RESEARCH & POLICY FOR THE REAL WORLD

Too much too young? The role of parents in families that (mis)use alcohol

Honor Rhodes, Director of DevelopmentFamily and Parenting Institute

Alcohol as communication

It’s something we’d share, or that is what I thought, we don’t share time together now, she is out drinking with friends and when she is not drinking she is planning how to get out and go drinking, no, not even that really, she is planning on getting drunk

Sarah, mother of Rose (14)

He knows I hate it, I was brought up teetotal, it is like the worst insult, hurting me knowing that I don’t understand it and I never can.

Das, father of Rahmi (16)

Why does love (and why do parents) matter?….to everyone….

• Neurology and alcohol• Genetics• Cost• Early intervention• Every Child Matters• Neighbourhoods and

communities• Wasted potential of any child• Child death enquiries

The recipe for successful parenting is to be….

• White• Affluent • Healthy and not abusing alcohol or drugs • With healthy children born after uneventful

pregnancies and births • Partnered/married• Well housed• A graduate• Doing an interesting job with a high degree of professional autonomy • Well parented yourself• Connected to family, kin and community• And not at all smug…….

What do most parents worry about?

• General and family misuse of drugs and alcohol

• Their children’s education and life chances

• How to deal with problems that they have tried and failed to resolve

• How to spend time together in a way each family member enjoys

• How to balance competing needs like time and money (we do 8.4 activities a day compared to 7.2 in 1961)

What do children and young people worry about?

• School work and bullying

• Friendships• Anxiety and depression• Not be listened to or

taken seriously • Their parents’ health• Body image• Lack of freedom• Too much responsibility• The world

What children and young people say about alcohol

• You just have to do it, you probably don’t want to but it is what you’ve got to do

• I don’t drink as much as my dad• My mum comes home from a

‘hard day at work’ and hits the bottle big time

• I know that I can take beer and spirits from home and they’ll never know, the joys of home delivery, comes just like the baked beans and toothpaste

• I know they don’t like it but they don’t say so, just do that cold and disappointed stuff

Families’ use of alcohol

• Parents’ alcohol consumption matters as an influencing factor on their children between the ages of 10 – 13

• Moderate, safe, celebratory drinking seems to correlate with more responsible child drinking in their later teenage years

• At 13+ peers have a far greater influence and the child brought up in modest/moderate use households can have the protection this bestows eroded by other teenagers with less modelling of moderate alcohol use to draw upon

What can we do?

• Beware of moral panics• No prohibition but no positive

reinforcements • Know what works• (Parenting Programmes, Early

intervention work, peri and ante-natal, early education, peer support, youth fora for research and help with messages)

• Apply it• Review it• Make it better

What do we still need to know?

• More research…on protections• More research on prompts• More research on messages that

can be really ‘heard’ by young people

• More services that help parents talk with children about uncomfortable things, including alcohol use

• More information in places where it can be taken in and then applied

• Less blame/shame, more effective help

• So what do you know and how can you share it?

More communication without knowing it

• It’s like my last little legal pleasure, I’d never let the children see me smoking weed but what’s the harm in the odd beer?

• I lie, simple as that, I lie about who I drink with, where I drink, what I drink and MOST of all how much I drink, I don’t want her to be awake all night worrying

• When I’m off my face I stay out, as long as phone sober enough before 11pm it’s OK

• I don’t think that I’m a heavy drinker, all the men in my family have drunk beers, my lad is a bit of lightweight, needs to get some practice in…

Ask for help

• http://www.familyandparenting.org, try the Practitioner Forum

• Get some specific advanced training

• Look at established and emerging research sites, even ones that you think are driven by different ideologies/theoretical understanding than your own

• http://www.jrf.org.uk