Effects of parental monitoring on alcohol use in the US and Sweden: A brief report

Highlights

• Parental monitoring is related to lower alcohol use in adolescents.

• Country may moderate parental monitoring, so we compared parental monitoring's relation to alcohol use in the US/Sweden.

• Main effects of country & PM, interaction between country & PM predicting drinks/week, & PM predicting problem alcohol use.

Abstract

Objective

Adolescent alcohol use predicts a myriad of negative mental and physical health outcomes including fatality (Midanik, 2004). Research in parental influence on alcohol consumption finds parental monitoring (PM), or knowing where/whom your child is with, is associated with lower levels of alcohol use in adolescents (e.g., Arria et al., 2008). As PM interventions have had only limited success (Koutakis, Stattin, & Kerr, 2008), investigating moderating factors of PM is of importance. Country may serve as one such moderator (Calafat, Garcia, Juan, Becoña, & Fernández-Hermida, 2014). Thus, the purpose of the present report is to assess the relationship between PM and alcohol use in the US and Sweden.

Method

High school seniors from the US (n = 1181, 42.3% Male) and Sweden (n = 2171, 44.1% Male) completed assessments of total drinks consumed in a typical week, problematic alcohol use, and perceived PM.

Results

Generalized linear mixed modeling (GLM, Cohen, Cohen, West, & Aiken, 2013; Hilbe, 2011) was used to examine whether country moderated the relationship between PM and alcohol use. Results revealed main effects of country and PM and a significant interaction between country and PM in predicting total drinks per week and PM in predicting problematic alcohol use (p < 0.001).

Conclusions

While PM is related to lower quantity of alcohol consumed and problematic alcohol use, greater PM appears to be more strongly related to fewer drinks per week and less problematic alcohol use in the US, as compared to Sweden.

Introduction

Early alcohol use is a robust predictor of physical/mental health outcomes in adolescents, including drug/alcohol dependence, depression, aggression, and victimization (e.g., McGue and Iacono, 2008, Midanik, 2004). Underage drinking is a leading causes of death among youth (National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, 2007), and directly responsible for higher rates of physical injury and high-risk sexual activity. Despite clear evidence that one aspect of parenting, parental monitoring (PM), is associated with lower levels of adolescent drinking (Arria et al., 2008, Beck et al., 2004), prevention efforts that have targeted PM have had only limited success (e.g. Koutakis, Stattin, & Kerr, 2008). This highlights the importance of identifying dispositional factors that may strengthen the effect of parental monitoring on adolescent alcohol consumption. Parental styles across countries have been proposed as one such moderator (Calafat et al., 2014). Given that country of origin is not a malleable factor, it is important to understand if the efficacy of PM is affected by country. PM and alcohol has been studied in several countries (e.g., Strunin et al., 2013), but rarely across countries. Thus, the current brief report provides a preliminary examination into the extent that country is associated with adolescent sensitivity to parental monitoring.

Substantial evidence suggests adolescent drinking practices differ across countries (Norström, 2002, Hibell et al., 2004, Rehm et al., 2003, Ahlstrom and Osterberg, 2004). Compared with American youth, European adolescents initiate drinking earlier and are half as likely to abstain from alcohol, than American adolescents (Jernigan, 2001, Johnston et al., 2005, Hvitfeldt et al., 2004). According to the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drug Use (ESPAD) report, youth in Sweden reported drinking more than average amounts of alcohol when compared to other European countries (7.0 versus 5.1 cL). Given the central role culture plays in parenting and adolescent drinking, country may be critical in determining the association between PM and adolescent problem drinking. Research on parenting in the US and Sweden suggests differing parental styles. According to Sorbring and Gurdal (2011), in Sweden more equal responsibilities and opportunities are spread between children and parents. Thus, Swedish parents “negotiate” with their children. In contrast, in the US the hierarchy between individuals is highlighted. Thus, individuals are more competitive and power dynamic.

Dishon and McMahon (1998) proposed a triad of interrelated components of parenting that impact youth problem behavior: motivation, behavior management, and parental monitoring (PM), defined as “parenting behaviors involving attention to and tracking of the child's whereabouts, activities, and adaptations.” Indeed, evidence suggests that PM has been protective for a range of adolescent risk behaviors (Lahey et al., 2008, Fletcher et al., 2004, Bohnert et al., 2012). Critically, two-decades of research have revealed that high levels of PM are consistently associated with lower levels of adolescent drinking and related consequences in the US (Arria et al., 2008, Beck et al., 2004, Barnes et al., 1994, Fors et al., 1999, Griffin et al., 2000, Branstetter and Furman, 2013), over and above peer influence (Steinberg, Fletcher, & Darling, 1994). However, it has been noted that many of the studies that purport to examine parental monitoring have been limited by only examining one component of this process, parental knowledge. This dimension of parental monitoring has come under criticism for being a more passive measure of child disclosure rather than active parental tracking and monitoring of youth behaviors (e.g. Kerr et al., 2010, Stattin and Kerr, 2000), highlighting the need to assess not only parental knowledge but also active limit-setting that accompanies it to fully measure active parental monitoring. Indeed, studies that have examined parental knowledge alone have found inconsistent results. While some research suggests that parental knowledge alone can be effective at buffering youth from drinking problems (Kerr et al., 2010), other research indicates that it may be an insufficient protective factor (e.g. for females, Barnes et al., 2005, Borawski et al., 2003, Griffin et al., 2000). Thus, the present study incorporates rule setting with parental knowledge items in order to more closely approximate PM. These inconsistent results across studies suggest that PM, and factors determining adolescent sensitivity to PM, remain inadequately understood.

The present study fills this gap in the literature by examining whether country moderates the relation between PM, indicated by both parental knowledge and rule-setting, and adolescent problem drinking in two large community-based samples of high school seniors living in the US and in Sweden. Based on prior research in the US (Aria et al., 2008) and Sweden (Bergh, Hagquist, & Starrin, 2010), we hypothesized that higher levels of PM would be associated with lower levels of adolescent drinking in both cultures. However, we hypothesized that high levels of PM would have a stronger relation with low levels of drinking among US adolescents due to the relative authority of US parents and the lower overall adolescent drinking observed in the US compared with Sweden.