Poster #24 - Childhood Supportive Emotion Socialization Buffers the Relation Between Parent and Offspring Cannabis Use

• In Event: Poster Session 03

Abstract

Parent cannabis use (CU) is a risk factor for offspring CU and disorder (Bailey et al., 2016; Kosty et al., 2015). However, when parent CU may have the greatest impact developmentally is less clear, with theoretical, but no empirical support for early childhood being a sensitive period (Bornstein, 1989; Knudsen, 2004). Parent substance use is associated with non-supportive reactions to children’s emotions (Shadur & Hussong, 2019; 2020), with important implications for offspring’s dysregulated behavior, including substance misuse (Eisenberg et al., 1998; Perry et al., 2021). Therefore, under a resilience framework, we hypothesized that parental supportive emotion socialization could serve as a buffer that protects children from the intergenerational transmission of substance use. More specifically, we hypothesized that early parent CU rather than later use would have a stronger positive relation with offspring CU, while supportive parental emotion socialization in childhood would buffer these associations.
Racially and ethnically diverse families were recruited from rural, urban, and suburban low-income communities when children were 2 years and followed longitudinally in an RCT (N=731; 50% female, 50% White, 28% Black, 13% biracial, 13% Hispanic; M annual income = $28,993). Primary caregivers completed the short version of the Adult Substance Use Questionnaire (Skinner & Allen, 1982) when the children were 2, 3, 4, 5 (early childhood), 7.5, 8.5, 9.5 (middle childhood), and 14 and 16 years (adolescence). Parent CU was dichotomized by age and mean composited by developmental period. Parent supportive emotion socialization was measured by the Reward subscale of the Emotion Socialization Questionnaire (Magai, 1997) at age 8.5. Emerging adult CU disorder symptoms were assessed using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5 Disorders (First et al., 2016) at age 19. We conducted separate zero-inflated negative binomial regressions by developmental period, regressing number of offspring CU disorder symptoms on parent CU, emotion socialization, and their interactions, controlling for sex, age, control vs. intervention group, location, and income.
Parent CU during early and middle childhood, but not adolescence, predicted offspring cannabis symptoms at age 19 (B = -1.41, SE = 0.62, z = -2.26, p = .024; B = -1.74, SE = 0.76, z = -2.28, p = .022; B = -0.71, SE = 0.53, z = -1.35, p = .178, respectively). However, these main effects were qualified by significant interactions between parent CU in early and middle childhood and supportive emotion socialization (Table 1). Emotion socialization buffered the relation between parent and offspring CU as hypothesized (Figure 1), such that there was no relation between parent and offspring CU with high parent supportive emotional socialization. However, contrary to what was expected, young adults with parents that used more cannabis and received lower supportive emotion socialization had fewer symptoms of cannabis use disorder. There was no relation between parent CU when youth were in adolescence, and offspring CU at age 19, supporting childhood as a sensitive period. Future research should build a more nuanced understanding of how parent CU may affect offspring use by using a developmental perspective, examining sensitive periods, and testing resilience theory.

Authors

• Savannah G Ostner, Arizona State University
  Presenting Author

• Erika Westling, Oregon Research Institute

• Daniel S. Shaw, University of Pittsburgh

• Jenn-Yunn Tein, Arizona State University

• Jazmin Brown-Iannuzzi, University of Virginia

• Melvin N Wilson, University of Virginia -Charlottesville

• Kathryn Lemery-Chalfant, Arizona State University