A final developmental consideration is whether parental divorce has a differential effect on alcohol use initiation in pre- to early adolescence compared to mid to late adolescence. Dube et al. (2006) suggest that as use of alcohol becomes increasingly normative across adolescence, weaker relationships between life events and alcohol use would be expected during late adolescence and early adulthood. However, their findings indicate that parental divorce is associated with the initiation of alcohol use throughout adolescence, although effects are greater for early initiation (by age 14) than for later initiation (by age 17 or by age 20). Sartor et al. (2007) also found that the contribution of parental divorce to initiation of alcohol use was not consistent over time, conferring the greatest risk for drinking when drinking was initiated prior to age 13 and after age 15. A similar pattern of results was found in the studies by Waldron et al. (2014a, 2014b) and Grant et al. (2015) that examined variability in the degree of influence of parental separation by age at parental separation and by age at alcohol use initiation. Their findings revealed that parental separation effects were greater for drinking that occurred in early versus later adolescence.
