How Parents Drinking Shape Their Kids’ Beliefs About Alcohol From an Early Age

A child begins forming alcohol expectancies in kindergarten, and it influences drinking behaviors in their teens. But luckily parents can help shape alcohol expectancies as their kid grows up.

What You’ll Learn:

• Explanation of the concept of alcohol expectancies.

• How alcohol expectancies form in childhood.

• What actually shapes a child’s alcohol expectancies.

• Why alcohol expectancies are used as a predictor of drinking later in life.

• What parents can do to be a positive influence.

Most parents assume talking to kids about drinking is something that happens in the teenage years, but research has shown that kids begin forming beliefs about alcohol much sooner.

And they largely base those beliefs on their parent’s relationship with alcohol.

It’s what’s known as alcohol expectancies. Kids start forming beliefs about what alcohol does and who it's for years before they're anywhere near a drink.

By the time many parents talk to their kids about alcohol, the beliefs are already baked in and influencing whether or not a kid will drink alcohol in high school - or even middle school.

Here's what the science says about how those early beliefs about alcohol form, why they matter so much and what parents can actually do about it to be a positive influence.

What Are Alcohol Expectancies and How Do They Form?

Let’s go into a little more detail on what exactly alcohol expectancies actually are. Alcohol expectancies are the beliefs a person holds about what will happen if they drink. These beliefs can form long before someone ever drinks alcohol.

Psychologists have described it as mental "if-then" scripts. If I drink, then I'll seem less anxious, or if I drink, then I'll feel sick and embarrassed.

These expectancies can be positive (alcohol makes people more fun, confident, or relaxed) or negative (alcohol makes people sick, out of control, or mean).

What’s most crucial to understand is that alcohol expectancies don’t just come from first-hand experience. They come from observations as well.

Children build them by watching how the adults around them drink and behave while drinking, how alcohol is portrayed in the media and how adults talk about it.

How Early Do These Beliefs About Alcohol Actually Form?

Alcohol expectancies form much sooner than many parents realize. It’s been proven that children as young as 4 years old can register an adult’s mood changes from drinking alcohol.

A foundational study by researchers Miller, Smith and Goldman tested children as young as six and found that alcohol expectancies were already measurable. There was an overall trend of increasingly positive expectancies as children got older.

The most striking part of the finding was that the sharpest jump in positive expectancies happened during third and fourth grade, years before most kids have any real exposure to alcohol.

The researchers went so far as to call this a possible "critical period" for preventing alcohol misuse later in life.

3rd and 4th grade: this is when a spike in positive alcohol expectancies is most likely.

These findings weren’t a fluke. A large-scale study comparing 4th and 9th graders found that older students viewed alcohol's effects significantly more positively than younger ones. The 9th graders also believed alcohol had a stronger impact overall.

But it goes beyond how kids think about alcohol. Yet another study provided additional insight into how kids view alcohol.

A recent analysis of around 5,000 9- to 11-year-olds found that 22% had already sipped alcohol, most often beer that belonged to their father. The sippers had more favorable expectations about alcohol.

What’s most interesting is how alcohol expectations can change over time. A recent research review found that young children's starting point tends to be negative, not positive.

Those negative views decline as positive expectancies increase steadily throughout adolescence. Their alcohol expectancies are shaped along the way by parents, peers and increasing exposure to media.

The clear takeaway is that kids are observing, and even mimicking their parent’s drinking behaviors, from a very early age, and it makes a difference years down the road.

What Shapes Alcohol Expectancies

There are a few consistent influential factors that show up across the research:

• Watching parents drink, the context, mood and frequency communicate more than any lecture does.

• Being given sips at family gatherings, which studies link to more favorable, not more cautious, expectations.

• Media and advertising, which tends to pair alcohol with glamor, humor and social gatherings while rarely showing the downsides.

• What does (or doesn't) get talked about at home, silence isn't neutral. It leaves media and peers to fill in the gaps.

• Peer influence, which becomes an increasingly dominant force as kids move into adolescence.

A child who has come to expect that alcohol equals fun, confidence and social ease is somewhat primed to seek out that experience. A child who expects it to mean sickness, embarrassment or loss of control has a built-in reason to hesitate.

Because these beliefs form before much (or any) real drinking experience, they aren't yet being corrected or complicated by lived reality.

This is one reason why early childhood may be a high-leverage window for shaping alcohol expectancies.

What Alcohol Expectancies Can Predict About Your Child’s Drinking in the Future

Here’s why all of this is so important for parents to understand. Alcohol expectancies are one of the more reliable predictors we have of how and when kids start drinking.

A study following adolescents from families with and without a history of alcoholism found that certain expectancy scores predicted the age at which teens began regularly drinking.

Teens from higher-risk families tended to hold beliefs about alcohol that closely mirrored their own parents' beliefs.

Positive alcohol expectancies are associated with:

• Starting alcohol use at an earlier age

• Larger quantity of alcohol consumed in a single drinking episode

• Higher chance of binge drinking

Negative alcohol expectancies are associated with:

• Less alcohol use

• Slower progression in alcohol use

Another strong prediction is that drinking alcohol as an adolescent tends to increase positive alcohol expectancies creating a dangerous reinforcing effect.

What Parents Can Do to Positively Influence Their Child’s Alcohol Expectancies

The good news buried in all this research is that expectancies are shaped, not fixed. Parents can influence their child’s alcohol expectancies, especially if they take initiative in the pre-teen years or earlier.

• Start having conversations about alcohol earlier than expected. Given that the biggest shift in beliefs shows up around third and fourth grade, age-appropriate conversations can start well before middle school.

• Refrain from offering a taste. Offering a taste "just to see" may seem harmless, but it's associated with more favorable alcohol expectancies. It’s about the message it sends, not the amount.

• Narrate your own drinking (or non-drinking). Kids absorb more from context than content. If you have a glass of wine at dinner, calmly modeling moderation says more than any talk.

If you choose not to drink, saying why can be just as instructive.

• Comment about media coverage. When a movie or ad glamorizes drinking, a quick, casual comment like "notice how they never show what happens the next morning?" helps kids build a more accurate picture.

• Be genuine and honest with information. Research consistently favors parents who stay warm and engaged while also being clear and truthful over being permissive or purely restrictive approaches.

Kids do best when they feel able to ask questions without fear of getting a lecture.

• Keep the conversation going. Since expectancies keep shifting through adolescence, revisiting the topic as kids grow matters more than having one good talk.

Consider Your Own Relationship With Alcohol

The most important thing any parent can do is set a good example. Since so much of what kids absorb comes from watching the adults closest to them, it's worth being honest with yourself about your own relationship with alcohol.

If you've noticed that your own drinking is heavier or more frequent than you'd like, you don't have to rely on willpower alone to change it.

Getting a handle on your alcohol use doesn’t mean quitting cold turkey or having to go to rehab. There’s an easier, more discreet way to cut back on your drinking.

Naltrexone is an FDA-approved medication that blunts alcohol's rewarding effects in the brain. It’s an evidence-based prescription that’s been shown to help people cut back on heavy drinking.

For busy parents it’s a great option. Just take a pill once a day and that’s it. You don’t have to put any more thought to curbing alcohol because naltrexone does a lot of the work for you.

To learn more about naltrexone and if it’s right for you, take our Alcohol Use Assessment.