Parenting Interventions

Parents have an important influence on adolescent alcohol use. These parental influences can be generic, such as supportive parent-adolescent relationships, or they may be specifically alcohol-related such as parental modelling of alcohol-related behaviour or parental provision of alcohol.  As noted earlier, it is increasingly evident that parental provision of alcohol does not protect young people from alcohol related harm.  Parenting, or family, interventions that strengthen parenting skills such as parental nurturing and support for young people, setting boundaries and monitoring appear to improve adolescent alcohol related behaviours. There are few studies that explore strengthening parenting skills in the clinical context (e.g. community health centres, primary care, other health contexts), rather most interventions report on programs occurring in school or home contexts.