Parenting Styles And Substance Abuse Essay

Experimentation with alcohol and other substances typically starts during adolescence. Recent statistics from the National Institute of Health reported that by late adolescence 78.2% of US adolescents had consumed alcohol, the opportunity to use illicit drugs was reported by 81.4%, drug use by 42.5%, and drug abuse by 16.4%,” (2012). With statistics like these, it is important to investigate the issue of alcohol and substance abuse in the adolescents from many different angles. There are many programs in the United States that address the problem of alcohol and substance abuse once it materializes into a bigger problem. This research aims to address the problem before that happens. There is a growing body of literature that addresses how to

For the purpose of this study, adolescents were defined as people between the ages of twelve and twenty-four. The parents of the adolescents in some of the studies were also included in the research. This research pinpointed three main parenting styles from the studies and will use Baumrind’s (1971) original definitions of the styles: authoritarian, permissive and authoritative. In the authoritarian parenting style, the mother and father are always right with no explanation. There are strict rules and boundaries and little warmth or comfort is given. The permissive parenting style is the opposite of authoritarian. In a permissive parenting household, parents do not try to exert control over their children and there is a high level of warmth. An authoritative parenting style is somewhere in the middle of the two. Baumrind (1971) defines authoritative parenting as controlling in a rational, reasonable way, giving explanations for boundaries and providing warmth but not too much. Alcohol and substance abuse was measured using the Multidimensional Addictions and Personality Profile (MAPP) (Craig & Craig,