Family Influences on Young Adult Maturity and Drinking
Principal Investigator: Sydney Jay, Ph.D.

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The overall goal of the project, "Family Influences on Young Adult Maturity and Drinking", is to understand the relationship between a variety of family factors on two important and interrelated young adult outcomes: maturity and alcohol consumption. Young adult drinking studies indicate that heavy drinking is common among this demographic group. Furthermore, the literature on the impact of divorce and remarriage on childhood and adolescent development suggests that these family events increase the risk for alcohol and drug use in this same population. To date there has been little integration of these separate fields of study resulting in gaps in our understanding of how family events such as divorce and re-marriage influence the complexities associated with successful young adult development, including the ability to make safe and reasonable decisions about alcohol consumption. Building upon recent conceptual models of family functioning, the study examines the hypothesis that maturity and drinking behaviors are jointly dependent outcomes of the family socialization process. The goal of the study is to identify specific individual and familial characteristics that are associated with each outcome in order to identify those that put young adults at risk for heavy drinking and those that provide some protection against the dual risk of age and family dysfunction. The study addresses this goal with the following objectives: (1) to identify the individual and familial factors associated with young adult maturity; (2) to identify the individual and familial factors associated with young adult drinking behaviors; and (3) to examine the joint dependency between young adult maturity and alcohol consumption.

The research design will employ simultaneous equation modeling using longitudinal data from the National Survey of Families and Households to examine these relationships. This data includes information on 1090 young adults as adolescents from their parents (1987-1988) and from the young adults themselves, five years later. The findings from this study will identify both risk and protective factors that can be used in targeting prevention efforts among adolescent and young adult populations by increasing our understanding of how family events and parent-child relationships affect young adult drinking behaviors.


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