The Interplay of Peer, Parent, and Adolescent Drinking

To explore variability in the link between peer and adolescent drinking by parental drinking. Stress and differential susceptibility perspectives led to hypotheses that adolescents with drinking parents would be more reactive to peer drinking but also to peer abstention.

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, regressions estimated whether the association between peer alcohol use and increased drinking among adolescents was moderated by parental drinking. A regions of significance test identified the level of peer drinking that predicted adolescent drinking in the context of parental drinking.

Adolescents with binge-drinking parents were more likely to increase drinking at every level of peer drinking, supporting the stress perspective; such adolescents did not accrue benefits from abstaining peers, going against the differential susceptibility perspective.

Far from monolithic, peer influences on adolescent risky behaviors may require family environments and genetic predispositions conducive to those behaviors.