Adolescent drinking behaviour and the role of family life: a Scottish perspective

Family socialisation processes have been shown to have a significant influence on a variety of health-related behaviours. In this study two aspects of family life--the family's social position, and patterns of support and control by parents of their adolescent offspring--are examined in relation to young peoples self-reports of levels of drinking by a representative randomly selected sample of more than 600 Scottish young people. The analysis is based on data drawn from a longitudinal study of adolescent socialisation and life-styles. The results initially support the usual negative relationship reported in other studies between family structure and young people's alcohol use, with adolescents from non-intact families tending to drink more. However, adolescent drinking behaviour is found to be largely unrelated to the socio-economic circumstances of the family. In addition, a supportive family environment is associated with lowered prevalences of alcohol use. The work also points to the fact that, from the young person's perspective, an unsupportive family environment where there are also extremes of parental control (irrespective of whether these are high or low levels of control) is associated with raised levels of alcohol use later in adolescence. The results of a multiple linear regression show that these socialisation factors, related to parental support and control, continue to be of significance even when the family's social position is taken into account, and that such family socialisation factors would appear to be of more direct importance to adolescent drinking behaviour than family structure.