Relationships of substance use to attitudes toward gender roles, family and cohabitation.

Abstract

This study utilizes data from four nationally representative subsamples of white high school seniors to analyze the relationships of alcohol consumption, marijuana use, and other illicit drug use to attitudes toward gender roles, family, and cohabitation. These analyses provide evidence concerning two hypotheses: the Gender Roles Hypothesis and Deviance Hypothesis. As predicted by the Gender Roles Hypothesis, among males, traditional gender role attitudes were associated with greater alcohol consumption. Contrary to the predictions of the Gender Roles Hypothesis, for females, nontraditional gender role attitudes were not associated with greater alcohol consumption or drug use in analyses which controlled for confounding factors such as family structure, socioeconomic status, and religiosity. As predicted by the Deviance Hypothesis, nontraditional attitudes toward cohabitation and family were associated with greater alcohol consumption and illicit drug use among both males and females.