Support was found for the hypothesis of reciprocal relationships operating between parent-child relationship quality and adolescent cigarette and alcohol use for girls and on-time maturing boys. These effects operated in the context of relatively high stability in both appraisals of parent-child relationship quality and cigarette and alcohol use. For adolescents whose pubertal timing can be characterised as on-time, a reciprocal pattern of effects linked parent-child relationship quality with cigarette and alcohol use across a twelve-month period. For boys whose pubertal timing was off-time (early or late), parent-child relationship quality and substance use were not associated in a reciprocal fashion. Similarly, with the exception of the path linking parent-child relationship quality with increased alcohol use, reciprocal effects were not observed for early maturing girls.
