Children’s experience of physical harms and exposure to family violence from others’ drinking in nine societies

Abstract

Aim: To study caregiver reports of children’s experience of physical harm and exposure to family violence due to others’ drinking in nine societies, assess the relationship of harm with household drinking pattern and evaluate whether gender and education of caregiver affect these relationships.

Method: Using data on adult caregivers from the Gender and Alcohol’s Harm to Others (GENAHTO) project, child alcohol-related injuries and exposure of children to alcohol-related violence (CAIV) rates are estimated by country and pooled using meta-analysis and stratified by gender of the caregiver. Households with and without heavy or harmful drinker(s) (HHDs) are compared to assess the interaction of caregiver gender on the relationship between reporting HHD and CAIV, adjusting for caregiver education and age. Additionally, the relationship between caregiver education and CAIV is analyzed with meta-regression.

Results: The prevalence of CAIV varied across societies, with an overall pooled mean of 4% reported by caregivers. HHD was a consistent correlate of CAIV in all countries. Men and women in the sample reported similar levels of CAIV overall, but the relationship between HHD and CAIV was greater for women than for men, especially if the HHD was the most harmful drinker (MHD). Education was not significantly associated with CAIV.

Conclusions: One in 25 caregivers with children report physical or family violence harms to children because of others’ drinking. The adjusted odds of harm are significantly greater (more than four-fold) in households with an HHD, with men most likely to be defined as this drinker in the household.

Keywords:

• Alcohol’s harm to children
• child maltreatment
• child injury
• family violence
• meta-analysis
• harm to others

Acknowledgments

The data used in this study are from the GENAHTO Project, supported by NIAAA Grant No. R01 AA023870 (Alcohol’s Harm to Others: Multinational Cultural Contexts and Policy Implications). GENAHTO is a collaborative international project affiliated with the Kettil Bruun Society for Social and Epidemiological Research on Alcohol and coordinated by research partners from the Alcohol Research Group/Public Health Institute (USA), University of North Dakota (USA), Aarhus University (Denmark), the Center for Addiction and Mental Health (Canada), the Center for Alcohol Policy Research at La Trobe University (Australia) and the Addiction Switzerland Research Institute (Switzerland). Support for aspects of the project has come from the World Health Organization (WHO), the Thai Health Promotion Foundation (THPF), the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC Grant No. 1065610) and the US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism/National Institutes of Health (Grants R21 AA012941, R01AA015775, R01 AA022791, R01 AA023870, and P50AA005595). Support for individual country surveys was provided by government agencies and other national sources. National funds also contributed to the collection of all of the data sets included in WHO projects. Study directors for the survey data sets used in this study have reviewed the study in terms of the project’s objective and the accuracy and representation of their contributed data. The study directors and funding sources for data sets used in this report are as follows: Australia (Robin Room, Anne-Marie Laslett, Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education, NHMRC Grant 1090904 and ARC Grant DE190100329); Chile (Ramon Florenzano, THPF, WHO); Ireland (Ann Hope, Trinity College, Dublin); Lao PDR (Latsamy Siengsounthone, THPF, WHO); Nigeria (Isidore Obot and Akanidomo Ibanga, THPF, WHO); Sri Lanka (Siri Hettige, THPF, WHO); Thailand (Orratai Waleewong and Jintana Janchotkaew, THPF, WHO); the United States (Thomas Greenfield and Katherine Karriker-Jaffe, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism/National Institutes of Health (Grant No. R01 AA022791)); Vietnam (Hanh T.M. Hoang and Hanh T.M. Vu, THPF, WHO). Opinions are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institutes of Health, the WHO, and other sponsoring institutions (GENAHTO survey information at https://genahto.org/abouttheproject/)].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the grants from the Australian Research Council [DE190100329], National Health and Medical Research Council [1090904] and National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism [P50 AA005595, 023870, R01 AA015775, R01 AA022791, R01 AA023870, R21 AA012941].