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Parent-child Relationships and Sexual Minority Youth: Implications for Adult Alcohol Abuse

  • Empirical Research
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Abstract

Sexual minority (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and same-sex attracted) youth and adults report elevated rates of alcohol use and abuse relative to their heterosexual peers; these differences are strongest for sexual minority girls and women. Although preliminary evidence suggests that unsupportive parenting and maladaptive parent-child relationship qualities are associated with concurrent substance use among sexual minority youth, questions remain about the long-term implications of these early familial experiences on drinking behaviors among sexual minority youth and adults. Nationally-representative prospective data (n = 14,800; 53.1% female; Wave 1 Mean age = 15.61; Wave 4 Mean age = 28.51) were used to test the longitudinal association between parent-child relationships and parental autonomy granting between the ages of 13–18, and sexual-orientation-related disparities in alcohol abuse during adulthood. The findings showed that adolescent same-sex attraction was associated with alcohol abuse during adulthood for sexual minority women and that deficits in parent-child relationship quality statistically mediated this association. No sexual orientation differences in alcohol abuse were found among men. The findings suggest that the quality of relationships with parents in early adolescence has long-lasting impact on sexual minority women’s vulnerability for alcohol abuse. Early interventions that bolster supportive parent-child relationship qualities may have enduring consequences for sexual minority women’s alcohol use across the life course.

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Notes

  1. The Mplus bootstrap option does not work with the FIML missing data procedure nor the integration statement requirements to estimate the indirect effects with weighted survey data (Muthén 2015).

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Acknowledgements

This research uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis.

Funding

This study was funded in part by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (awarded to Fish) grant number F32AA023138. This research was also supported by grant P2CHD041041, Maryland Population Research Center, and P2CHD042849, awarded to the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Additionally, the study was funded in part by the National Institutes of Drug Abuse (awarded to Watson) grant number K01DA047918. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. The authors acknowledge generous support from the Communities for Just Schools Fund Project at the New Venture Fund, and for Russell from the Priscilla Pond Flawn Endowment at the University of Texas at Austin. Fish would also like to acknowledge support from the University of Maryland Prevention Research Center cooperative agreement U48DP006382 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Any interpretations and opinions expressed herein are solely those of the authors and may not reflect those of the CDC.

Data Sharing and Declaration

The data that support the findings of this study are available from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill team, but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. However, data are available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of the Add Health program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Maryland, Family Science, School of Public Health, 4200 Valley Drive, Suite 1142, College Park, MD, 20742, USA

    Jessica N. Fish

  2. University of Connecticut, Human Development & Family Sciences, 348 Mansfield Rd., U-1058, Storrs, CT, 06269-1058, USA

    Beth S. Russell & Ryan J. Watson

  3. Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, 108 E. Dean Keeton St., Stop A2702, Austin, TX, 78712, USA

    Stephen T. Russell

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  1. Jessica N. Fish
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Contributions

J.N.F. conceived of the study, carried out the statistical analysis, drafted several sections of the original manuscript, and participated in the design and coordination of the drafted manuscript; B.S.R. helped inform the study design and drafted sections of the manuscript; R.W.J. drafted several sections of the manuscript; S.T.R. helped inform the study design and drafted sections of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jessica N. Fish.

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The University of Texas and the University of Maryland Institutional Review Boards granted exemption from human subjects review for the current study given that data are anonymous and publically available.

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The current study design uses secondary data; therefore, informed consent was not necessary. Informed consent was obtained as part of the original study.

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Fish, J.N., Russell, B.S., Watson, R.J. et al. Parent-child Relationships and Sexual Minority Youth: Implications for Adult Alcohol Abuse. J Youth Adolescence 49, 2034–2046 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-020-01299-7

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