R-rated movies don’t cause early drinking; alcoholic parents do.
“Middle-schoolers who are forbidden to watch R-rated movies are less likely to start drinking than peers whose parents are more lenient about such films.”
So found researchers at Dartmouth Medical School, reporting that among those whose parents let them watch R-rated movies “all the time,” almost a quarter had drank without their parents’ knowledge. Only 3% had tried a drink among those “never allowed” to watch R-rated movies. While the researchers controlled for parenting style, there was nothing said about the parents’ level of alcohol use and alcoholism.
Aligning cause and effect between movies and drinking ignores the fact that the less disciplined a child, the greater the likelihood that a parent is an alcohol or other-drug addict (“out of control children” ...
