Lability in Parent-Child Affective Relationships Is Associated with Youth Substance Use and Delinquency

Introduction:  Parent-child relationships are an important protective factor for youth development: Youth who have positive parent-child relationships are less likely to engage in problem behaviors. Extant longitudinal studies have explored how smooth, long-term developmental trends in parent-child relationships are linked to youth outcomes.  However, some changes in parent-child relationships may be characterized by inconsistency and unpredictability: Some families may experience many ups and downs in their affective relationships across their adolescent period.  We term these within-person fluctuations “lability”. Two recent studies have found that lability in parental knowledge of youth activities is linked to negative youth outcomes. In this study, we test if lability in the parent-child affective relationship from Grade 6-8 is associated with Grade 9 substance use and delinquency. 

Method: Longitudinal data were obtained from 840 rural youth and their parents involved in at least 3 waves of the PROSPER prevention trial.  Poisson regression models were used to examine if and how (1) Long-term trends of positive and negative affective quality of the parent relationship (initial level and rate of change first obtained from growth curve models) and (2) Lability of positive and negative affective quality (operationalized as intraindividual standard deviation of residuals from the growth curve models) were associated with youth’s substance use (alcohol use, tobacco use, substance and polysubstance use initiation) and delinquency in Grade 9.  Long-term trends and lability predictors were first obtained from a growth curve model of parent-child affective relationships from Grade 6-8 (four waves of data, youth average report of both parents).  We also tested if those associations were moderated by youth gender by adding a lability x gender interaction term to our regression models.  Models control for dual biological marital status, intervention condition, parent education and youth’s baseline substance use and delinquency.   

Result:  Controlling for the mean and developmental trends, higher lability in positive parent-child affective relations (eg, more within-person fluctuations) between Grade 6 and 8 were associated with higher levels of Grade 9 tobacco use and polysubstance initiation.   Gender moderated some findings: Lability in positive and negative parent-child affective relations were associated with more delinquency for girls (but not boys). 

Conclusions:  Lability in parent-child affective relationships may be an important risk factor for early adolescent substance use and delinquency.  Youth who experience many unpredictable ups and downs in their affective relationship with their parents may be at increased risk for negative outcomes.  The discussion will focus on intervention implications.