In conclusion, the current study suggests that parents’ alcohol-related symptoms may impact children in multiple ways. The distal effects of having a parent with a lifetime diagnosis of alcoholism does not fully account for children’s risk for externalizing symptoms associated with parent alcohol involvement. Rather, more proximal risk mechanisms need to be considered such as the disruption of parental drinking to family environment and organization, increased stress and potentially violence in the home, and impairments in parenting. These proximal effects appear largely limited to predicting externalizing rather than internalizing symptoms. Further understanding the relations among the risk mechanisms underlying these highly co-occurring forms of symptomatology is needed to better understand the multiple ways in which parent alcoholism may impact children’s functioning over development.
