You can blame it on the parents

London: Poor parenting significantly increases the likelihood that children will grow up to be binge drinkers, according to the findings of a controversial study.

The thinktank Demos, which tracked the lives of 30,000 people across four decades, found that high levels of parental warmth and attachment until the age of 10, combined with strict discipline by the time they are 16, play a powerful role in reducing the likelihood that a child would go on to be a binge drinker.

The findings will chime with claims from the right that many of society's problems are attributable to inadequate parenting. But it is unusual for a left-of-centre thinktank with historically close links to the Labour party to identify dysfunctional parenting as one of modern society's most high-profile problems.

Advocating a traditional "tough love" style of parenting, Demos claims its research suggests that high levels of attachment between parents and pre-fives significantly reduce the chances a child will drink excessively. It warns that bad parenting at age 10 makes a child twice as likely to drink excessively in their 30s.

But it is during the teenage years that "tough love" parenting seems to exert its most crucial influence. Demos claims a 16-year-old child is more than eight times more likely to drink excessively if there are poor levels of parenting. They are more than twice as likely to drink excessively in their 30s.

"The enduring impact of parenting on a child's future relationship with alcohol cannot be ignored," said Jamie Bartlett, author of the report. Demos's research was based on a statistical analysis of two sets of data, involving more than 30,000 children born during the past 40 years, including the respected 1970 British CohortStudy.