However, not all offspring exposed to parental divorce and parental relationship discord go on to experience alcohol-related problems (Amato, 2001). Accordingly, it is important to better understand variability in offspring’s response to parental divorce and parental relationship discord. Offspring genetic factors are one plausible contributor to variability in offspring responses to parental divorce and discord. For example, there is evidence that the effects of parental divorce on offspring risk for early alcohol initiation and risk for AUD are the strongest among those with a parental history of AUD (Thompson et al., 2008; Waldron et al., 2014). This pattern of effects could be consistent with the diathesis–stress mechanisms of gene-by-environment interaction (GxE; Shanahan & Hofer, 2005), whereby individuals respond differently to stressor (e.g., family adversity) based on a vulnerability factor (i.e., familial risk for AUD, which is a mixture of both genetic and environmental influences; Kendler et al., 2015). These findings suggest that variability in responses to parental divorce and parental discord may be attributable, in part, to offspring’s own genetic predisposition for AUD (Pilowsky et al., 2009). This possibility was
