Mediation of family alcoholism risk by religious affiliation types

Religious affiliation is inversely associated with alcohol dependence (AD). Our previous findings indicated that when a religious affiliation differentiated itself from cultural norms, then high-risk adolescents (those having parents with alcoholism history) raised with these affiliations exhibited fewer AD symptoms compared with adolescents of other religious affiliations and nonreligious adolescents. The first of two studies reported here provides a needed replication of our previous findings for childhood religious affiliation using a different sample, and the second study extends examination to current religious affiliation.

A national sample of male and female adolescents/young adults (N = 1,329; mean age = 19.6 years) was selected who were the offspring of members of the Vietnam era Twin Registry. Parental alcoholism, religious affiliation types, and their interactions were examined as predictors of offspring AD symptoms.

(1) Offspring reared with a differentiating religious affiliation during child-hood exhibited significantly fewer AD symptoms as young adults; (2) offspring with current differentiating religious affiliation also exhibited fewer AD symptoms; this main effect was not weakened by adding other measures of religiousness to the model; (3) differentiating religious affiliation was correlated with both family alcoholism risk and offspring outcome, and removed the association between family alcoholism risk and offspring outcome, thus indicating that differentiating religious affiliation was at least a partial mediator of the association between family AD history risk and offspring AD outcome.

Current results indicate that religious differentiation is an inverse mediator of alcoholism risk for offspring with or without parental AD history and regardless of the influence of other religion variables. Results replicated our previous report on religious upbringing between ages 6 and 13 years and indicated an even stronger effect when current differentiating affiliation was examined.