Children may form their perceptions about alcohol and tobacco use before they ever encounter peer pressure at school, a new Dartmouth Medical School study suggests.
According to the study, conducted by Dartmouth Medical School pediatrics professor Madeline Dalton, childhood attitudes toward alcohol and tobacco are directly correlated with parental use of these substances.
Dalton, who has been involved in tobacco prevention for ten years, oversaw the structured observation of 120 children, ages two to six, whom she asked to purchase items for a simulated dinner party from a mock grocery store. The study was designed to measure the attitudes of children who were not yet literate, she said.
When the children picked their groceries, they were four times more likely to buy cigarettes if their parents smoked and three times more likely to buy alcohol if their parents drank at least once monthly.
Some of the subjects were even familiar with different cigarette brands -- one six-year-old boy was able to identify the brand of his cigarettes as Marlboro even though he could not identify the brand of his favorite cereal, Dalton said.
Dalton said the results suggest young children have both positive and negative associations with drinking.
Although many of the children decided to purchase alcohol and cigarettes in the scenario, some did not.
According to Dalton, one girl refused to buy alcohol for her doll because, she said, "he gets drunk enough already."
While the study did not investigate whether childhood attitudes toward alcohol and cigarettes persist in later years, Dalton said she believes children will probably also react as their parents have in similar future situations.
"Theoretically," Dalton said, "the unconscious ideas that children form do guide behavior later in life."
Dalton emphasized the powerful nature of parents as role models despite the competing influences of television, older siblings and peers.
"It is important for parents to realize that kids receive these messages. Kids are picking up on what we do more than what we say," Dalton said.
Dalton said she hopes to continue researching her topic by using more children from more diverse backgrounds and by placing them in varying scenarios. The subjects of the current study, she said, were from relatively similar socioeconomic classes because they were the children of adults affiliated with Dartmouth.
