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Parents who are concerned about drinking and other risky behavior often try to steer their teenage children away from friends and dating partners whom they consider "bad influences."
Those parents may want to look one step further: A new study suggests that teenagers with a new boyfriend or girlfriend tend to be more influenced by the drinking habits of their romantic partner's friends than they are by the partners themselves.
Why? Dating introduces adolescents to new and different social networks and also creates a kind of indirect peer pressure, says lead researcher Derek Kreager, Ph.D., an associate professor of crime, law, and justice at Pennsylvania State University, in University Park.
A teen's longtime friends tend to be like-minded when it comes to values and lifestyle, but romantic partners are more likely to come from a different circle.
"Think of your son or daughter's new significant other as a bridge to a whole other group that he or she is now going to be exposed to," Kreager says.
When teenagers begin dating, they tend to meet in the middle when it comes to habits like drinking. If a teen girl who has yet to experiment with alcohol starts dating a boy who drinks often, for instance, the boy is likely to cut back while the girl is likely to give drinking a try.
