Adolescent smoking and drinking differs across family structures. As expected, those in two biological married parent families are least likely to smoke or drink. The greater likelihoods of risky behaviors among those in single-mother families, married stepfamilies, and cohabiting stepfamilies are due in part to weaker maternal support and control, higher levels of maternal smoking and drinking, and socioeconomic disadvantage, which is consistent with our expectations. But these factors only account for some of the variation, suggesting there are other benefits of residing in a two biological parent family that were not identified here. Specifically, there may be additional family processes, such as paternal support and control, paternal modeling, or sibling behaviors, which may contribute to lower odds of smoking and drinking. These factors merit attention in future work.
