Contextual risks linking parents’ adolescent marijuana use to offspring onset

Abstract

Objective We studied the extent to which parent marijuana use in adolescence is associated with marijuana use onset in offspring through contextual family and peer risks. Method Fathers assessed (n = 93) since childhood, their 146 offspring (n = 83 girls), and offspring's mothers (n = 85) participated in a longitudinal study. Using discrete-time survival analysis, fathers’ (prospectively measured) and mothers’ (retrospective) adolescent marijuana use was used to predict offspring marijuana use onset through age 19 years. Parental monitoring, child exposure to marijuana use, peer deviance, peer marijuana use, and perceptions of parent disapproval of child use were measured before or concurrent with onset. Results Parents’ adolescent marijuana use was significantly associated with less monitoring, offspring alcohol use, the peer behaviors, exposure to adult marijuana use, and perceptions of less parent disapproval. Male gender and the two peer behaviors were positively associated with children's marijuana use onset, controlling for their alcohol use. Parents’ adolescent marijuana use had a significant indirect effect on child onset through children's deviant peer affiliations and a composite contextual risk score. Conclusions Parents’ histories of marijuana use may contribute indirectly to children's marijuana use onset through their influence on the social environments children encounter; specifically, those characterized by more liberal use norms, exposure to marijuana use and deviant and marijuana-using peers, and less adult supervision. Given that alcohol use onset was controlled, findings suggest that the contextual factors identified here confer unique risk for child marijuana use onset.

Intergenerational Continuity in Cannabis Use: The Role of Parent's Early Onset and Lifetime Disorder on Child's Early Onset

“…However, we note that almost all other prospective, longitudinal data sources are limited in the same way with respect to a specific geographic locale. Nonetheless, this is the first study to demonstrate IG continuity among a predominantly minority sample (i.e., 90% of the families were non-White in RIGS compared to 22% in the Oregon Youth Study, 16 27% in the National Youth Survey Family Study, 15 and 59% in the Seattle Social Development Study Intergenerational Project 17 ), suggesting the importance of IG continuity in an ethnically diverse sample.…”

“…14 One exception is Knight and colleagues 15 who report a direct relationship between frequency of parental use of cannabis during both adolescence and emerging adulthood and frequency of child cannabis use during these same time periods. Kerr, Tiberio, and Capaldi 16 also examined the relationship between frequency of parent cannabis use during adolescence (retrospectively reported for mothers but prospectively reported for fathers) and offspring cannabis use onset during adolescence and found an indirect IG effect via two social context variables – peer marijuana use and peer delinquency. Most recently, Bailey and colleagues 17 reported that frequency of parent's current use of cannabis predicted child's use of cannabis, but frequency of parent's cannabis use during late adolescence and early adulthood (historical use) did not.…”

“…19 Evidence suggests that the antisocial behavior of fathers and mothers differentially affects children with greater continuity in antisocial between fathers and their children compared to mothers and their children. 18,20–22 Therefore, we depart from prior work on IG continuity in cannabis use 15,16,17 and evaluate our hypotheses separately for mothers and fathers in order to determine if sex of the parent conditions IG continuity in cannabis use.…”

Maternal Cannabis Use During a Child's Lifetime Associated With Earlier Initiation

“…Previous analytic techniques have modeled cannabis use as a binary outcome. 39,44,53,62,63 Some research has investigated the intergenerational transmission of use by modeling parent use as any use during the parent’s lifetime. 39,44 Other research reporting child perceptions of parent use may not accurately reflect actual parent use.…”

Intergenerational Associations in Sexual Onset: Mediating Influences of Parental and Peer Sexual Teasing and Youth Substance Use

“…The DDS approach builds on lifespan approaches emphasizing the interaction between the individual’s prior dispositions and learning and the environments in which s/he is placed or selects. [15,16] A key aspect of the model is the importance of both general pathway risk and outcome-specific risk [17,18] that helps bring conceptual clarity to questions regarding the development of risk behaviors.…”