Youth Alcohol Problems: Relationship with Child Externalizing Behaviors, Gender and Age, Parental IPV, Parenting Practices, and Parent and Peer Alcohol Use

Background: Alcohol abuse is a developmental and recursive disorder that often begins in childhood and adolescence (Hicks & Zucker, 2014). Although association of alcohol problems with youth gender, age and externalizing behaviors, parental and peer alcohol use and family violence has been thoroughly studied in the United States and other high-income countries (Zucker, Donovan, Masten, Mattson, & Moss, 2008), very few studies tested these association in countries with developing economies. Thus, the present study aims to estimate the relationship between these factors and youth alcohol-related problems in a Ukrainian sample of 320 parent-child dyads.

Methods: Data in this study were collected from children and parents living in Eastern, Southern and Central Ukrainian communities. Following infirmed consent and assent procedures, parents and their children aged 9 to 16 answered sociodemographic questions and questions from the Drinking and Drug History and Current Use Patterns Questionnaire, Revised Conflict Tactics Scales, Alabama Parenting Questionnaire, and Child Behavior Checklist. Caregivers were biological mothers (N = 294) aged 37.79 years (SD = 6.52), with average family income of $406 (SD = 255). Twenty percent of parents completed 11 grades or less of secondary school, 50% had vocational school diploma, 6% had a few years of college and 26% had university degrees.

Results: The average number of alcohol problems reported by youths was 3.88 (SD = 9.79). The most prevalent problems related to academic attainment, relationships with others and delinquency. There were less alcohol problems among female youths (M = 2.59, SD = 6.75) than among male youths (M = 5.16, SD = 11.97), t(318) = -2.36, p < .05. The robust regression results indicated that older child age (β = .21, p < .001), more symptoms of externalizing behavior (β = .17, p < .01) and higher peer alcohol use (β = .23, p < .001) were significantly associated with more youth alcohol problems. Parent alcohol use, family violence and parenting practices were not significantly related with youth alcohol problems. The model explained 32% of the variance in youth alcohol problems, F(8, 311) = 10.76, p <.001.

Implications:

Consistent with prior research, Ukrainian youths experienced alcohol related problems in key areas of socialization. Regression results suggested that when family, peer and youth’s predictors are accounted for in the same model, peer alcohol use has the largest effect size followed by child age and child externalizing behaviors with all other predictors bearing no significant relationship with child alcohol problems. These results will be useful for alcohol prevention policy and programming in Ukraine and similar Eastern European countries. It is important to begin prevention as early as possible, in particular with male youths and children with externalizing problems. Parents should monitor activities and whereabouts of their children to minimize their contact with alcohol-permeated social contexts. Future studies should use longitudinal design to examine temporal precedence of variables explored in this study and test probable causes and effects.