| Abstract | Alcohol-related accidents have been recognized as a leading cause of physical health problems, injuries, and lower academic success among young adults. Exposure to parental drinking has a significant influence on offspring's drinking behavior. Parental drinking in childhood forms attitudes and expectancies towards alcohol that have been found to affect drinking behavior later in life. Additionally, the recollection of emotions related to alcohol-related childhood memories has been associated with similar emotions towards alcohol in adulthood. However, the emotional perception of middle childhood memories of parental alcohol use has not been examined in association with later life alcohol consumption. The current study aimed to investigate whether alcohol use in young adults would be associated with a positive or negative emotional perception of memories of parental drinking during middle childhood. Two hundred and one young adults (82.6% females) between the ages of 18 and 33 (M = 19.23) reported their alcohol consumption and retrospectively recalled memories from their childhood (6-12 years old) of their mother's and father's drinking. The study found a trending result of paternal drinking, with participants with positive memories related to their father's drinking reporting drinking more than those with negative memories, F(1, 172) = 2.991, p = .086, h2partial = .017. There was no effect of maternal memory on young adult's drinking. Future research is needed to confirm the study's results with a more diverse and evenly distributed sample. |
