Elsevier

Addictive Behaviors

Volume 37, Issue 12, December 2012, Pages 1314-1324
Addictive Behaviors

Family and peer predictors of substance use from early adolescence to early adulthood: An 11-year prospective analysis

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2012.06.020Get rights and content

Abstract

The focus of this study was social (i.e., family and peer) influences on substance use from early adolescence to early adulthood. A large, ethnically diverse sample of early adolescents (N = 998) was followed from age 12 to age 23. We tested direct and indirect effects of parental monitoring, family relationship quality, and association with deviant peers on change in substance use across time. Outcomes for tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use were analyzed as separate pathways within the same overall model. The results suggest that a significant shift in the nature of family influence occurred across adolescence and into early adulthood, but deviant peer influence was relatively consistent across this period. Specifically, parental monitoring and deviant peer association were predictive of substance use in early adolescence, but family relationship quality was a significant predictor across the transition to high school and generally continued to predict use into later adolescence, as did association with deviant peers. Deviant peers were the only significant predictor in early adulthood. Our results also suggested that parental monitoring and family relationship quality indirectly predicted later substance use by way of deviant peers, implying that an important aspect of the family context is its influence on choice of friends and peer group composition. Implications for family-based prevention and intervention are discussed.

Highlights

► We tested effects of families and peers on substance use from age 12 to 23. ► Outcomes for tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use were analyzed simultaneously. ► Parental monitoring and deviant peer association were predictive in early adolescence. ► Family relationship quality and deviant peers were predictive in late adolescence. ► Monitoring and family relationships indirectly predicted substance use via peers.

Introduction

Considerable research has been devoted to understanding adolescent use of tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana. Substance use often starts among a small percentage of youth during early adolescence, and the percentage continues to increase throughout adolescence. Results from a recent national survey indicated that among eighth grade students, 36.6% had tried alcohol, 17.4% had been intoxicated in their lifetime, and 15.7% had used marijuana; however, by 12th grade, 56.6% of students had been intoxicated and 42.0% had used marijuana (Johnston, O'Malley, Bachman, & Schulenberg, 2010). These elevations in substance use have both immediate and long-term implications for adolescent health, well-being, and competence in adult roles (Chassin et al., 1999, Kandel et al., 1986, Newcomb and Bentler, 1988). Specifically, substance use before age 17 is a strong predictor of later use and dependence (Brook et al., 2002, Clark, Kirisci and Tarter, 1998, Dewit et al., 2000), even when controlling for genetic and family influences (Grant et al., 2006, Lynsky et al., 2003) and the actual number of years of substance use (Anthony & Petronis, 1995). In turn, substance dependence is linked to a variety of maladaptive outcomes, including a greater likelihood of psychiatric disorder and involvement in violent crime (Brook et al., 2002, Lennings et al., 2003, Soyka, 2000). Moreover, adolescent substance use is a key component of more general problem behavior, which includes antisocial or delinquent behavior, academic failure, and risky sexual activity (Ary et al., 1999, Barrera et al., 2001, Dishion and Patterson, 2006, Tapert et al., 2001). These findings underscore the importance of identifying specific risk and protective factors in the progression of use from early adolescence to early adulthood.

Many researchers who explore risk and protective factors related to adolescent substance use emphasize the social context, and key aspects of this context are interactions within the family, such as parental monitoring and parent–youth relationship quality (Dishion, Nelson, & Bullock, 2004). For example, a great deal of this research has linked parental monitoring to reduced adolescent substance use (Barrera et al., 2001, Kumpfer and Alvarado, 2003, Svensson, 2000). Successful parental monitoring involves structuring activities and fostering communication skills to facilitate adolescents’ disclosure, which helps reduce youths’ exposure to risks for problem behavior (Dishion and McMahon, 1998, Stattin and Kerr, 2000). Family-based interventions typically strengthen parents’ family management skills, and research on these programs has linked improved family management practices, and monitoring in particular, to reductions in adolescent substance use (Dishion et al., 2003, Dusenbury, 2000, Spoth et al., 2001).

The quality of the parent–youth relationship has also been linked to decreased risk for a variety of problem behaviors in adolescence, including substance use (Ackard et al., 2006, Herman et al., 1997). Relationship quality with parents remains a robust predictor of youth problem behavior even when controlling for parenting styles (e.g., authoritarian, permissive, etc.; Bronte-Tinkew, Moore, & Carrano, 2006) and family structure (e.g., one vs. two parents, biological vs. stepfamilies; Crawford & Novak, 2008). Family theorists posit that youths who have a strong relationship with their parents are more likely to turn to their parents for information and guidance and to internalize parental advice (Allen and Land, 1999, Brody et al., 1994).

Peer relationships are another critical aspect of the social context that can precipitate adolescent substance use (Barrera et al., 2001, Brook et al., 2001). During this developmental period, youths spend less time with parents, levels of involvement with the family decrease, and the frequency and quality of youth–parent communication are reduced (Hill et al., 2007, Larson et al., 1996, Loeber et al., 2000). In addition, adolescence is a developmental period of heightened responsiveness to social reward, implying an increasing desire to fit in among peers (Spear, 2000). As a result, peers are hypothesized to become increasingly influential relative to parents during the course of adolescence (Berndt, 1979, Kandel, 1996), and extant research demonstrates that early adolescents are particularly vulnerable to peer influence related to substance use (Kelly et al., 2012). Further, although resistance to peer influence may develop during the course of adolescence (Steinberg & Monahan, 2007), more recent research suggests that peers may continue to exert a socializing influence until at least the age of 20 (Monahan, Steinberg, & Cauffman, 2009). Thus, associating with a deviant peer group in adolescence can be highly prognostic of escalating problem behavior (Dishion et al., 1995, Dishion et al., 2004, Patterson et al., 2000). Affiliation with deviant or substance-using peers can influence individual behavior in a variety of ways, such as social learning, facilitation, peer pressure, and deviancy training, during which peers reinforce each other by endorsing and encouraging deviant behaviors and activities (Dishion and Owen, 2002, Patterson et al., 2000). Early substance use can provide an entry point into a social context where use is accepted and encouraged by peers, which in turn fosters increasing levels of use (i.e., “peer contagion”; Dishion & Tipsord, 2010). At the same time, selection factors may also be in play, in that troubled or antisocial children tend to gravitate toward antisocial peers (Fergusson & Horwood, 1999).

When exploring the progression of substance use from adolescence to adulthood, it is important to examine both family and peer contexts simultaneously. Although some consider family and peers to be unique predictors of adolescent substance use (Aseltine, 1995, Bahr et al., 2005, Beal et al., 2001, Brook et al., 2001, Chassin et al., 1986), this perspective ignores the potentially problematic overlap between family and peer contexts, described by Dishion, Poulin, and Medici Skaggs (2000) as premature adolescent autonomy. In this developmental process, parents disengage from active involvement and monitoring of child behavior too early in adolescence, which can open the door to influence by deviant peers. In contrast, parents who continue their monitoring of and involvement with their adolescent can reduce the influence of deviant peers by keeping their youth engaged in the family system and by actively managing the composition of peer groups.

Thus, rather than treating parental and peer social contexts as independent, it is useful to consider the ways in which they are linked with each other and with adolescent substance use. For example, parental monitoring and parent–youth relationships can influence not only an adolescent's behavior, but also his or her exposure to deviant or substance-using peers. Some research has found that ineffective parental monitoring is linked with increased association with deviant peers, and deviant peer association in turn partially mediates the relationship between parental monitoring and more general problem behavior (Ary et al., 1999, Barrera et al., 2001). On the other hand, effective monitoring has been linked with reduced likelihood of associating with peers who use substances (Flannery, Williams, & Vazsonyi, 1999). Additionally, although the supporting research is sparse, parent–youth relationship quality has also been linked with deviant peer association, even when controlling for parental monitoring (Fosco, Stormshak, Dishion, & Winter, 2012). Youths who have a strong relationship with their parents are more likely to turn to their parents for information and guidance and to internalize parental advice (Allen and Land, 1999, Brody et al., 1994), and as a result, relationship quality may influence the decision to use substances (i.e., a direct effect) as well as the choice of peers, who may then provide access to substances or exert peer pressure to use substances (i.e., an indirect effect). Recent research supports this hypothesis, finding that the family environment can exert an indirect effect on alcohol use by means of peers (Nash, McQueen, & Bray, 2005). As a result, in addition to direct effects of family and peers on substance use, we also investigated whether deviant peers are an indirect mechanism by which the family context can influence adolescent substance use at different points in development.

To better understand the etiology of adolescent substance use, it is also vital to examine the relative timing of family and peer effects. Recently, Dodge et al. (2009) tested a cascade model of family and peer influences on substance use initiation. Using longitudinal data from prekindergarten through 12th grade, they found that an early family risk composite was associated with kindergarten behavior problems, early peer rejection and diminished social preference, reduced parental supervision in Grade 5, problem behavior in Grades 6 and 7, and subsequent substance use. However, because parenting and peers were not tested as simultaneous predictors, it is not possible to evaluate the relative influence of each at different stages of development. Other studies have compared family and peer influences on substance use, but these were generally limited in that they were either cross-sectional (e.g., Bahr et al., 2005, Beal et al., 2001, Cleveland et al., 2008) or focused on a narrow time period (e.g., Aseltine, 1995, Brook et al., 2001). Even when both family and peer influences on substance use are evaluated over a longer term, the relative influence of the two is usually not examined, nor are potential overlaps (e.g., Guo, Hill, Hawkins, Catalano, & Abbott, 2002). Thus, we find that the extant literature has not systematically examined the relative contribution of parents and peers to adolescent substance use at multiple points across the entirety of adolescence. This is particularly critical given the plethora of family-based intervention programs that exist; it may be, for example, that these programs could realize additional benefits by focusing on particular aspects of parenting at specific ages.

Previous research has found both gender (Jackson, Sher, Cooper, & Wood, 2002) and ethnic (Blum et al., 2000) differences in the progression of substance use across adolescence. These differences extend to the links between family processes and substance use (Kelly, O'Flaherty, et al., 2011, Rosay et al., 2000), although the exact nature of effects is not always clear. For example, in some research, parental monitoring has been found to be more effective in reducing substance use among girls (Choquet, Hassler, Morin, Falissard, & Chau, 2008), whereas in other research, monitoring is more effective among boys (McArdle et al., 2002). Rosay et al. (2000) argue that, although differences exist, they are not large enough to be consequential. Thus, although we investigated whether gender and ethnicity moderated the links between family and peer processes and substance use, the current state of the literature did not permit the development of a priori hypotheses. We treated these aspects of our analysis as exploratory.

In this study, we explored family and peer predictors of youth substance use from early adolescence to early adulthood. Using a longitudinal sample, we examined the timing of family and peer influences on individual substance use during key developmental periods, including middle school, high school, and early adulthood. We were also interested in the transition to high school, since this change can create a significant degree of stress in adolescents’ lives (Isakson & Jarvis, 1999). The transition requires students to adapt to a larger school and to fit in with a new peer group, and trends in problem behavior that begin in early adolescence can potentially be exacerbated by the transition to high school (Eccles et al., 1997, Roeser et al., 1999).

Previous research has also found that early tobacco use can be a key risk factor for later association with deviant peers (Fergusson & Horwood, 1999) and for later use of other substances (Clark, Kirisci and Moss, 1998, Ennett et al., 2006, Vega and Gill, 2005). At the same time, other research finds that early alcohol (Jackson et al., 2002) and marijuana (Patton, Coffey, Carlin, Sawyer, & Lynskey, 2005) use may be a contributing factor to later tobacco use. In an effort to disentangle these conflicting hypotheses, we modeled use of tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana independently and examined whether use of a certain substance predicted later use of other substances.

Overall, we tested a longitudinal model in which parenting, deviant peers, and substance use were cross-lagged at ages 12, 13, 15, 17, and 23 (see Fig. 1). Our model included pathways of tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use simultaneously and included cross-over effects among substances (although Fig. 1 depicts a generic “substance use” construct to improve readability). The model also considered parental monitoring and parent–youth relationship quality simultaneously (again, Fig. 1 depicts a generic “family context” construct to improve readability). We controlled for socioeconomic status (SES) and grade-point average (GPA) throughout the model because they have been shown to influence substance use (Diego et al., 2003, Luthar and D'Avanzo, 1999). The variables within each time point were allowed to correlate freely (not pictured in Fig. 1, for readability). Using this model, we examined the following core research questions:

  • 1.

    Do family and peer contexts have unique associations with tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use across adolescence and early adulthood? We tested direct effects of parental monitoring, family relationship quality, and deviant peers simultaneously at ages 13, 15, 17, and 23.

  • 2.

    Does the relative strength of direct family and peer effects change over the course of adolescence? We evaluated the relative magnitude of the association between family and peer factors and substance use at ages 13, 15, 17, and 23.

  • 3.

    Is the family context associated with substance use by way of deviant peer association? We tested indirect effects of parental monitoring and family relationship quality on substance use by way of deviant peer association.

  • 4.

    Do gender and/or ethnicity moderate these links?

We hypothesized that family and peer factors would influence substance use across time, but that peer factors would become stronger during the course of adolescence and into early adulthood. We also hypothesized that parental monitoring would be a stronger predictor in early adolescence, and family relationship quality would be a stronger predictor later in adolescence as youth gain a degree of behavioral autonomy from parents (Allen & Land, 1999). Finally, we hypothesized that parental monitoring and family relationship quality both would exert significant indirect effects on substance use by way of association with deviant peers.

To minimize the chance of model misspecification, we included a consideration of continuity in each construct over time, as well as reciprocal effects among constructs (e.g., adolescent substance use predicting later aspects of parenting and association with deviant peers, deviant peer association predicting later aspects of parenting, etc.). These questions were not central to our study, so we treated these components of the analysis as exploratory.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were 998 adolescents and their families who enrolled in a randomized controlled trial of a family-based intervention project aimed at reducing adolescent antisocial behavior (the Family Check-Up; Dishion & Stormshak, 2007). Families were recruited in sixth grade from three middle schools in the Pacific Northwest that contained student populations representative of the geographic area (i.e., very diverse from both an ethnic and socioeconomic perspective). Parents of all sixth grade

Results

Descriptive statistics for each variable are provided in Table 1, and the correlations within each age are presented in Table 2. The percentage of substance users in our sample appears to be slightly lower than those reported in a recent national survey (Johnston et al., 2010). Although there was a degree of missing data across time, an attrition analysis found that families who did not provide data at later waves were not systematically different from those who did in terms of baseline levels

Discussion

Our study is unique in several ways. First, longitudinal research on substance use that spans adolescence and early adulthood is somewhat atypical. Second, research has only rarely considered the family and peer contexts, as well as their overlap, in the same model. Finally, no research to date has explicitly examined the timing of family and peer influences across the span from early adolescence to early adulthood. Our findings can not only inform developmental theory, but will be highly

Conclusions

This study provides new insight into the links between adolescents’ social ecology and the pathways of substance use from early adolescence to early adulthood. Our findings suggest that both parents and peers have significant impacts on substance use, but that the most salient aspects of parenting are subject to change during the transition to high school; monitoring appears to be more central in early adolescence, while family relationship quality appears to be more central in middle and late

Role of Funding Sources

This project was supported by grants DA07031, DA13773, and DA018760 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to Thomas J. Dishion. Support for the first author was provided by grant T32 MH20012 from the National Institute of Mental Health. These organizations had no role in the study design, collection, analysis or interpretation of the data, writing the manuscript, or the decision to submit the paper for publication. The content of this paper is solely the responsibility of the authors and

Contributors

Dr. Dishion designed the study and wrote the protocol. Dr. Van Ryzin conducted the statistical analysis and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors contributed to and have approved the final manuscript.

Conflict of Interest

All authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Acknowledgements

This project was supported by grants DA07031, DA13773, and DA018760 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to Thomas J. Dishion. Support for the first author was provided by grant T32 MH20012 (Elizabeth A. Stormshak) from the National Institute of Mental Health. We acknowledge the contribution of the Project Alliance staff, Portland public schools, and the participating youths and families. We also acknowledge Cheryl Mikkola for her editorial assistance.

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  • Cited by (0)

    1

    Present address: Pennsylvania State University, Department of Human Development and Family Studies, 110 South Henderson Building, University Park, PA 16802 USA.

    2

    Present address: Arizona State University, Prevention Research Center, PO Box 876005, Tempe, AZ 85287–6005 USA.

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