The dominance of distal, over proximal and time-varying, effects of parent alcoholism on children’s externalizing symptoms is consistent with our previous analyses predicting children’s internalizing symptoms. Although these findings are not consistent with theories of child psychopathology that conceptualize parent-child influences as dynamic and driven by real-time processes (e.g., Granic & Patterson, 2006), they are consistent with alternate views pointing to a long-term deleterious effects of high genetic vulnerability coupled with stressful, chaotic and sometimes abusive environments. Such posited gene by environment interactions may have long-term implications for subsequent adjustment due to increasing constraints on positive or even corrective environmental inputs (e.g., lower school readiness and parental involvement resulting in school failure and lack of exposure to the benefits of school success; Zucker, 2006). Thus, in some cases, distal influences may be so substantial as to reduce the odds that more proximal influences will significantly alter risk for symptomatology.
