The Association Between Problem Drinking Parent(s) and Age When Started Drinking

Live Poster Session: Zoom Link

Eli Gappelberg
Eli Gappelberg

Eli is a student at Wesleyan University and is in the psychology major here. Additionally, he plans on being in the religion minor. Outside of academics, Eli is an avid running enthusiast.

Abstract

There is a significant association between family history of alcoholism and drinking trajectories with well-informed literature as evidence, but the literature linking family history of alcoholism and age when drinking begins is lacking (Warner, Wright, Johnson, 2007). Woman have a known higher heritability of alcohol dependance than men(Ehlers, 2010), but does this translate to mothers having more influence over their children’s drinking trajectories than fathers do?

When one or more parent is a problem drinker, does this influence when the child starts drinking? Additionally, does this effect when/if the child will start drinking regularly, and/or the age during the heaviest drinking period? Does the mother or father being a problem drinker have more influence?

The goal of this study is to examine if there is significance in these aforementioned associations. These findings suggest that there is a significant association between having one or more problem drinking parent and the age when starting to drink, as well as age when starting to drink regularly and age at heaviest drinking period. There was a reported difference of influence between the mother and father. Further research is needed to examine other environmental factors and their significance in association with these drinking milestones.

Below is an embedded PDF of the poster.

QAC-Poster-Eli