Five Questions With: Kristina Jackson

Kristina Jackson is associate professor of behavioral and social sciences at the Brown University School of Public Health. Her expertise is in the developmental course of alcohol use in late adolescence and young adulthood. She recently published a study that found children given a sip of alcohol before sixth grade were more likely to have had a full drink or gotten drunk by ninth grade than those not given the first sip.

PBN: There’s a perception that some European countries may more successfully teach their kids about alcohol, partly by diminishing or eliminating the taboo associated with it. Do your study results mean to you that postponing the introduction of alcohol is the only viable course for parents to take?
JACKSON:
There is a widespread misperception that alcohol problems in youth are lower in European countries than in the U.S. This may be true of some Southern European countries but not Britain, Ireland, or Northern European countries where alcohol intoxication is more common and socially acceptable, so we need to be very careful not to assume that early alcohol consumption will somehow protect children or teach them how to drink safely.
Alcohol use has neurobiological effects specific to the adolescent brain –that is, alcohol affects the developing brain. Because we don’t know what amount is “safe,” the recommendation is that young adolescents avoid alcohol entirely.

PBN: Were you surprised by your results?
JACKSON:
What we found most surprising is that our findings were so robust – we found an association between early sipping and later outcomes even controlling for factors that we expected to account for the association, including an underlying disposition for problem behavior and parents’ own alcohol use.

PBN: What kinds of reactions have you been getting on the study from fellow-scientists around the country?
JACKSON:
I don’t think researchers who work in this field are surprised. This topic has received recent attention and the weight of evidence supports the view that parental provision of alcohol is associated with greater alcohol use and problems down the road, which is of course contradictory to what the lay public believes. Although some research has shown that children given alcohol by their parents are at lower risk for later alcohol use than those who obtained the alcohol elsewhere (other non-relative adults, underage friends or acquaintances, took alcohol from home without permission), our study shows that children who were given alcohol are at greater risk than those who did not drink at all.

- Advertisement -

PBN: How big a determinant was parents’ drinking habits on outcomes in the study?
JACKSON:
Children of alcoholics are more likely to develop alcohol-related problems and alcohol dependence as adults. These kids may have an underlying genetic risk for risky drinking and alcohol-related problems – and they may be raised in households where alcohol is being consumed more frequently or heavily, so they may model parent behavior. As noted above, we controlled for these factors and still observed an association, although it was reduced in magnitude.

PBN: Will you be pursuing the same line of research in the future – what’s next?
JACKSON:
Our research program here looks at a wide variety of contributors to teen drinking, including parent influences but also the influence of peers and the mass media – for example, we’re currently studying exposure to alcohol in music and films. Fortunately we have received more NIH funding to continue to study these kids through the end of high school, so we’re interested to see what happens as these teens become more independent and move away from parents and towards other influences.

No posts to display