Spanish study links parental moral excuses to increased adolescent drinking and smoking via moral disengagement

New research from Spain reveals that parents who frequently excuse harmful behaviour may inadvertently encourage teenagers to justify moral shortcuts, leading to higher rates of alcohol and tobacco use through increased moral disengagement.

Parents who repeatedly excuse harmful behaviour may be doing more than sending mixed messages. A new Spanish longitudinal study suggests that when adults normalise moral shortcuts at home, teenagers may absorb that mindset and become more likely to drink alcohol or use tobacco in the years that follow.

The research, led by Joaquín Rodríguez-Ruiz of the University of Huelva with Raquel Espejo-Siles and Izabela Zych of the University of Córdoba, was published in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction. It examined moral disengagement, a concept first developed in the work of Albert Bandura, which describes the mental habits people use to justify conduct that would otherwise clash with their values. Those habits can include portraying harmful behaviour as acceptable, minimising its consequences or shifting responsibility on to others.

The study followed 533 adolescents across three school years beginning in autumn 2020, with the participants averaging just over 12 years old at the start. According to the paper, the researchers asked teenagers how often they believed their parents made excuses for immoral conduct, then measured the teenagers’ own moral disengagement and their use of legal and illegal substances over time. The team used a robust statistical approach to test whether parental attitudes could predict later behaviour through the adolescents’ own moral reasoning.

What emerged was a clear indirect pattern. Parents who were seen as more morally permissive did not directly predict later use of alcohol or tobacco. Instead, those attitudes were linked to higher moral disengagement among adolescents a year later, and that, in turn, was associated with greater use of beer, wine, spirits and cigarettes the following year. The study did not find the same pathway for illegal drugs, which the authors said may reflect the easier availability and lower perceived risk of alcohol and tobacco.

The findings fit with earlier research showing that family behaviour and parental monitoring can shape the timing and likelihood of adolescent substance use. A long-running study indexed by the US National Library of Medicine found that adolescents with alcoholic fathers showed sharper growth in substance use over time, while other research has linked parental disengagement and harshness to later alcohol and tobacco use through peer behaviour. Separate studies have also highlighted the value of active parental anti-substance messaging and monitoring as protective factors.

The Spanish team argues that the mechanism matters. Their interpretation is that children do not simply copy a parent’s attitude towards one rule-breaking episode; they may learn a broader way of thinking that makes later rationalisations easier. In that sense, the household moral climate can become a quiet but powerful influence on decision-making during early adolescence, when experimentation with legal substances often begins.

The authors also note several limits. The data relied on self-reports, the sample came from 16 schools in one province rather than a nationally representative group, and a substantial share of participants did not complete all three waves. Even so, the study adds rare prospective evidence to a field that has mostly relied on one-time snapshots. For parents and caregivers, the practical lesson is straightforward: the excuses made in everyday family life may matter as much as the rules themselves.