Teens’ sips could lead to bingeing

Parents who give their adol­escent children sips of alcohol could be setting up the teenager for a future­ of alcoh­ol abuse.

Parents who give their adol­escent children sips of alcohol in the ­belief that it will prevent binge drinking could be setting up the teenager for a future­ of alcoh­ol abuse instead.

A new report by researchers at the University of NSW”s National­ Drug and Alcohol ­Research Centre found no evidence that parental supply of ­alcohol to adolescents has a protective effect to avoid later ­alcohol harms.

Instead, researchers found offering­ teens small alcohol­ sips was assoc­iated with increased futur­e alco­hol consumption.

The researchers analysed data from the Australian Parent­al Supply of Alcohol Longitud­inal Study, which tracked 1910 adolescents and their parents, recruited in the first year of second­ary school and followed up annually over seven years.

The study’s lead author, Alexandra Aiken, said introducing teenagers to alcohol at home was not advisable. The study has been published in international journal Drug and Alcohol Depen­dence. “Parental supply of sips in one year was associated with increased risk of binge drinking and alcohol-related harms a year later, compared with no supply,” Ms Aiken said.

“As the quantity of alcohol supplied increased, so too did the risk of adverse outcomes. Whilst many parents may supply sips of alcohol to their underage children as a harm reduction strategy, results shows that supply of sips exists on a continuum of increasing risk of adverse outcomes.”

“Sipping” is the most common form of alcohol consumption among children and young adolescents, is usually supervised, and is associated with child perceptions of parental approval and familial modelling of alcohol behaviours.

“While parents supplying larger amounts of alcohol is assoc­iated with worse outcomes, even supplying relatively small quantities such as sips increases the risk of adverse outcomes for adolescents relative to no supply­,” Ms Aiken said.

“Relative to no parental supply, parental supply of even small amounts of alcohol in early adol­escence may hasten alcohol ­initiation, may be perceived by children as permissiveness and approval, and may reduce bar­riers to alcohol use, all of which in turn might encourage further alcohol consumption.”

According to the non-profit organisation DrinkWise, about 9 per cent of male teenagers and 7 per cent of females drink in a risky way. However, the numbers of teenagers who have never tried alcohol is increasing.

The average age of initiat­ion to alcohol increased from 14.4 in 1998 to 16.1 in 2016. In 2016 about 82 per cent of 12 to 17-year-olds ­reported abstaining from alcohol.

The Foundation for Alcohol Research found almost one in four young people aged 18-14 had more than six stand­ard drinks on a typical occasion last year. Three-quarters of youth surveyed said they “drink to get drunk”, while only 20 per cent of young people were teetotallers.

Despite the high rates of risky alcohol consumption, the majority of young people believed more needed to be done in Australia to reduce alcohol-related harms.