GENDER, RACE/ETHNICITY, AND DEVIANT DRINKING: A LONGITUDINAL APPLICATION OF SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY

Aker’s (1998) theory of social structure and social learning (SSSL) argues that structural variations in deviant behavior, such as gender or race/ethnic differences in underage or heavy drinking, are mediated by social learning variables. However, longitudinal analyses of deviant drinking in an urban sample of white, black, and Hispanic adolescents fail to sup-port the SSSL mediation hypothesis. Significant gender and race/ethnic differences persist after controls for social learning variables as well as for social bonding variables. Interac-tion effects involving two social bonding variables—family attachment and moral belief— point to theoretically important conditions that maintain a gender gap in underage drinking and relatively low levels of deviant drinking among African American adolescents. Some of the strongest and most consistent patterns in epidemiological research on adolescent alcohol use involve gender and race=ethnic differences. Young men tend to drink more frequently, in heavier quantities, and with more problematic conse-quences than do young women (Johnston et al. 2007; Office of the Surgeon General 2007; Wallace et al. 2003). Similarly, white adolescents in the United States are more frequent and heavier users of alcohol than are Hispanic, African American