“Routinely connecting over meals—which can be as simple as a caregiver and child standing at a counter having a snack together—can help establish open and routine parent-child communication and parental monitoring to support more positive long-term outcomes for the majority of children,” said lead author of the study, Margie Skeer, professor and chair of the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine, in a press release.
“It’s not about the food, timing, or setting; it's the parent-child relationship and interactions it helps cultivate that matter,” she said.
For the study, researchers examined online survey data from 2,090 US adolescents aged 12 to 17 and their parents. The survey asked about the quality of their family meals- including communication, enjoyment, digital distractions, and logistics, alongside adolescents' use of alcohol, e-cigarettes, and cannabis in the past six months. Altogether, 17.6% of adolescents reported past-six-month alcohol use, 17.1%: vaping, and 15.5%: cannabis.
After analyzing the data, the researchers found that higher-quality family dinners were linked to a 22-34% lower prevalence of substance use among adolescents who had either no or low to moderate levels of adverse childhood experiences.
Family meals, however, lost their protective effect among adolescents who had four or more adverse experiences. Adverse experiences included parents being divorced, a family member having a substance use or mental health disorder, and witnessing violence, among other stressors. Around 20% of high school students under age 18 in the US have four or more adverse childhood experiences.
“While our research suggests that adolescents who have experienced more severe stressors may not see the same benefits from family meals, they may benefit from more targeted and trauma-informed approaches, such as mental health support and alternative forms of family engagement,” said Skeer.
Future research should delve into how combining family meals with additional supports can improve adolescent substance use outcomes, wrote the researchers in their study. Research should also work to identify other protective routines for adolescents with high levels of adversity, they added.
Sources: EurekAlert, Journal of Aggression Maltreatment and Trauma