The Impact of Adult Roles on Drinking Among Women in the United States

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of three adult roles—spouse, parent, and worker—on psychological distress and drinking among a national sample of 10,193 women in the United States, using the 1992 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA). We found that the spouse and worker roles are negatively associated with the level of psychological distress, and the parent role is positively correlated with it. Controlling for level of psychological distress, those workers generally are more likely to be drinkers, but, among drinkers, they do not consume alcoholic beverages more than non-workers. The family roles do not affect a woman's likelihood of being a drinker. However, among the drinkers, being a spouse or a parent is negatively related with level of alcohol consumption. Separating three aspects of drinking behavior—whether a woman drinks at all and, if she drinks, her levels of alcohol consumption and problem drinking—our findings suggest that drinking is not a unidimensional construct. A woman's roles influence various dimensions of her drinking differently.