Parenting Styles and Gender-Linked Drinking Behaviors in Dominica

Abstract

We explored links among adult alcohol consumption, personality, and retrospective childhood rela- tionships with parents using psychometric instruments adapted for use among Dominicans (n 5 58; 25 men and 33 women). Compared to women, men consumed more alcohol and cigarettes, reported lower behavioral inhi- bition, and lower maternal ''caringness'' (all po.05). Results suggest that, with respect to drinking, parenting styles predispose opposite developmental trends for men and women. Women who recalled their mothers as more caring tended to have higher behavioral activation seeking (BAS) scores and also to drink more. For men BAS was negatively correlated with maternal caring, but did not significantly correlate with alcohol consumption. Women who recalled their fathers as more controlling tended to drink less (p 5 .026), but men who recalled their fathers as more controlling tended to drink more (p 5 .0002). Maternal controllingness was also positively associated with alcohol consumption in men (p 5 .002), but showed no association with drinking in women. (child development, mother-child, health, family, personality, alcohol) Relations between parenting and individual identity are core issues in psychological anthropology (Bock 1988; Ingham 1996; Whiting and Whiting 1978). Debates about the influence of cultural context on parental behavior, the consequent socialization of adult intercultural differences, and the relative importance of universalism versus relativism have been major recurring themes (Hinton 1999; Quinn 2005; Wallace 1970). Some theorists have identified a prevailing assumption that cultural knowledge is somehow facsimiled into individual minds (Strauss 1992), and reliably copied back into practices in communities and relationships (Weisner 2009). Nonetheless, some anthropologists have shown interest in questioning the extent to which intracultural or idiosyncratic variation in parenting style or rearing influences lifetime health, well-being, adjustment, or maladjustment. For example, based on longitudinal evidence comparing distinctive parental styles (e.g., countercultural vs. conventional parents in California) Weisner (2009) showed that cultural scripts for parenting can be inconsistent, resulting in unintended consequences such as dependency conflicts and ambivalence among both parents and children.