Extended Family Members Help Curb Youth Drinking.
Mentoring relationships with extended family members can positively influence drinking among Mexican youths, a study led by a School of Public Health researcher finds.
The study in the journal Health Education Research explores extended family influences on alcohol use among Mexican youths, and whether extended family members can be considered natural mentors. A research team led by Lee Strunin, professor of community health sciences at SPH, conducted interviews with 117 first-year university students in Mexico City. The interviews revealed six drinking groups: excessive, heavy, regular, occasional, abstainers, and nondrinkers.
Most youths reported close relationships with extended family members, such as uncles, aunts, and grandparents, who counseled them about alcohol use and acted as representatives of familial values about appropriate alcohol use. These extended family members discouraged misuse of alcohol by providing advice about drinking, warning about misuse, and “role modeling appropriate use,” the study found.
The influence of family members was strong among youths who drank moderately or not at all, but did not extend to excessive drinkers, Strunin and colleagues found. They speculated that the effect of mentoring on heavy and excessive drinkers may have been diminished if extended family members were not aware of the extent of the youths’ drinking, and also that heavy and excessive drinkers may resist traditional norms of parental and familial respect and authority.
Strunin said natural mentoring relationships should be encouraged and facilitated in prevention efforts for Mexican youths, Mexican American youths, and potentially other Hispanic/Latino youths.
“Family-based interventions have been effective in reducing alcohol use and misuse among youths,” she said. “Our study indicates that Mexican extended family members are naturally occurring mentors who can positively impact youths’ drinking and play a role in alcohol prevention and intervention efforts.”
Earlier this year, a study by Strunin found that young people in Mexico who drank excessively had three times the odds of being injured in a fight or forced to have sexual contact as compared to occasional drinkers. That study found that males were significantly more likely than females to drink both frequently and heavily, although female drinking rates have increased over time.
Co-authors on the new study were from: the Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City; the Department of Psychiatry and Alcohol Research Center at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine; and General Medical Services of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Submitted by Lisa Chedekel