Parental Permissiveness as Perceived by the Offspring and the Degree of Marijuana Usage Among Offspring

This survey research, using typological and cross-tabulation procedures with a randomly selected sample of 563 black and white, primarily Catholic-democratic middle-class, undergraduate students from a northern urban university, explored and analyzed the relationships between perceived parental permissiveness (laissez-faire, autocratic, quasi-democratic, and democratic) and the degree of marijuana usage (high, medium and low) among offspring. The following hypotheses were tested and found to obtain: (1) Perceived laissez-faire parent-child relationships lead to high marijuana usage by offspring; (2) Perceived autocratic parent-child relationships lead to medium use of marijuana by offspring; (3) Perceived quasi-democratic parent-child relationships lead to low marijuana usage by offspring; and (4) Perceived democratic parent-child relationships lead to low marijuana usage. In addition, a summary of four intervening variables, age (16-18, 19 and above) sex, race (black, white) and peer group orientation (strong, moderate, weak) were documented via the literature to correlate with marijuana usage, yielded 36 sub-hypotheses, of which 29 were confirmed.