How do you keep your teenagers from drinking? According to a study summed up in this article from the New York Times “Motherload” blog, you don’t. Assessing different parenting styles on a range of accountability and warmth, the study found that the likelihood of teens drinking wasn’t influenced by the parenting style. However, the liklihood that they would drink heavily was affected. The children of “strict” and authoritarian parents were twice as likely to binge drink as those with warm, permissive parents. Those least likely to drink: the children of parents who are warm but accountable, ie who insist on knowing where their kids are and who they are with.
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