Exploring the Relationship between Parental Socialization of Emotion and Non-Clinical Alcohol Use in a Norwegian Sample.
Creators: name: Vaarin Amundsen
name: Gjesmoe, Amalie
name: Tsotsi, Stella
name: Evalill Bølstad
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
subject: Psychology
subject: FOS: Psychology
subject: Developmental Psychology
subject: Parenting
subject: Non-supportive ERSBs
subject: Alcohol use
subject: Emotion-Related Socialization Behaviors (ERSBs)
subject: Sex Differences
subject: Emotion Socialization
subject: Supportive ERSBs

description: The current study is part of a larger research project “Parenting Practices in Norway” (Norwegian: Foreldrepraksis i Norge (FiN)) carried out by the Department of Psychology (PSI) at the University of Oslo (UiO) coordinated by Professor Egil Nygaard (UiO). The project (FiN) is conducted on assignment from Bufdir (short for the Norwegian Children, Youth and Family Directorate). Bufdir’s request for assistance from PSI is grounded in the need for new and increased knowledge about Norwegian parents, how they practice their parenthood, and especially, which factors that contribute to emotion-related parenting practices. Based on previous academic work, there exists a reasonable amount of evidence suggesting a relationship between high risk alcohol use and parenting practices, which may further differ according to the sex of the parent (Nolen-Hoeksema, 2004; Root &amp; Denham, 2010). In Norwegian culture, alcohol use is both common and accepted and approximately 80% of the adult population in Norway drink alcohol (Bye &amp; Rossow, 2022). Within a large sample of children of parents with substance abuse, 9% (constituting 95 000 children) reported that they have experienced problems or discomfort regarding their parents’ use of alcohol or other substances (Rossow et al., 2009). Similarly, a recent nationwide survey show that one in five children feel that their parents drink too much (Vissgren, 2021). With alcohol being so present in many children’s upbringing in Norway, it poses a question of how this parental behavior affects them. Despite the severe consequences of risky drinking behavior, even small amounts of alcohol may change the way parents behave around their children (Lund et al., 2015), and children can experience these small changes in their parents’ behaviors as uncomfortable or frightening (Sola, 2022; Vissgren, 2021). As the group of parents drinking in the context of socially accepted drinking habits in Norwegian culture constitutes a substantially large proportion of the population, this also concerns so many more children than that of parents with an actually risky drinking behavior (approximately 3% women and 8% men (Merakerås, 2022)). Following these thoughts, Lund and colleagues (2015, 2019) suggest that the degree of harm from non-clinical parental drinking may be underestimated, and, in line with this, even small amounts of parental alcohol use may affect emotion-related socialization behaviors, and in turn, socioemotional outcomes in the child. As the larger proportion of previous literature has focused on more severe, clinical parental drinking habits, less is known about other levels of alcohol use in parents. This has not yet been investigated in relation to parental socialization of emotion, where, to our knowledge, the only two studies that have examined the relationship between parental alcohol use and emotion socialization, has been within the context of alcoholic father families (Godleski et al., 2020) or problem drinking (Keller et al., 2021). The present study’s aim is therefore to explore the relationship between less severe use of alcohol in parents, which we refer to as non-clinical alcohol use, and how parents respond to negative emotions in their child. In addition, an examination of whether parent sex acts as a moderator to the relationship between parental alcohol use and parental ERSBs will be conducted, as large parts of the literature on parental emotion socialization points to important gender differences in emotion-related parenting and encourages further research to examine parental emotion-related socialization behaviors independently for mothers and fathers. This will help provide crucial information about some of the contributing factors to the practice of parenthood in Norway, and more specifically, emotion-related parenting practices, which can be useful for tailoring the implementation of future interventions in the general parental population in Norway.