Reduced Parental Supply of Alcohol to Adolescents Associated with Reduced Adolescent Alcohol Use in Australia Between 1998 and 2013

Introduction: Alcohol use by adolescents is associated with significant short and long term harms.  In Australia, large reductions in adolescent alcohol use have been noted since 2000, but the reasons for these downward trends are unclear. Parents have important roles in shaping adolescents’ attitudes and behaviour relating to alcohol use.  In particular, reduced parental supply of alcohol to adolescents has been linked to reduced adolescent alcohol use in longitudinal and intervention studies. In the present study, we utilized nationally representative data spanning 15 years to examine trends in parental supply of alcohol to adolescents (12-17 years). We also explored trends in rates of adolescent alcohol abstinence and heavy episodic drinking.

Methods: Cross-sectional data from the adolescent sample (N = 7357) of six Australian National Drug Strategy Household Surveys (NDSHS; 1998-2013) were used. The key measures were self-reported source of currently consumed alcohol and first ever alcoholic beverage (parents/peers/others), lifetime and current alcohol use, and frequency of heavy episodic drinking (5+ drinks in a day).

Results: Peers and parents were the two main sources of alcohol supply for adolescents. While there was a significant drop in both peer (from 25.9% in 2001 to 20.2% in 2013; p < .001) and parental supply (from 23.8% to 13.9%; p < .001), the decrease in parental supply was much larger. The lower prevalence of parental supply coincided with the downward trends in adolescent experimentation with alcohol (from 87.1% to 67.7%), and frequency and quantity of alcohol use in the same period (rate of weekly drinking dropped from 11.1% to 5.1%; rate of heavy episodic drinking dropped from 24.2% to 14.4%).

Conclusions: In Australia, there has been a substantial reduction in parental supply of alcohol to adolescents, and this reduction was not compensated for by increases in other forms of supply. Causality cannot be established between reduced parental supply and reduced adolescent alcohol use because of the cross-sectional design, however, the results from this study are consistent with the possibility that reduced parental supply of alcohol may partially account for reductions in adolescent alcohol use across Australia in the last decade.