A longitudinal examination of factors predicting maternal permissiveness toward underage student drinking across the first three years of college

Parental permissiveness of drinking is a reliable predictor of college drinking, but there is little known about factors that predict such permissiveness. This study seeks to examine factors that predict two potentially different facets of permissiveness: perceived general approval of alcohol use and perceived drinking limits. Additionally, we explored how these facets mediate the relationship between the predictors of permissiveness and subsequent college drinking and related consequences. First-year college students (N = 1,172) from three large U.S. universities participated in a three-year longitudinal study (surveys were approximately 1 year apart). The students reported demographic information (i.e., birth sex, race, ethnicity), perceived injunctive peer norms, drinking outcomes (i.e., peak, heavy episodic drinking, and consequences), and perceived maternal behaviors (i.e., modeling alcohol use, monitoring, alcohol communication) and attitudes toward drinking (i.e., general approval and drinking limits). Results indicated that being White (compared to Asian and Black) predicted higher perceived maternal general approval of alcohol use and higher perceived maternal drinking limits during students’ second year in college. And, perceived maternal drinking limits, but not general approval, assessed during students’ second year predicted all three drinking outcomes during the students’ third year. This study supports previous research showing the impact of parental permissiveness, especially drinking limits, on college drinking and highlights the role of race as a predictor of parental permissiveness. Moreover, our findings support general approval and drinking limits as distinct facets that reflect different dimensions of parental permissiveness.