Weed-whacked parents are anything but chill when it comes to their children, a new study found.
The study of 3,000 California parents, published this week in the Journal of Social Work Practice in the Addictions, found marijuana users were more likely to administer all types of discipline techniques on their kids — including timeouts, taking away privileges and spanking — than non-drug users.
"There are parents who say marijuana calms them down and makes them a better parent," lead researcher Bridget Freisthler, a professor in the College of Social Work at Ohio State University, told the New York Post. "That's not what we're seeing in this particular study."
The researchers asked the parents how often they used alcohol, marijuana, methamphetamine, and other drugs — and found a 0.5% increase in the amount of discipline pot-smoking parents over non-smokers.
They also looked at how frequently parents used non-violent punishment such as timeouts, corporal punishment like spanking, and physical abuse, such as hitting a child with a fist. They found parents who reported marijuana use were more likely to control their kids than someone who did not.
"That is not something we would have expected to see," Freisthler told the Post. "They were more likely to use all forms of discipline more often."
Freisthler said she is concerned about the impact more prevalent drug use would have in the family home.
"That's one of the things that we want to keep an eye on," she told the Post. "As we're seeing more people use drugs like marijuana, are we seeing more changes in how people parent?"
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