monitoring. Women’s drinking quantity was affected by parental monitoring, while men’s drinking frequency was affected by both parental monitoring and television monitoring. Interestingly, men’s binge drinking frequency was correlated with television monitoring but not parental monitoring, while women’s binge drinking frequency correlated with parental monitoring but not television monitoring. Implications for preventing alcohol misuse and ideas for future research are discussed. Alcohol consumption, specifically on college campuses, is a prevalent concern in modern society. According to a nationwide survey conducted between the years 1975 and 2002 (Johnston, O’Malley and Bachman), college students reported more daily drinking and binge drinking and had a higher prevalence of drinking in the previous month than did their same age peers who were not in college. Researchers are particularly interested in the prevalence of collegiate binge drinking, commonly defined as consumption of 5 or more drinks in one sitting by males and 4 or more by women (International Center 230 Chrestomathy: Volume 3, 2004 for Alcohol Policies). A study by Wechsler and colleagues (2002) examined binge-drinking trends in college students from 1993 to 2001 across 119 4-year American colleges. The prevalence of binge drinking among college students in 2001 was not significantly different from the figures in 1993 (44.4 % and 43.9%, respectively, reported binge drinking in the prior 2 weeks), demonstrating the consistency of binge drinking on college campuses, despite an increase in prevention efforts. This is causefor higher tendency to use alcohol, cigarettes, or marijuana if they perceived more permissiveness, less nurturance, and less monitoring. Similarly, Xiaoming, Stanton and Feigelman found that adolescents’ reports of perceived parental monitoring are related to lower levels of a variety of risk-taking behaviors, including alcohol consumption; this finding was persistent across the four years of the study. Additionally, Veal and Ross found that scores on the retrospective Parental Monitoring Scale negatively correlated with recent binge drinking (within the past month). None of these studies examined whether boys and girls receive different levels of monitoring or whether there are gender differences for the monitoring-alcohol use relationship. Research on whether parents monitor their sons and daughters differently is extremely limited; however, a few studies have documented that some gender differences may exist with regards to parental monitoring. According to Svensson, daughters reported being more highly monitored (i.e. their parents knew where they were and whom they were with when they went out in the evenings) than did sons among students aged 14 to 18. Svensson also found that, although both men and women who had used drugs tended to be less monitored by their parents, both men who used drugs (including alcohol) and men who did not use drugs reported poorer parental monitoring. Webb and colleagues also found that females reported more perceived monitoring than males, but only concerning maternal monitoring; interestingly, fathers did not appear to monitor males and females differently. While maternal monitoring was significantly related to alcohol use for both men and women, paternal monitoring was not. Television monitoring, the extent to which parents oversee what or how much their children watch on TV, is an important specific aspect of parental monitoring. Nathanson (2002) used the term Veal and Ross: Gender, Parenting and Binge Drinking 231 “parental mediation” in reference to television monitoring and defined three distinct kinds of mediation. Active mediation occurs when parents talk to their children about television, and can be either positive (parents express agreement with or approval of the content), negative (parents criticize or reject content), or neutral (cannot be classified as either negative or positive). The second type of mediation, restrictive mediation, refers to the limitations or rules parents set regarding children’s television viewing, such as how much can be viewed, when viewing is allowed, and how long viewing can last. Coviewing, the third and final type of mediation, occurs when parents and children watch television together. Nathanson found that, while negative active mediation and restrictive mediation may cause children to view content unfavorably, coviewing may actually act as an endorsement for the content, because the parents themselves are watching and enjoying it (Nathanson, 2001). Additionally, negative active mediation and restrictive mediation were related to less aggression in children, while coviewing was related to increased aggression (Nathanson, 2002). In addition to increasing aggression in children, television has also been linked to a higher risk of alcohol use in adolescents. Tucker found that the amount of television viewing among teenagers significantly predicted their alcohol consumption and that heavy viewers are significantly more likely than light or moderate viewers to drink heavily and regularly. Veal and Ross devised a retrospective scale of parental television monitoring that allows a more complete understanding of the construct. They found that parental television monitoring negatively correlated with adolescent binge drinking in the previous month. However, they did not examine gender differences in television monitoring. Also, whether perceived parental television monitoring relates to alcohol consumption differently for young men and women has yet to be investigated. Interestingly, research has shown that parents’ reports and their children’s reports of monitoring are often discrepant. Ross and her colleagues found that the correlations between parents’ and children’s reports of parenting practices were fairly low. Parents, especially fathers, underestimated substance abuse for their children and also reported more monitoring, stronger norms, and more nurturance than did their children. Rossiter and Robertson demonstrated parental 232 Chrestomathy: Volume 3, 2004 exaggeration in reported television monitoring. Compared to their children’s reports, parents claimed lower levels of viewing by their children, stricter house rules about TV viewing, more co-viewing, and lower susceptibility to commercials in their children. This exaggeration by parents increased with social class, suggesting an underlying social desirability bias in the basic pattern of parent’s idealized reports of monitoring (Rossiter and Robertson). Both these studies indicate that, compared to parent’s reports, children’s reports on monitoring may be more valid, i.e. more predictive of their substance use. The purpose of the present study was to assess the gender differences in retrospective parental monitoring (including television monitoring) and recent alcohol consumption (quantity, frequency, and frequency of binge drinking). It was expected that men would report more quantity, frequency, and frequency of binge drinking than women. It was also expected that women would be more heavily monitored by their parents than men. In addition, we explored whether both types of monitoring and alcohol consumption have similar associations for men and women.