The impact that parental drinking has on children is related to the parents’ reasons for drinking, not to the amount that they drink, according to researchers in Philadelphia.

They found that children of mothers who drank “to escape” were much more averse to the smell of alcohol than others, regardless of the amount that the mothers drank.

Julie Mennella and Catherine Forestell at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, US, divided 145 children aged five to eight years into two groups according to whether their mothers reported using alcohol to escape from feelings of tension and depression.

The children were presented with two odours and asked to pick the one they preferred. One of the odours was always beer. The other was either an odour that the children had previously identified as pleasant, such as bubblegum or chocolate, or an odour previously identified as unpleasant, such as coffee, cigarette smoke or rotten food.


Emotional link

Mennella and Forestell report that while all the children chose the pleasant odours over beer, those whose mothers drink to escape were more likely to choose the unpleasant odours in preference to the smell of beer.

Out of 36 “escape” children, 72% preferred coffee to beer, compared to 51% of 103 “non-escape” children. And 55% of 22 “escape” children preferred the smell of rotten food to the smell of beer, compared to only 29% of 79 “non-escape” children.

Although the women classified as escape drinkers did have a tendency to drink greater quantities more often, statistical analyses showed that it was the women’s reasons for drinking, and not the amount, that created such strong aversion to the smell of alcohol in their children.

Mennella says that children as young as five were clearly aware of the negative feelings that led their mothers to drink.

“They are associating the smell of beer with the mood state of the mother when they are drinking,” she says. “When it’s a mood state that’s not positive, low and behold, when these children are faced with a choice between beer and rotten eggs, they are picking rotten eggs.”

Drive to drink

However, this does not mean that children of escapist drinkers are safe from becoming problem drinkers themselves.

Animals studies have shown that young rats who spent time with intoxicated mothers were more likely to seek out alcohol when stressed as adolescents.

Richard Velleman, an expert in the effect of alcohol on the family at the University of Bath, UK, says he is impressed by the study. However, he would like to see more work to find out how the negative association with alcohol affects children when they get older.

“There is no good evidence that children’s negative associations with alcohol then translate into altered behaviour when they become old enough to start drinking themselves,” he says.

“Young people’s drinking behaviour is much more influenced by overall parental behaviour, peer influences, and the major influence of the media,” adds Velleman.

Reference: Alcohol (DOI: 10.1016/j.alcohol.2008.03.129)

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