AIMS: To determine whether parental factors earlier in life (parenting, single parent family, parental substance use problem) are associated with patterns of alcohol consumption among young men in Switzerland.
METHODS: This analysis of a population based sample from the Cohort Study on Substance Use Risk Factors (C-SURF) included 5,990 young men (mean age 19.51 years), all attending a mandatory recruitment process for the army. These conscripts reported on parental monitoring and rule-setting, parental behaviour and family structure. The alcohol use pattern was assessed through abstention, risky single occasion drinking (RSOD), volume drinking and dependence. Furthermore, the impact of age, family socio-economic status, educational level of the parents, language region and civil status was analysed.
RESULTS: A parental substance use problem was positively associated with volume drinking and alcohol dependence in young Swiss men. Active parenting corresponded negatively with RSOD, volume drinking and alcohol dependence. Single parent family was not associated with a different alcohol consumption pattern compared to standard family.
CONCLUSION: Parental influences earlier in life such as active parenting (monitoring, rule-setting and knowing the whereabouts) and perceived parental substance use problem are associated with alcohol drinking behaviour in young male adults. Therefore, health professionals should stress the importance of active parenting and parental substance use prevention in alcohol prevention strategies.
OBJECTIVE: This study examines the relationships between the dose, pattern, and timing of prenatal alcohol exposure and achievement in reading, writing, spelling, and numeracy in children aged 8 to 9 years.
METHODS: Data from a randomly selected, population-based birth cohort of infants born to non-Indigenous women in Western Australia between 1995 and 1997 (n = 4714) (Randomly Ascertained Sample of Children born in Australia's Largest State Study cohort) were linked to the Western Australian Midwives' Notification System and the Western Australian Literacy and Numeracy Assessment statewide education testing program. The records for 86% (n = 4056) of the cohort were successfully linked with education records when the children were aged 8 to 9 years. The associations between prenatal alcohol exposure and achievement of national benchmarks in school numeracy, reading, spelling, and writing tests and nonattendance for the tests was examined. Logistic regression was used to generate adjusted odds ratios (aOR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI), adjusting for potential confounding factors. The referent group included children of mothers who previously drank alcohol but who abstained during pregnancy.
RESULTS: Children were twice as likely not to achieve the benchmark for reading after heavy prenatal alcohol exposure during the first trimester (aOR 2.26; 95% CI 1.10-4.65) and for writing when exposed to occasional binge drinking in late pregnancy (aOR 2.35; 95% CI 1.04-5.43). Low-moderate prenatal alcohol exposure was not associated with academic underachievement.
CONCLUSIONS: The type of learning problems expressed depends on the dose, pattern, and timing of prenatal alcohol exposure.