By Erin Kayata
Every parent wants their kid to have a healthy relationship with alcohol. But how do you help them get there? Is it by letting them drink while they’re young in hopes of making alcohol less alluring? Or by taking a strict no-drinking approach when they’re underage?
The answer is neither, according to research from Robert Leeman, professor and chair of the health sciences department at Northeastern University, who worked with a team looking into the indirect influence of parenting styles on a person’s tendency toward heavy episodic drinking to alleviate stress.
Research found that, specifically, maternal permissiveness was indirectly linked to more alcohol problems and episodes of heavy drinking to deal with stress while authoritative styles that set boundaries were indirectly linked to fewer alcohol-related issues and stress-induced drinking episodes.
“We’ve found both passive parenting styles and authoritarian parenting styles can have negative outcomes in terms of the children’s substance use risk for different reasons,” Leeman said. “There’s anecdotal evidence that if we demystify alcohol for our kids, then they’ll be less likely to be at risk later on. That’s not what the data say.”