With respect to alcohol, a number of studies show that alcohol use and problems are lower for emerging adults in committed or cohabiting romantic relationships (Braithwaite et al., 2010; Fleming et al., 2010; Whitton et al., 2013). Despite these associations, there has been little attention paid to how romantic relationship status in emerging adulthood fits into a broader set of psychosocial and behavioral risk factors for alcohol use. We were particularly interested in pursuing the recent finding that dating several people is distinctly associated with higher alcohol use compared to being single or being in an exclusive relationship in emerging adulthood (Salvatore et al., 2014). Our goal here was to examine how psychosocial and behavioral risk factors for alcohol use were related to dating several people and, in turn, alcohol use. Our conceptual model is shown in Figure 1. In the sections below, we elaborate on the hypothesized pathways linking parental alcohol problems, intermediate psychosocial and behavioral outcomes, romantic relationship status, and alcohol use.
