“Do As I Say, Not As I Do”: The Effectiveness of Family Management in Reducing Child Marijuana Use Among Parents Who Do and Do Not Use Marijuana

Introduction. Prevention studies have documented that children from families with good family management report less drug use than children from less well-managed families.  Studies have also shown that both the amount and the impact of family management vary over the course of adolescence. The degree of family influence on children may also differ by child gender and personality characteristics, and may depend on whether parents themselves use marijuana. The current study examines the relationship between family management and marijuana use from ages 10 to 19, and compares these relationships by gender, behavioral disinhibition, and parental drug use.

Method. Participants were drawn from the Raising Healthy Children study (n = 1040), a U.S. community study of risk and protective factors related to substance use and delinquency. Analyses were performed using time-varying effects modeling (TVEM), which estimates continuous longitudinal effects between predictors and outcomes.

Resuts. Results indicated a curvilinear relationship between family management and marijuana use; the strongest protective association was evident at ages 14-16, then the association gradually weakened. The influence of family management on marijuana use was stronger for girls, particularly during the period of transition to high school (ages 14-16). Differences in behavior disinhibition were evident at ages 13-16 with less disinhibited youth showing greater impact of family management.  Analyses of parental drug use showed that it undermined parenting behavior and that the effect of family management was stronger for those families where parents did not use marijuana. Significant differences by parent drug use were seen during middle adolescence (ages 15-18).

Conclusions. Findings provide information about the optimal timing for delivery of family-centered interventions for adolescent marijuana use. In general, promoting consistent family management, particularly during the ages where the most protective effect was shown, could help prevent or delay marijuana initiation among adolescents. In addition, marijuana use among parents emerged as an important prevention target because it both presented a risk factor for children’s marijuana use and reduced effectiveness of other parenting practices.