UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa., Jun 12, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Children whose parents
didn't permit them to drink underage were significantly less likely to drink
heavily in college, U.S. researchers found.
Caitlin Abar, a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University's Prevention
Research and Methodology Centers, suggested parents practice a zero-tolerance
alcohol policy at home and said there is no scientific basis to the common
belief that prohibiting alcohol turns it into a "forbidden fruit" and encourages
abuse.
Abar surveyed almost 300 college freshmen and related their drinking habits to
their parents' modeling and permissibility of alcohol use. Those students whose
parents did not permit them to drink underage -- about half of the group --
drank less than others in college.
In addition, "the greater number of drinks that a parent had set as a limit for
the teens, the more often they drank and got drunk in college," Abar said in a
statement.
However, whether the parents themselves drank appeared to have little effect on
predicting their children's behaviors when accounting for the permissiveness
they exhibited toward teen alcohol use.
More research is needed, Abar said, to determine whether the findings differ
among the students who drank with their parents at meals from those whose
parents allowed their children to drink both inside and outside of the house.
The study was presented at meeting of the Society for Prevention Research in
Washington and is published in Addictive Behaviors.
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Copyright 2009 by United Press International