Abstract
Research has shown that early maturation is related to problematic alcohol use, yet the differential effect of early pubertal timing (i.e., younger age at menarche) on the onset of alcohol use and subsequent level of alcohol use has rarely been examined. This distinction is relevant, as younger age at menarche can have differential effects on these outcomes, which in turn can have long-lasting effects. Therefore, the present study examined the relationship between age at menarche and adolescent alcohol use among girls, hereby distinguishing between onset and level of alcohol use. In addition, the moderating effects of alcohol-specific rules, child disclosure and class gender composition were examined. Participants were 430 girls from a Dutch four-wave survey, with a mean age of 12.17 years (SD = 0.50) at the beginning of the study. Results showed that the probability of onset of alcohol use was increased by younger age at menarche, but only when girls were younger than 15. Moderation analyses showed that younger age at menarche increased the risk of alcohol onset only in low risk girls (with high levels of alcohol-specific rules and in classes with a high percentage of girls). Once adolescent girls started drinking alcohol, younger age at menarche was associated positively with alcohol consumption only for girls in classes with a moderate to high percentage of girls. These findings confirm that younger age at menarche is a risk factor for the onset of alcohol use, but strongly suggest that this effect is strongest for girls having restrictive alcohol-specific rules and in classes with a high percentage of girls. Possibly, in the absence of social factors that “push” to alcohol use, biological factors (like age at menarche) become more important. Another possibility is that adolescent girls start drinking alcohol to oppose their parents if they set too strict alcohol-specific rules.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Acock, A. C. (2005). Working with missing values. Journal of Marriage and Family, 67, 1012–1028.
Adalbjarnardottir, S., & Hafsteinsson, L. (2001). Adolescents’ perceived parenting styles and their substance abuse: Concurrent and longitudinal analyses. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 11, 401–423.
Belsky, J., Steinberg, L. D., Houts, R. M., Friedman, S. L., DeHart, G., Cauffman, E., et al. (2007). Family rearing antecedents of pubertal timing. Child Development, 78, 1302–1321.
Benjamini, Y., & Yekutieli, D. (2001). The control of the false discovery rate in multiple testing under dependency. The Annals of Statistics, 29, 1165–1188.
Biehl, M. C., Natsuaki, M. N., & Ge, X. (2007). The influence of pubertal timing on alcohol use and heavy drinking trajectories. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 36, 153–167.
Boden, J. M., & Fergusson, D. M. (2011). The short and long term consequences of adolescent alcohol use. In J. Saunders & J. M. Rey (Eds.), Young people and alcohol: Impact, policy, prevention and treatment (pp. 32–46). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Bray, J. H., Adams, G. J., Getz, J. G., & Stovall, T. (2001). Interactive effects of individuation, family factors, and stress on adolescent alcohol use. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 71, 436–449.
Brody, G. J., & Forehand, R. (1993). Prospective associations among family form, family processes, and adolescents’ alcohol and drug use. Behavior Research and Therapy, 31, 587–593.
Caspi, A., Lynam, D., Moffitt, T. E., & Silva, P. A. (1993). Unraveling girls’ delinquency: Biological, dispositional, and contextual contributions to adolescent misbehavior. Developmental Psychology, 29, 19–30.
Chartier, K. G., Hesselbrock, M. N., & Hesselbrock, V. M. (2010). Development and vulnerability factors in adolescent alcohol use. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 19, 493–504.
Costello, E. J., Sung, M., Worthman, C., & Angold, A. (2007). Pubertal maturation and the development of alcohol use and abuse. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 88, 50–59.
De Bruyn, E. H., & Cillessen, A. H. (2006). Popularity in early adolescence: Prosocial and antisocial subtypes. Journal of Adolescent Research, 21, 607–627.
Deardorff, J., Gonzales, N. A., Christopher, F. S., Roosa, M. W., & Millsap, R. E. (2005). Early puberty and adolescent pregnancy: The influence of alcohol use. Pediatrics, 11, 1451–1456.
Dick, D. M., Rose, R. J., Viken, R. J., & Kaprio, J. (2000). Pubertal timing and substance use: Associations between and within families across late adolescence. Developmental Psychology, 36, 180–189.
Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics. (2006). Voortgezet onderwijs; deelname leerlingen naar onderwijssoort [Secondary education; participation of students sorted by educational level]. Retrieved from http://statline.cbs.nl.
Engels, R. C. M. E., & Knibbe, R. A. (2000). Alcohol use and intimate relationships in adolescence: When love comes to town. Addictive Behaviors, 25, 435–439.
Engels, R. C. M. E., Knibbe, R. A., & Drop, M. J. (1999). Why do late adolescents drink at home? A study on the psychological well-being, social integration and drinking context. Addiction Research, 7, 31–46.
Fletcher, A. C., Steinberg, L., & Williams-Wheeler, M. (2004). Parental influences on adolescent problem behavior: Revisiting Stattin and Kerr. Child Development, 75, 781–796.
Ge, X., Brody, G. H., Conger, R. D., Simons, R. L., & Murry, V. M. (2002). Contextual amplification of pubertal transition effects on deviant peer affiliation and externalizing behavior among African American children. Developmental Psychology, 38, 42–54.
Ge, X., Conger, R. D., & Elder, G. H. (1996). Coming of age too early: Pubertal influences on girls’ vulnerability to psychological distress. Child Development, 67, 3386–3400.
Ge, X., Natsuaki, M. N., Jin, R., & Biehl, M. (2011). A contextual amplification hypothesis: Pubertal timing and girls’ problem behaviors. In M. Kerr, H. Stattin, R. C. M. E. Engels, G. Overbeek, & A. K. Andershed (Eds.), Understanding girls’ problem behavior: How girls’ delinquency develops in the context of maturity and health, co-occurring problems, and relationships (pp. 11–29). London: Wiley.
Goode, E. (2010). Deviant behavior (9th ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Haines, R. J., Johnson, J. L., Carter, C. I., & Arora, K. (2009). “I couldn’t say, I’m not a girl”: Adolescents talk about gender and marijuana use. Social Science and Medicine, 68, 2029–2036.
Hayatbakhsh, M. R., Najman, J. M., McGee, T. R., Bor, W., & O’Callaghan, M. J. (2008). Early pubertal maturation in the prediction of early adult substance use: A prospective study. Addiction, 104, 59–66.
Hayes, A. F., & Matthes, J. (2009). Computational procedures for probing interactions in OLS and logistic regression: SPSS and SAS implementations. Behavior Research Methods, 41, 924–936.
Johnston, L. D., O’Malley, P. M., Bachman, J. G., & Schulenberg, J. E. (2009). Monitoring the Future national survey results on drug use, 1975–2008, Vol. 1. Secondary school students. Bethesda, MD: National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Kaltiala-Heino, R., Koivisto, A. M., Marttunen, M., & Fröjd, S. (2011). Pubertal timing and substance use in middle adolescence: a 2-year follow-up study. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 40, 1288–1301.
Kerr, M., & Stattin, H. (2000). What parents know, how they know it, and several forms of adolescent adjustment: Further support for a reinterpretation of monitoring. Developmental Psychology, 36, 366–380.
Koning, I. M., Engels, R. C. M. E., Verdurmen, J. E. E., & Vollebergh, W. A. M. (2010a). Alcohol-specific socialization practices and alcohol use in Dutch early adolescents. Journal of Adolescence, 33, 93–100.
Koning, I. M., Harakeh, Z., Engels, R. C. M. E., & Vollebergh, W. A. M. (2010b). A comparison of self-reported alcohol use measures by early adolescents: Questionnaires versus diary. Journal of Substance Use, 15, 166–173.
Koning, I. M., van den Eijnden, R. J. J. M., Engels, R. C. M. E., Verdurmen, J. E. E., & Vollebergh, W. A. M. (2011). Why target early adolescents and parents in alcohol prevention? The mediating effects of self-control, rules and attitudes about alcohol use. Addiction, 106, 538–546.
Koning, I. M., Vollebergh, W. A. M., Smit, F., Verdurmen, J. E. E., van den Eijnden, R. J. J. M., ter Bogt, T. F. M., et al. (2009). Preventing heavy alcohol use in adolescents (PAS): Cluster randomized trial of a parent and student intervention offered separately and simultaneously. Addiction, 104, 1669–1678.
Kristjansson, A. L., Sigfusdorrit, I. D., James, J. E., Allegrante, J. P., & Helgason, A. R. (2010). Perceived parental reactions and peer respect as predictors of adolescent cigarette smoking and alcohol use. Addictive Behaviors, 35, 256–259.
Lanza, S. T., & Collins, L. M. (2002). Pubertal timing and the stages of substance use in females during early adolescence. Prevention Science, 3, 69–82.
Lynne-Landsman, S. D., Graber, J. A., & Andrews, J. A. (2010). Do trajectories of household risk in childhood moderate pubertal timing effects on substance initiation in middle school? Developmental Psychology, 46, 853–868.
Medina, K. L., McQueeny, T., Nagel, B. J., Hanson, K. L., Schweinsburg, A. D., & Tapert, S. F. (2008). Prefrontal cortex volumes in adolescents with alcohol use disorders: Unique gender effects. Alcoholism, Clinical and Experimental Research, 32, 386–394.
Rothman, E. F., Edwards, E. M., Heeren, T., & Hingson, R. W. (2008). Adverse childhood experiences predict earlier age of drinking onset: Results from a representative US sample of current or former drinkers. Pediatrics, 122, e298–e304.
Schelleman-Offermans, K., Knibbe, R. A., Engels, R. C., & Burk, W. J. (2011). The effect of pubertal and psychosocial timing on adolescents’ alcohol use: What role does alcohol-specific parenting play? Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 40, 1302–1314.
Simmons, R. G., & Blyth, D. A. (1987). Moving into adolescence: The impact of pubertal change and school context. New York, NY: Aldine De Gruyter.
Simons-Morton, B., Pickett, W., Boyce, W., ter Bogt, T. F., & Vollebergh, W. (2010). Cross-national comparison of adolescent drinking and cannabis use in the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands. International Journal of Drug Policy, 21, 64–69.
Smolak, L., Krieg, D. B., Hayward, C., Shisslak, C. M., & Taylor, C. B. (2007). The reliability of self-reported menarcheal timing. Journal of Early Adolescence, 27, 386–397.
Stattin, H., & Magnusson, D. (1990). Pubertal maturation in female development. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Stolle, M., Sack, P. M., & Thomasius, R. (2009). Binge drinking in childhood and adolescence: Epidemiology, consequences, and interventions. Deutsches Ärzteblatt International, 106, 323–328.
Tabachnick, B. G., & Fidell, L. S. (2007). Using multivariate statistics (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Van der Vorst, H., Engels, R. C. M. E., Meeus, W. H. J., Deković, M., & van Leeuwe, J. (2005). The role of alcohol specific socialization in adolescents’ drinking behavior. Addiction, 100, 1464–1476.
Van der Vorst, H., Vermulst, A. A., Meeus, W. H. J., Deković, M., & Engels, R. C. M. E. (2009). Identification and prediction of drinking trajectories in early and mid-adolescence. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 38, 329–341.
Walls, M. L., & Whitbeck, L. B. (2011). Maturation, peer context, and indigenous girls’ early-onset substance use. Journal of Early Adolescence, 31, 415–442.
Westling, E., Andrews, J. A., Hampson, S. E., & Peterson, M. (2008). Pubertal timing and substance use: The effect of gender, parental monitoring and deviant peers. Journal of Adolescent Health, 42, 555–563.
Whincup, P. H., Gilg, J. A., Odoki, K., Taylor, S. J. C., & Cook, D. G. (2001). Age of menarche in contemporary British teenagers: Survey of girls born between 1982 and 1986. British Medical Journal, 322, 1095–1096.
Author contributions
MV coordinated and drafted the manuscript, performed the statistical analyses and the interpretation of the data. RJJME participated in the design of the study and helped with the interpretation of the data and the draft of the manuscript. IMK coordinated the study, performed the measurements and helped to draft the manuscript. WAMV participated in the design and the coordination of the study and helped to interpret the data and draft the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Verhoef, M., van den Eijnden, R.J.J.M., Koning, I.M. et al. Age at Menarche and Adolescent Alcohol Use. J Youth Adolescence 43, 1333–1345 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-013-0075-6
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-013-0075-6