Parent-Child Bonds and Drug Use: Can Spending More Time With Your Family Keep You Out of Harm's Way?
Date
2025-05-01
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
ORCID
0009-0002-2909-2116
Type
Thesis
Degree Level
Masters
Abstract
Incarceration has been the main method of deterring drug use in the United States, especially since the war on drugs began. However, research has shown that this approach is ineffective and has contributed instead to significant collateral consequences, as evidenced by the overdose epidemic. A different approach is needed, perhaps a more social, strength-based, and preventative approach. Research suggests that time spent with family in adolescence and the subsequent bonds that are formed have the potential to reduce drug use (e.g., cocaine, crack, heroin, etc.). Thus, to both inform policy and update the current literature, this study examined whether spending time with one’s family in adolescence (reported in 2000) can work to prevent or reduce drug use in young adulthood (reported in 2003), and whether this occurs through strengthened bonds that young adults have with their parents. Using a prospective sample of 2,612 American respondents from the NLSY97, this study revealed that spending more time with family during adolescence was negatively associated with both drug use likelihood and drug use frequency in young adulthood. Moreover, while parent-child bonds mediated the association between family time and drug use frequency, such bonds did not have any mediating effect on family time and drug use likelihood. These findings indicate that spending more time with family during adolescence can 1) minimize the likelihood of drug use in young adulthood, regardless of parent-child bonds, and 2) increase the strength of bonds that an individual has with their parents, which, in turn, can reduce drug use frequency in young adulthood. This study provides support for policy initiatives that promote, rather than interfere with, healthy family processes that have been shown to mitigate drug use. By making these changes, overdoses in North America may be prevented, and the state of the public’s well-being could be improved overall.
Description
Keywords
family time, parent-child bond, drug use, drug use frequency, social control theory, routine activity theory of deviance, the age-graded theory of informal social control, overdose, the war on drugs
Citation
Degree
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Department
Sociology
Program
Sociology