Parents play an important role in teaching their children about alcohol. A common view is that allowing teenagers to try alcohol under parental supervision can be effective at promoting responsible drinking.
Researchers at the Adolescent and Family Development Lab from the University at Buffalo have considered whether allowing teenagers to sip and taste alcohol, and the age at which parents allow such behaviour, is an effective harm reduction strategy.
Results indicate that allowing teenagers to try alcohol under parental supervision actually increases risk of later alcohol use and harmful drinking, and the age at which parents allow such behaviour doesn’t matter. Contrary to popular belief, allowing children to sip/taste alcohol in the teen years increases risk of potential harms of future drinking.
What we know about parental permission to sip/taste alcohol
Children and teenagers are most often first introduced to alcohol by their family in the form of parental permission to sip/taste alcohol. Estimates in US samples suggest that 30-40% of children prior to age 13 try alcohol with parental permission and that percentages increase as children age into the teen years (Colder et al., 2018; Donovan & Molina, 2008). Many parents view this as an effective harm reduction strategy, believing that it reduces curiosity about alcohol and promotes safe drinking (Jones, 2016). Yet, research across several laboratories has found that parents providing alcohol, even in the form of sipping/tasting in the early teen years (Colder et al., 2018), is predictive of increased quantity and frequency of drinking and alcohol-related negative consequences in young adulthood (Colder et al., 2018; Kaynak et al., 2013; Sharmin et al., 2017; Yap et al., 2016).
While it’s clear from the accumulated evidence that parental permission to drink alcohol increases risk of later harm, there has been some speculation that the teenager’s age at which parents provide permission to try alcohol may matter. One perspective is that the risk effect of parental permission to drink diminishes with increasing age as teenage alcohol use becomes more common, perhaps to a point where parents allowing alcohol use becomes benign at later ages. On the other hand, it is plausible that, irrespective of age, parental permission to try alcohol signals approval of underage drinking (Kaynak et al., 2013) which, in turn, can increase risk of future heavy drinking and alcohol-related harms.
The purpose of the current study was to examine whether the age at which parents first give teenagers permission to try alcohol matters with respect to future alcohol use and alcohol-related harms in a US community sample of teenagers.
The study
The study included a US community sample of 387 adolescents and one parent assessed annually for 9 years (2009-2018). The study spanned early adolescence to young adulthood (ages 12 to 20 years). We tested whether 1) alcohol use with parental permission and 2) the age at which permission was first given predicted alcohol use quantity, alcohol use frequency, alcohol use disorder symptoms, and negative alcohol consequences during young adulthood. To provide a rigorous test of these questions, we also took into account and controlled for other known risk factors associated with later alcohol use and harms including child temperament/personality, parental alcohol use, and perceived peer alcohol use, among others.
Findings and conclusions
Consistent with previous findings, results showed that teenagers who tried alcohol with parental permission (compared to those who did not) drank more often, drank in higher quantities, endorsed more symptoms of Alcohol Use Disorder, and experienced more negative consequences from drinking in young adulthood. Importantly, the age at which such permission began did not matter. The age at which teenagers tried alcohol with parental permission was not associated with any of the alcohol use outcomes in young adulthood. Collectively, this suggests that the risk effect of alcohol use with parental permission was uniform across age and did not lessen at later ages.
A uniform effect is consistent with suggestions (Kaynak et al., 2013) that parental permission to drink alcohol may increase perceived parental approval of underage drinking, which in turn, increases risk of drinking. Ongoing work in our lab suggests that parental permission to drink alcohol was associated with decreases in the perceived likelihood of experiencing negative alcohol outcomes. Taken together, these studies imply that shifts in alcohol beliefs may occur at any age during the teenage years and, in turn, confer risk.
Our findings highlight the need for targeted public health messages to emphasise that parents’ allowing children to try alcohol, although well intended, increases the likelihood of risky drinking in the future.
Written by Bernard Pereda and Nathaniel Perdue, Department of Psychology, University at Buffalo.
All IAS Blogposts are published with the permission of the author. The views expressed are solely the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Institute of Alcohol Studies.