Perceptions and Beliefs Motivating Parental Discussions of Marijuana Use With Children

Parents can influence their children's use of marijuana and other substances through targeted parent-child discussions. Little is known about what factors motivate parents' decisions to discuss marijuana use with their children.

Guided by an elaborated prototype-willingness model, we tested hypotheses that: (a) parental perceived risk of harms and negative prototypes of youth who use marijuana positively predict worry about their child using marijuana; (b) higher perceived risk and worry predict higher intentions to discuss marijuana use with one's child; (c) negative prototypes and worry positively predict willingness to have discussions; and (d) higher intentions and willingness predicts having discussions.

We administered a longitudinal survey to 499 American parents of youth ages 10 to 17 assessing risk perceptions, prototypes, worry, discussion intentions, and willingness. One month later, 409 participants completed another survey assessing whether they had discussed marijuana use with their child.

At follow-up, 40% of participants reported having marijuana use discussions in the previous month. Structural-equation modeling revealed that perceived risks and negative prototypes positively predicted worry about their child using marijuana. Worry positively predicted intentions and willingness to discuss marijuana use with children. Worry mediated the relationship between perceived risks and intentions, but not the relationship between prototypes and willingness. Intentions positively predicted likelihood of marijuana use discussions, whereas willingness did not.

These findings support most predictions of the adapted model and identify cognitive and affective factors that could be targeted in health communications promoting parental discussions of marijuana use with children.