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The Role of Parents in Adolescents’ Alcohol Use

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Drug Abuse and Addiction in Medical Illness

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the existing literature on the role of parents in the development of adolescents’ alcohol use. Numerous studies showed that adolescents model the drinking of their parents, particularly the drinking of the fathers. Other parental influences involve the way parents raise their children in general or specifically concerning alcohol use (alcohol-specific socialization). Parents being supportive toward their adolescent children and monitoring their daily lives have children who drink fewer amounts of alcohol. Also, parents who prohibit alcohol use at home and in other settings have strict attitudes about youth drinking, and supervising the drinking of adolescents lower the risk for their children to start using alcohol at an early age and to drink heavy later on in adolescence. However, parents are not rigid in their (alcohol-specific) parenting and adolescents are not passive recipients of the parenting. It seems that parents become more tolerant toward youth ­drinking over time which results in heavier drinking of the adolescents. The drinking of adolescents, on the other hand, affects their parents in the sense that parents withdraw in their parental efforts of controlling youth alcohol use. This in turn predicts an increase in adolescents’ alcohol use. Implications for future research are discussed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen, 9104, 6500, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Haske van der Vorst

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  1. Haske van der Vorst
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Correspondence to Haske van der Vorst .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Inst. Pharmaceutical Sciences, Department of Psychopharmacology, Utrecht University, Universiteitsweg 99, Utrecht, 3584CG, Netherlands

    Joris C. Verster

  2. Dept. Psychiatry, Medical University of South Carolina, President St. 67, Charleston, 29425, South Carolina, USA

    Kathleen Brady

  3. School of Medicine, Div. Alcoholism & Drug Abuse, New York University, First Ave. 550, New York, 10016, New York, USA

    Marc Galanter

  4. Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, National Addiction Centre, Windsor Walk 4, London, SE5 8AF, United Kingdom

    Patricia Conrod

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van der Vorst, H. (2012). The Role of Parents in Adolescents’ Alcohol Use. In: Verster, J., Brady, K., Galanter, M., Conrod, P. (eds) Drug Abuse and Addiction in Medical Illness. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3375-0_41

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