Prospective Intergenerational Associations between Parents’ and Children’s Illicit Substance Use During Adolescence

Abstract

Objective

Intergenerational studies have identified relations between adolescents’ and their future offspring’s cannabis and alcohol use, but rarely have examined the association for other illicit drug use. Given the low prevalence of such use in community populations, we pooled data from three prospective intergenerational studies to test this link.

Method

Participants were 1,060 children of 937 parents who had been repeatedly assessed since early adolescence. Children and parents reported on their use of cocaine, stimulants, hallucinogens, sedatives/tranquilizers, and opiates/narcotics from ages 10 to 18 years. Intergenerational similarities in any versus no use of these drugs were formally modeled using logistic regression. Patterns also were descriptively analyzed.

Results

Parent illicit substance use was associated with significantly higher odds of child use (adjusted odds ratio [95% confidence interval] = 2.682 [1.328–5.416], p = 0.006). However, intergenerational continuity was modest; 87% of children whose parent used illicit drugs in adolescence did not use such drugs, and 77% of parents of children who used illicit drugs had not themselves used these drugs during adolescence.

Conclusions

The use of illicit substances by parents during their teenage years poses a risk for their offspring’s similar behaviors. However, the discontinuity of these behaviors across generations implies children are largely resilient to or protected from this risk, and conversely that other aspects of parents’ and children’s experiences or characteristics may be more powerful risks for children’s illicit drug use than this transgenerational influence.

PUBLIC HEALTH SIGNIFICANCE:

(a) Parents’ use of illicit drugs during adolescence significantly increased risk that their adolescent children would use such drugs. (b) However, most parents who used illicit drugs did not have children who used illicit drugs, and conversely, the majority of adolescents who used illicit drugs did not have parents who had used such drugs in their adolescence. (c) Distinct prevention strategies may be needed to disrupt intergenerational continuities in illicit drug use via selective prevention, and also to avert drug use by offspring of parents who abstained in adolescence through universal approaches.

Keywords:

• Adolescence
• illicit drug use
• substance use
• intergenerational studies

Acknowledgement

We acknowledge and appreciate the children and parents who participated in our studies. We also thank Sally Schwader for editorial assistance.

Declaration of interest

All authors declare they have no conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise, to report. Analysis code is available on request from David Kerr ([email protected]). Archiving of data and study materials and use permissions differ by study; contact David Kerr ([email protected]), Jennifer Bailey ([email protected]), and Kimberly Henry ([email protected]) for information on 3GS, TIP, and RIGS, respectively.

Notes

1 Mutually exclusive race/ethnicity categories were created to summarize across studies with different measures; race/ethnicity was assessed with different measures in the child and parent generations.

2 One case was missing on sex.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (Oregon Youth Study–Three Generational Study [OYS–3GS] R01DA015485 awarded to Drs. Deborah Capaldi and David Kerr; Rochester Intergenerational Study [RIGS] R01DA020195 awarded to Dr. Kimberly Henry; Seattle Social Development Project–The Intergenerational Study [SSDP–TIP] R01DA023089, R01DA056371 awarded to Dr. Jennifer Bailey). Points of view reflect those of the authors and not the funding agency. The funding agency had no role in the design of the study, data collection or analysis, interpretation of results, or the decision to submit this manuscript for publication.