Youth Involvement in Family Drinking and Parental Permission to Sip/Taste Alcohol: A Test of an Early Risk Pathway to Perceived Parental Approval of Underage Alcohol Use

Background: Several alcohol-specific parenting behaviors are associated with adolescent alcohol use. An important next step in the literature is integrating these behaviors into unified risk pathways, which have the potential to inform preventive interventions and public health messaging. Youth involvement in family drinking (i.e., asking children to fetch, pour, and open drinks) reflects parental-approved contact with alcohol, which may present the opportunity for sipping/tasting alcohol with parental permission. In turn, sipping/tasting alcohol with parental permission may increase adolescents' perceived parental approval of underage drinking, a known risk factor for alcohol use later in adolescence and young adulthood. This indirect pathway was tested and sensation seeking was posited as a moderator of the association between youth involvement in family drinking and sipping/tasting alcohol with parental permission. Methods: The community sample included 260 parent-teen dyads (adolescents aged 11–12 years; 60.85% White, 28.9% Black or African American, 2.33% Asian, 1.16% American Indian or Alaska Native, and 7.36% identified as “more than one race”). Hypotheses were tested using path modeling. Results: Youth involvement in family drinking was positively associated with sipping/tasting with parental permission and perceived parental approval of underage alcohol use. Sipping/tasting with parental permission was not associated with perceived parental approval of underage alcohol use. Moderation was not supported. Conclusions: Youth involvement in family drinking may be the start of an early risk pathway that facilitates sipping/tasting with parental permission and directly shapes adolescent perceptions of parental approval of underage alcohol use. Lack of moderation may suggest that progression to sipping/tasting is driven more strongly by a family environment that approves of alcohol exposure rather than adolescent temperament. Findings highlight the utility of considering different alcohol-specific parenting practices mechanistically in risk models.