Fathers' Alcohol Consumption and Long-Term Risk for Mortality in Offspring

Aim

This study examined associations between fathers’ alcohol consumption and risk for total and cause-specific mortality in offspring.

Short summary

We examined the associations between fathers’ alcohol consumption and total and cause-specific mortality in adult offspring. Fathers’ alcohol consumption was associated with increased risk of alcohol-related mortality in offspring. The association appeared to be weaker for causes of death in which alcohol plays a smaller, or less direct, role.

Methods

Data on fathers’ alcohol consumption, and offspring’s risky use of alcohol, smoking, mental health and contact with police/childcare authorities were collected among 46,284 men (sons) aged 18–20 years, during conscription for compulsory military training in 1969/70. Data on offspring mortality were obtained from the National Cause of Death register, 1971–2008. The mortality outcomes included total mortality, alcohol-related causes of death and violent causes of death (categorized into suicides vs violent/external causes excluding suicides).

Results

Compared to sons whose fathers never used alcohol, the risk for total and alcohol-related mortality among sons increased with the father’s consumption level. The risk of violent death was significantly elevated among sons whose fathers drank alcohol occasionally or often, but the risk of suicide increased in the highest consumption category only. After adjustment for covariates, the results remained for alcohol-related mortality whereas they were significantly attenuated, or disappeared, for total mortality, violent death and suicide.

Conclusions

Fathers’ alcohol consumption is associated with increased risk of alcohol-related mortality in the offspring. Alcohol use among fathers also increases the offspring’s risk of later total mortality, suicide and violent death, but these associations appear to be mediated or confounded by factors related to parental drinking and/or adverse childhood psychosocial circumstances.

Parental Influence on Models of Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease in Children

BACKGROUND

Lifestyle behaviors such as overeating and physical inactivity contribute significantly to CVD, the leading cause of morbidity and mortality among adults globally. CVD risk factors that begin in children often track into adulthood. Parents are believed to influence the health behaviors of their children.

OBJECTIVE

To review the literature on parental influence on children's health beliefs and behaviors, particularly eating and exercise behaviors as indicators of CV health, school-based CVD risk reduction programs, and racial/ethnic, gender and socioeconomic considerations for models of primary prevention of CVD in children.

METHODS

Seventeen studies that included parents as either a source of information, change agent or participant in a CVD risk reduction intervention were identified searching the Medline, CINAHL and PsycINFO databases from 1980 through 2002.

RESULTS

Children's lifestyle health beliefs and behaviors are significantly influenced by positive parental modeling and involvement in exercise and healthy eating; parental influence on children's behavior lasts beyond adolescence; parents are effective teachers of health habits at home when prompted by health educators; and parental influences vary by ethnicity/race, socioeconomics and gender.

CONCLUSIONS

A broader base of knowledge that is socioculturally sensitive must be developed about what parents and children believe is healthy, how parents model beliefs and behaviors for their children, and how to build self-efficacy for positive health behaviors.

Does parental drinking influence children's drinking? A systematic review of prospective cohort studies

AIMS

To evaluate evidence of the capacity for causal inference in studies of associations between parental and offspring alcohol consumption in the general population.

METHODS

A systematic search for, and narrative analysis of, prospective cohort studies of the consequences of drinking, except where assessed prenatally only, or with clinically derived instruments. Primary outcome measures were alcohol use or related problems in offspring, which were collected at least 3 years after exposure measures of parental drinking. The systematic review included 21 studies comprising 26,354 families or parent-child dyads with quantitative effect measures available for each study. Criteria for capacity of causal inference included (1) theory-driven approach and analysis; (2) analytical rigour; and (3) minimization of sources of bias.

RESULTS

Four of the 21 included studies filled several, but not all, criteria and were assessed to have some capacity for causal inference. These four studies found some evidence that parental drinking predicted drinking behaviour in adolescent offspring. The remaining 17 studies had little or no such capacity.

CONCLUSIONS

There is a fairly large and consistent literature demonstrating that more parental drinking is associated with more drinking in offspring. Despite this, existing evidence is insufficient to warrant causal inferences at this stage.

Antecedent predictors of children's initiation of sipping/tasting alcohol

BACKGROUND

Sipping or tasting alcohol is one of the earliest alcohol-use behaviors in which young children engage, yet there is relatively little research on this behavior. Previous cross-sectional analyses determined that child sipping or tasting is associated with the child's attitude toward sipping and with a family environment supportive of alcohol use, but not with variables reflecting psychosocial proneness for problem behavior as formulated in Problem Behavior Theory (Jessor and Jessor, Problem Behavior and Psychosocial Development: A Longitudinal Study of Youth, 1977, Academic Press, New York). This study extended these analyses longitudinally to identify antecedent predictors of the childhood initiation of sipping or tasting alcohol in a multiwave study.

METHODS

A sample of 452 children (238 girls) aged 8 or 10 and their families was drawn from Allegheny County, PA, using targeted-age directory sampling and random digit dialing procedures. Children were interviewed using computer-assisted interviews. Antecedent variables collected at baseline (Wave 1) were examined as predictors of the initiation of sipping/tasting alcohol in childhood (before age 12) among Wave 1 abstainers (n = 286).

RESULTS

Ninety-four children initiated sipping/tasting alcohol in a nonreligious context between baseline and turning age 12. Initiation of sipping/tasting did not generally relate to baseline variables reflecting psychosocial proneness for problem behavior. Instead, as found in the previous cross-sectional analyses, the variables most predictive of initiating sipping/tasting were perceived parents' approval for child sipping, parents' reported approval for child sipping, parents' current drinking status, and children's attitudes toward sipping/tasting alcohol.

CONCLUSIONS

These longitudinal analyses replicate the earlier cross-sectional results. Young children's sipping/tasting of alcohol reflects parental modeling of drinking and parental approval of child sipping and does not represent a precocious manifestation of a psychosocial proneness to engage in problem behavior.

Children's introduction to alcohol use: sips and tastes

BACKGROUND

Sipping or tasting alcohol is one of the earliest alcohol use behaviors in which young children engage, yet there is relatively little research on this behavior. The present research describes the prevalence of sipping or tasting in a community sample of children, examines the sociodemographic correlates and social contexts of this behavior, and tests whether variables reflecting psychosocial problem-behavior proneness, that predict adolescent drinking, account for this behavior.

METHODS

A sample of 452 children (238 girls) aged 8 or 10 and their families was drawn from Allegheny County PA using targeted-age directory sampling and random digit dialing procedures. Children were interviewed using computer-assisted interviews. Logistic regression analyses were used to examine the univariate and multivariate correlates of sipping/tasting.

RESULTS

Thirty-nine percent of the sample had only sipped or tasted alcohol (35% of 8 year olds and 48% of 10 year olds), while 6% reported having had a drink of alcohol (5% and 7%, respectively). African-American children were less likely than White children to be sippers. Neither gender nor mother's education related to sipping status. Most sipping was done in a family context. Sipping/tasting did not generally relate to variables reflecting psychosocial proneness for problem behavior. Instead, the variables most predictive of sipping/tasting were perceived parents' drinking status, perceived parents' approval for child sipping, mother's drinking frequency, and children's attitudes toward sipping/tasting alcohol.

CONCLUSIONS

Young children's sipping/tasting of alcohol reflects parental modeling of alcohol use and increased opportunities to try alcohol in the home rather than deliberate family socialization of alcohol use, and appears not to be a precocious manifestation of a psychosocial proneness to engage in problem behavior.

Assessment of the Validity of Parenting Constructs Using the Multitrait-Multimethod Model

The validity and convergence between adolescents', mothers' and fathers' reports of five parenting constructs (family conflict, family communication, permissive parenting, authoritative parenting, and authoritarian parenting) were examined. Questionnaire data were collected from 302 families with children in the first and second year of secondary education and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to test three multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) models containing five parenting constructs as trait factors and adolescents', mothers', and fathers' reports as method factors. The CFA approach to MTMM data revealed a multidimensional structure in which both measurement method and parenting traits accounted for covariation among data. The CFA results also demonstrated that the family members' perspectives converged in the measure of family conflict and family communication constructs. Results also indicated method effects for the other three constructs reflecting parenting styles. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Really underage drinkers: alcohol use among elementary students

Despite the current societal concern with underage drinking, little attention has been paid to alcohol use within the preadolescent population. This article presents the proceedings of a symposium held at the 2003 Research Society on Alcoholism meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, that was organized and chaired by John E. Donovan. The intent of the symposium was to kick start research on alcohol use among elementary school children by reviewing what is known regarding drinking in childhood. Presentations included (1) The Epidemiology of Children's Alcohol Use, by John E. Donovan; (2) The Validity of Children's Self-Reports of Alcohol Use, by Sharon L. Leech; (3) Predicting Onset of Drinking From Behavior at Three Years of Age: Influence of Early Child Expectancies and Parental Alcohol Involvement Upon Early First Use, by Robert A. Zucker; and (4) Parent, Peer, and Child Risk Factors for Alcohol Use in Two Cohorts of Elementary School Children, by Carol J. Loveland-Cherry. Presentations indicated the need for better nationwide surveillance of children's experience with alcohol; suggested that children's reports of their use of alcohol tend to be reliable and valid; supported children's alcohol use schemas and parental drinking and alcoholism at child age three as independent predictors of early onset drinking; and showed that onset of drinking before fourth or fifth grade, peer pressure, and parental norms and monitoring predict elementary student alcohol use and misuse.

Parental modeling and parenting behavior effects on offspring alcohol and cigarette use. A growth curve analysis

PURPOSE

This paper examined the effects of parental drinking and smoking, parental warmth and hostility, and their interactions on offsprings' drinking and smoking over time.

METHODS

We used four waves of prospective longitudinal data collected from 218 males and 214 females who were age 15 at Time 1 and age 28 by Time 4. Growth mixture modeling was used to develop offspring trajectory groups of cigarette smokers and alcohol drinkers. Logistic regression analyses were conducted to determine whether parent behaviors could predict offspring heavy drinking and smoking trajectories.

RESULTS

Four drinking and three smoking trajectory groups were identified for females and males. Parent drinking rather than parenting behavior predicted heavy drinking by offsprings and mothers' drinking was a slightly better predictor than fathers' drinking for both daughters and sons. Fathers' warmth and hostility was the best predictor of heavy smoking by sons. Neither modeling nor parenting significantly predicted female heavy smoking. For the most part, parent modeling did not interact with parenting behavior to predict smoking or drinking in offspring.

IMPLICATIONS

Parents affected their offspring's use of alcohol and cigarettes both through modeling and parenting behavior. However, the importance of modeling relative to parenting behavior differed by the type of substance. Prevention programs that focus on both the modeling of parental behaviors, as well as enhancing parenting skills, should be effective in influencing trajectories of substance use throughout adolescence and young adulthood.