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Drug use risk increased among adolescents with authoritarian parents

Adolescents with authoritarian or neglectful parents are more likely to use drugs and alcohol compared with adolescents with authoritative or indulgent parents, according to study findings published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

“Our results support that idea that extremes are not effective: neither authoritarianism nor absence of control and affection,” Amador Calafat, MD, of the European Institute of Studies on Prevention in Spain, said in a press release. “A good relationship with children works well. In this respect, it can go hand in hand with direct control (known as ‘authoritative’ or democratic style) or not (style wrongly called ‘indulgent’).”

Calafat and colleagues evaluated 7,718 adolescents aged 11 to 19 years to determine what type of parent-child relationship protects against children taking drugs. Parenting styles included authoritative (strict and warm), authoritarian (strict but not warm), indulgent (warm but not strict) and neglectful (neither strict nor warm). Participants were from Sweden, the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic.

Across the different countries, interactions were found between parenting style and tobacco use (P<.05), school performance (P<.05) and personal disturbances (P<.05).

Authoritative and indulgent parenting styles led to lower personal disturbances compared with authoritarian and neglectful homes. Participants from authoritarian and neglectful homes scored negatively for use of alcohol, tobacco and illegal drugs, self-esteem, school performance, and personal disturbances.

Calafat added that self-esteem and school performance was the most positive among participants in indulgent homes.

“In conclusion, we found that both authoritative and indulgent parenting styles were equally protective against adolescent substance use in the European context, but from a more personal health global perspective, the indulgent style appears to be the optimum parenting style within the European context,” the researchers wrote. “Additional studies are needed to further explore the mechanisms behind this association.”

Disclosure: The study was funded in part by the European Commission and the Government Delegation for the National Drug Plan.