Racial differences in parenting style typologies and heavy episodic drinking trajectories

Area of Science:

• Adolescent Health
• Developmental Psychology
• Substance Use Research

Background:

• Parenting styles are crucial in shaping adolescent behavior.
• Heavy episodic drinking (HED) during adolescence can have long-term consequences.
• Understanding racial disparities in HED trajectories is vital.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate racial differences in the association between parenting styles and HED.
• To examine how parenting typologies predict changes in HED from adolescence to young adulthood.

Main Methods:

• Utilized data from 9,942 adolescents (ages 12-31) from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.
• Employed confirmatory factor analysis and factor mixture modeling to define parenting typologies (balanced, authoritarian, permissive, uninvolved/neglectful).
• Applied zero-inflated Poisson multigroup latent growth curve modeling to analyze HED trajectories.

Main Results:

• Identified four parenting typologies: balanced (65.8%), authoritarian (12.2%), permissive (19.4%), and uninvolved/neglectful (2.7%).
• Authoritarian parenting was linked to a lower probability of HED at age 12 across all races.
• Among Black youth with HED at age 12, authoritarian parenting predicted higher initial HED but a slower increase over time compared to balanced parenting.
• White adolescents exposed to uninvolved, permissive, or authoritarian parenting did not show increased HED over time compared to those with balanced parenting.

Conclusions:

• Parenting styles significantly influence heavy episodic drinking trajectories from adolescence into young adulthood.
• The impact of parenting on HED demonstrates significant racial differences, particularly for Black youth engaging in HED.
• Findings highlight the persistent and race-specific effects of parenting on adolescent substance use into later life stages.