A study from the University of Pittsburgh found that two out of five American children between the ages of eight and ten — that’s forty percent — have tasted alcohol. That means just a few sips… nothing dangerous, right?
What might be more worrisome is that of the children who had tasted alcohol, one third of parents had no idea that it had happened.
Before the University of Pittsburgh study, research on alcohol use in children focused on older children and larger quantities of alcohol. Most of the prior research only asked about a child taking “more than a few sips” of alcohol — leaving out children who only sample alcohol entirely.
The study interviewed more than four hundred children between the ages of eight and ten and their families by phone. Children were asked questions like:
- Have you ever sipped or tasted alcohol?
- Do your parents drink alcohol?
- How often do your parents drink alcohol?
Parents were interviewed separately.
As you might surmise, children who had parents that drank were more likely to have tasted alcohol between the ages of eight and ten. Not necessarily because parents are offering the drink to their children — as mentioned above, about a third of the mothers and nearly half of the fathers had no idea their children had tasted alcohol. The results to seem to suggest that children learn drinking behavior from their parents, but the study did not look at other possible role models like television shows and commercials.
The good news from the University of Pittsburgh study: only around six percent of children in the study had drunk a full eight ounces or more. That’s very encouraging news!
More good news: the majority of children who had tasted alcohol did it around family or during a religious service. Very few of the 452 children in the study tasted alcohol with friends or drank alone.
This is just the first in a planned series of studies that will look at family attitudes towards alcohol and drinking behavior and how they influence children.