(Republished with permission from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. This article originally ran in the Science & Medicine section on Monday, Sept. 25, 2006.)
By Tina Hesman Saey
Parents are clueless when it comes to drug and alcohol use among teenagers. A new study by Washington University researchers and others quantifies just how deeply in the dark parents are.
The study shows that about half of parents don’t know that their children use alcohol, marijuana and tobacco. Even fewer – 28 percent – are aware that their teens have used cocaine or other illicit drugs.
The Washington University team, led by Dr. Laura J. Bierut, a geneticist and psychiatrist who studies addiction, is part of nationwide effort to pinpoint genes associated with alcoholism. Researchers involved in the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism, surveyed 591 adolescents ages 12 to 17 and their parents. Some of the children had a family history of alcoholism. Others did not. The study is published in the October issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
The surveys polled teens and their parents separately and spanned the years 1991 to 1998. The reports of alcohol and drug use the teens reported were consistent with other surveys at the time.
And the data are as relevant today as they were then, Bierut said. A study earlier this year by researchers at Columbia University showed that most parents are unaware that their children attend parties where drugs and alcohol are available.
The gap between parents’ reports of substance use and their children’s admissions was greatest for the youngest teens. Among 12- and 13-year-olds, 22.4 percent said they had used alcohol. But only 12 percent of parents said their middle-schooler had ever had a drink. That is an age when children are more likely to develop addictions, and it sets the stage for future problems, said Sherri L. Fisher, lead author of the study.
By the time teens reached driving age, parents’ reports were closer to the kids’ admitted level of drug and alcohol use, but the gap was not closed. While only half of parents of 16- and 17-year-olds said their kids had used alcohol, 82 percent of the teens said they drank.
One of the most alarming findings was that parents were clueless even when children met diagnostic criteria for alcohol or drug abuse or dependence, Bierut said. Of 49 children who met criteria for alcohol abuse, 27 percent of parents agreed with the diagnosis, while 14 percent of parents said their children had never had a drink.
tsaey@post-dispatch.com 314-340-8325
Copyright 2006 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.