Parenting and Adolescent Substance Use: What Works, What Does Not, and What Is Next

Laurence Steinberg's 2001 presidential address to the Society for Research on Adolescence was titled "We know some things: Parent-child relationships in retrospect and prospect." Because this influential address, the field of parenting research has further expanded, particularly regarding work on youth substance use. The current study seeks to summarize the literature linking parenting characteristics with adolescent substance use (alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use) to highlight the amount of evidence that exists and where the field might move forward.

A total of 533 empirical articles published from 1990 to 2021 were identified with statistically significant associations between a variety of parenting characteristics and youth substance use outcomes. Samples included males and females between 12 and 20 years old from the United States and around the world. Associations were examined overall, across study design, and across substances.

Overall, the greatest number of studies involved parental modeling (136 studies), knowledge (109), and/or monitoring (102), with each of 15 parenting characteristics associated with outcomes in ≥ 19 studies. Relative frequencies of associations were similar across study design, substance type, and level of general risk in the sample examined. Associations showing parenting characteristics that result in positive and negative outcomes were overwhelmingly consistent across samples from across the world.

After more than 30 years of broad research, a preponderance of evidence exists linking parenting and youth substance use. As a field, it is time to move away from replication to new directions to improve science and youth outcomes.