Cultural and familial influences that maintain the negative meaning of alcohol.
OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this overview is to highlight the ways that cultural and familial factors may buffer children and adolescents from initiating alcohol use.


METHODS
This article uses the findings from studies of black and Hispanic adolescent and adult alcohol use to identify potentially important cultural and familial variables that buffer these groups from early alcohol use and misuse, abuse or dependence.


RESULTS
We begin with the notion that negative beliefs regarding alcohol and its effects protect young children from early alcohol involvement. We then consider how, for blacks and Hispanics, family structure, parent-child interaction patterns and value orientations function to maintain these negative belief schemas, thereby protecting children and adolescents from involvement with alcohol.


CONCLUSIONS
We conclude by emphasizing the importance of studying "nonmainstream" groups who are more likely to abstain from alcohol use. In doing this, research can more easily identify those family practices that produce the negative beliefs about alcohol consumption and thereby prevent early experimentation and adolescent alcohol abuse.
Johnson
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National Center for Addiction and Substance Abuse, Columbia University, New York, New York 10019, USA.
Johnson
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D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior; D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000208:ethnology* / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000523:psychology; D002648:Child; D005191:Family Characteristics; D005260:Female; D006630:Hispanic or Latino; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D010379:Peer Group; D012307:Risk Factors; D013695:Temperance / Q000523:psychology