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.
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.