Two Explanations of Intergenerational Substance Use:
Social Learning Perspective
Family Pathology Perspective
Alcohol
Social Learning Perspective
- Imitation
- “Emphasizes the normal processes of parent-child learning”[i]
- “Adolescents respond to what parents define as appropriate”[ii]
Family Pathology Perspective
- Derived from medical model
- “Posits deviancy and pathology in the personality resulting from adverse family circumstances”[ii]
- “Assumes that substances and emotional pathology are intertwined”[iv]
- Illicit drug use was higher in households where the father drank alcohol (Samsha, 2009).
- Young people age 12 to 17 who lived with a father who drank alcohol in the past year but did not have an abuse disorder, 18.4 percent used illicit drugs (Samsha, 2009).
- Alcohol use among fathers, even at levels not sufficient to warrant a diagnosis of an alcohol use disorder, is associated with several substance use behaviors and disorders among the adolescent children who live with them (Samsha, 2009).
- High levels of parental monitoring are associated with low frequencies of drinking and illicit drug use (Barnes & Farrell, 1992)
- Adolescents imitate the consumption of their parents, especially their father (Van der Vorst et al., 2005)
- Parents that drink, are more permissive about their children drinking and parents that are strict about their children drinking are less likely to drink themselves. It is possible that parents who drink feel less credible in providing rules about the behaviors or are more accepting of drinking in general (Van der Vorst et al., 2006)
- Students who share their feelings with their mother and father are less likely to use marijuana (Van der Vorst et al., 2007).
Alcohol
- “More juveniles are introduced to alcohol at home than anywhere else.”[i]
- “82% of drinking families raise youth who also drink, while 72% of abstaining families produce abstainers” [ii]
- “…maternal drinking behavior has a pronounced effect upon children of both sexes, fathers’ drinking influences only the drinking of their daughters.”[iii]
- “Parents who take one or more drinks of beer or wine per day are quite likely to have offspring who use substances (fathers: 72%; mothers: 77%).”[iv]
- “Eighty-two percent of the parents who drink more than 10 cups of coffee each day have substance-using offspring while only 37% of those who abstain from the use of coffee have adolescent children who use substances.”[v]
- "The more relatives with a history of alcohol problems, the greater the risk of their relatives displaying problematic drinking behaviors.”[vi]
- "Adolescent’s perception of their parents’ approval or disapproval of their alcohol consumption was related to the child’s drinking habits, such that perceived parental disapproval was associated with increased self-efficacy for refusing alcohol, and lower alcohol consumption.”[vii]
- “More recent studies have implied that psychological factors such as the transference of beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions from parent to offspring are important in the development of alcohol problems.”[viii]
- “Mothers who smoke more than one pack of cigarettes are very likely to have substance-using children…Only 64% of fathers with similar use patterns have children who are substance users. Parents who smoke less are not likely to have children who use substances.”[i]
- “Both mothers’ and fathers’ smoking had a stronger effect on daughters’ smoking than they did on sons’ smoking.”[ii]
- “Children of parents who smoke cigarettes are more likely to smoke”[iii]
- “Hops and colleagues (1996) found that both mothers’ and fathers’ use of cannabis independently predicted adolescents’ use on year later.”[i]
- “The proportion of youth having ever used marijuana was 40% higher when parents reported having ever used.”[ii]
- “Children of parents who use marijuana are more likely to use marijuana.”[iii]