Are Adolescent Addictions Preventable?

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“My name is Jess, and I’m an alcoholic.”

So begins Jessica Lahey’s anticipated new book, The Addiction Inoculation: Raising Healthy Kids in a Culture of Dependence. Lahey is an educator, mother, and the New York Times best-selling author of The Gift of Failure. The Addiction Inoculation is a comprehensive, well-researched, and intimate account of how addictions are often preventable and why “Just say no” does not work.

“All children, regardless of their genetics,” says Lahey, “are at some risk of substance abuse.”

The Partnership to End Addiction claims that adolescent substance use is the largest preventable health problem in America today. Instead of avoiding the topic, Lahey leans into it with conviction and authenticity. She hopes that parents will take her lead.

Instead of anxiously waiting to see what addictions may befall children in their teen years or believing magical thinking that “it won’t happen to my child,” experts know a lot about who gets addicted and why. Through research, Lahey shows that addictions are often preventable with the right knowledge, expectations, and practices.

Source: Jessica Lahey/HarperCollins

Addiction Prevention Begins At Home

According to Lahey, “Every substance abuse story begins at home.” Family is the most important influence on the well-being of children. It is also the most important risk factor.

For example, children who grow up with addicted parents are genetically and emotionally primed to follow in their footsteps. But the roots of addictions are varied. Adverse childhood experiences, including bullying and sexual harassment, account for more than 60 percent of binge drinking in 12- to 18-year-olds.

Toxic stress is another root cause of addictions in teenagers. The American Psychological Association reports that young people ages 13-17 are facing unprecedented uncertainty and stress. Surveys found that the pandemic has caused a new wave of mental and physical health consequences, including unhealthy weight gains and increased drinking.

Despite the research and known causes of addictions that begin in childhood, parents still find it difficult to talk with their children about drugs and alcohol. Why?

According to Lahey, “There is a balance to be struck in parenting for substance abuse prevention: parents want as much information and reassurance as we can get our hands on, but our children want (and need) autonomy, privacy, and to feel trusted.” It is a tough balancing act.

Are Childhood Addictions Correlated With Parenting Style?

In 1991, psychologist Diana Baumrind authored an article in The Journal of Early Adolescence that explored how parenting styles affected child development, especially the propensity for substance addictions. A major limitation of her research was that it included predominately affluent, well-educated, Caucasian families. In the 30 years since then, researchers have explored the effects of multi-cultural parenting styles on healthy development. A much-debated topic, there are some points of agreement, explained in more detail later.

Lahey simplifies the debate in her book, delving into the authoritative parenting style (high warmth and high behavioral control) and how it helps mitigate childhood addictions. She outlines the central behaviors of this parenting style to include:

• Holding high expectations for a child’s conduct
• Providing reasoning behind expectations
• Enforcing expectations fairly
• Being warm and supportive
• Encouraging children through failures and mistakes
• Prioritizing child’s learning versus obedience
• Giving children autonomy and room to grow
• Recognizing a child’s interests and goals
• Validating that a child is worthy of love and respect

Lahey’s list reinforces what the fields of positive youth development and positive parenting recommend—to focus on practices that nurture the development of a child’s internal strengths, like resilience, self-awareness, and resourcefulness. When children believe in themselves and their abilities, research shows they do better in school and are less likely to develop addictions to drugs or alcohol.

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You Won’t Be Here Forever

Back to the debate on parenting styles: While positive parenting practices are important to adopt as part of a parenting toolbox, researchers most agree on the parenting styles that can cause children to become addicted in the first place.

Published in the journal Developmental Psychology in 2017, a meta-analysis of 1,435 studies compared parenting styles with the externalizing problems of children and adolescents, including addictions. This study concluded that the following parenting styles were highly correlated with problems related to addiction and other mental health disorders in children.

• Harsh control — This style involves physical or verbal punishment and intrusiveness.
• Psychological control — This style attempts to manipulate a child’s psychological experiences by using guilt, shaming, and conditional love.
• Authoritarian — This style involves low warmth and high/harsh control versus the authoritative style described by Lahey that involves high warmth and high behavioral control.
• Permissive — This style involves high warmth and low control.
• Neglectful — This style involves low warmth and low control.

As Lahey suggests, parenting for addiction prevention is a balancing act. Most parents do not always use one style of parenting. Reactions and practices vary depending on the situation, the age of the child, and a parent’s own well-being.

The most important learning from research is to pay attention to parenting behaviors that are most correlated with childhood problems like drug or alcohol addiction. If parents frequently use the above “harsher” or “permissive” styles in their parent-child relationship, they should stop and find resources that will help them understand ways to impact a child’s healthy development more positively.