Abstract
Despite the legal ban, alcohol consumption is widespread among Latvian adolescents and starts at very early age. In social sciences this phenomenon is analysed as a complex assessment of peer, educational services, parents, and environmental impact. The current study evaluates the impact of witnessing parent drinking, parent-adolescent communication, and parents monitoring on the start of adolescent alcohol use. By assessing these aspects of family socialization on adolescents alcohol use, we make a contribution to the conduct and family socialization studies in sociology, which serves as a contribution to the area of parent-adolescent communication. For the research, we used data obtained from quantitative three-year period longitudinal surveys, among 7th to 9th grade students from 50 schools in Latvia. Data from self-completed adolescent surveys were processed with regression analysis method to examine the relationship between witnessing parent drinking, parent-adolescent communication, and parents monitoring, and the odds of beginning of adolescent alcohol use. From these aspects of adolescent socialization in family, the most significant influence on the initiation of alcohol use among adolescents is for witnessing parent drinking. The discrepancy between the information provided by parent-adolescent communication, parents monitoring, and witnessing parent drinking does not prevent adolescents from alcohol use. Witnessing parent drinking is an aspect, the impact of which parents are unaware, but it should be highlighted to build more efficient adolescent-parent communication on the consequences of alcohol use.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Adolescent alcohol use, Parent-adolescent communication, Parents monitoring, Witnessing parent drinking
