Family Experience and the Motives for Drinking

Abstract

Family socialization experience as reported by 128 students was posited to be related (both linearly and curvilinearly) to the seriousness of the reasons or motives for drinking. A correlational analysis, following orthogonalization of the independent variables, indicated that the frequency of intoxication by the mother was linearly and positively related to the number of reasons checked by students for drinking. Extreme closeness and extreme distance between the parents was related to drinking for personal effects (i.e., to improve self-esteem), while neutral or ambiguous attitudes toward drinking by the father were related principally to moderately serious personal and interpersonal reasons for drinking. The findings suggest that college students are at risk of becoming problem drinkers to the extent their family socialization experience included maternal deviant drinking, weak or fuzzy paternal norms about drinking, and extreme closeness or distance between parents. Family conditions that lead to poor self-esteem were seen as a necessary but not sufficient cause of problem drinking. Suggestions are made for future research and for a new, conceptually related alcoholism-prevention program.