Binge drinking in adolescents: Correlations with temperament, peers, and parenting styles

During the last years, binge drinking has become common among German adolescents. Novelty seeking, delinquency, and peer behavior as well as parental monitoring are considered as risk factors. However, little is known about their interplay with regard to binge drinking. This article presents data of 333 15-year-olds from the Mannheim Study of Risk Children, a prospective longitudinal study of a birth cohort. About one third of the sample had already engaged in binge drinking. Consistent with expectations, among these were more adolescents with high levels of novelty seeking, deviant peer contacts, and delinquency. Independent of these factors, parental monitoring had a protective effect on levels of heavy alcohol use. The impact of novelty seeking became insignificant after controlling for the other variables. It is concluded, that deviant peer affiliation and delinquency are significant risk factors for binge drinking, while parental monitoring acts as a protective factor, both directly and indirectly.