Session: The Intergenerational Transmission of Risk: Findings from Three Multi-Generation Studies (Society for Prevention Research 25th Annual Meeting)

Substance use, health-risking sexual behavior, and poor mental health are intertwined and predict a wide range of negative outcomes across the lifespan. When parents experience these problems, their children often do so as well. Prospective, longitudinal, intergenerational studies are a powerful and under-utilized tool that enables nuanced understanding of the intergenerational transmission of problem behaviors not possible with other study designs. Thus, they offer unique insights for prevention. Intergenerational studies permit examination of continuity and discontinuity across generations and linkage of developmental timing and outcomes in one generation to timing and outcomes in the next. They identify factors that facilitate or disrupt the transmission of problem behaviors or poor mental health, thus identifying targets for preventive intervention. In fact, intergenerational studies may inform primordial prevention, or the prevention of risk factors and enhancement of protective factors. This symposium includes three papers that highlight processes related to the intergenerational transmission of problem behavior and poor mental health. Paper 1 draws on the Oregon Youth Study Three Generation Sample and focuses on the transmission of early onset sexual behavior among fathers and their sons and daughters. Results suggest that early onset sexual behavior is transmitted across generations and is mediated by early onset alcohol use among offspring. This paper also presents results linking the novel constructs of parent and peer sexual teasing to the onset of sex among youth. Paper 2 uses data from the Rochester Intergenerational Study to examine links between heavy alcohol use and depression among mothers and internalizing and externalizing behavior among their children. Results showed that both maternal depression and heavy alcohol use predicted child internalizing and externalizing, however, maternal depression explained a much greater proportion of variance in child outcomes. Paper 3 draws on the Seattle Social Development Project Intergenerational Study to understand links between parent cigarette use and child externalizing behavior. Results suggest that parent cigarette use, parenting practices, and parental depression were all uniquely related to child externalizing. Discussion will focus on the implications of these studies for understanding and interrupting the intergenerational transmission of risk.