We were interested in mapping the direct and indirect effects of parental alcohol problems on romantic relationship involvement and alcohol use at the beginning of emerging adulthood. We tested whether three alcohol-related risk factors (parental history of alcohol problems, conduct problems, and positive urgency) were associated with romantic relationship status and alcohol use in a sample of 4,410 individuals at the beginning of emerging adulthood. We tested a model informed by the deviance proneness and positive affect regulation pathways as well as the results from an earlier report (based on n = 2,056; Salvatore et al., 2014) that dating several people is distinctly associated with higher alcohol use compared to being single or being in an exclusive relationship. We had three primary hypotheses:
