Is Drinking with Parents Associated with High-Risk Drinking among Adolescents?

Background/Aims: What are the implications of drinking with parents (DWP) on adolescents’ drinking behavior? We expanded the meagre body of research on this controversial issue by assessing the association between the frequency of DWP and adolescent high-risk drinking, taking a number of parental factors into account. Method: Data stemmed from a subsample of 14–17-year-old current drinkers (n = 7,616) who participated in a cross-sectional Norwegian school survey (response rate: 84%). Results: One in four reported DWP during the past year. The higher the frequency of DWP, the higher was the prevalence of high-risk drinking. Parental drunkenness, permissive alcohol-related parenting, and indicators of suboptimal parenting more generally also correlated with DWP. After controlling for these confounders, only frequent DWP remained significantly associated with high-risk drinking. Conclusions: DWP was related to adolescent high-risk drinking, yet the association was in part attributable to parents’ drinking and parenting style. The risk of involvement in high-risk drinking was about the same for adolescents reporting no DWP and infrequent DWP, while it was significantly elevated among those reporting frequent Received: October 7, 2014 Accepted: March 14, 2015 Published online: May 28, 2015 European Addiction c Re e s ar h Hilde Pape Norwegian Institute for Alcohol and Drug Research (SIRUS) PB 565 Sentrum, NO–0105 Oslo (Norway) E-Mail hp @ sirus.no © 2015 S. Karger AG, Basel 1022–6877/15/0216–0291$39.50/0 www.karger.com/ear Th is is an Open Access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC) (www.karger.com/OA-license), applicable to the online version of the article only. Distribution permitted for non-commercial purposes only. D ow nl oa de d by : 54 .7 0. 40 .1 1 11 /2 0/ 20 17 3 :5 9: 51 A M