Parenting and Family Factors Associated with Marijuana Use Among Chilean Adolescents: Testing for Differential Effects

Background:

Family involvement and several parenting characteristics have been suggested to have a protective relationship with adolescent substance use. For example, some literature has reported that monitoring adolescent whereabouts and activities are effective parental strategies to keep adolescents from engaging in problematic behaviors. At the same time, the central role of the family system among Latin American adolescents has also has investigated. Even so, while in Chile and other Latin American countries it is recognized that although the family is the most important area of life, some authors have pointed out that the commonly assumed “positive effects” of the family over individuals may not always act in that direction, as family life is sometimes experienced as a source of conflict, suffering or even mistreatment by some of its members. Considering that parenting involves a variety of different behaviors that can have simultaneous differentially effects, and given that most of our knowledge about these factors stems from research in the United Sates, we conducted a study with youth in Chile. Specifically, we sought to understand how nine different family factors, individually and jointly, may be associated with adolescent marijuana use, after controling for a number of individual and peer influences.

Method: We used logistic and negative binomial regression to examine how a large number of family and parenting variables were associated with adolescent marijuana use. The sample consisted of 877 adolescents (Mean age=14, 48% females) of mid-to-low socioeconomic status from Santiago, Chile participating in a NIDA-funded study. The youths were interviewed by psychologists trained in the administration of previously-validated standardized instruments. Topics assessed ranged from assessing the adolescents' relationship with parents, perceptions of self, perceptions of parent use of drugs and perceptions of family characteristics, behavior, and substance use, among others.

Results: Of the various family and parenting measures, parental substance use was the most consistent risk factor, after statistically controlling for all the other variables in the study. Parental marijuana use was the only parenting variable found to be associated with youth having higher odds of using marijuana (OR=1.49), keeping all other variables constant. In contrast, results of the negative binomial regression analyses show a variety of family and parenting variables being associated with the frequency of marijuana use. For example, increments in parental monitoring decreased adolescents' rate of marijuana use by a factor of 0.93, and harsh parenting by mothers increased the rate of marijuana use by a factor of 1.11.

Conclusion: These findings indicate that despite the adolescents' developmentally appropriate emancipation and peer influences, parents and family still may influence their children's lives, particularly as role models. Programs aimed at preventing youth from initiating the use of substances or helping youth quit if they have already consumed may be more effective if they do not treat the adolescent in a vacuum but also consider parents and families. Findings are discussed within the context of substance abuse practice with U.S. Latino and Latin American families.