In addition to varying rates of disorder by gender of the offspring, the gender of the parent appears to be an important consideration. A meta-analysis (Prescott, 2001) addressing sex differences in alcoholism transmission reported a 40% increase in risk for alcoholism among relatives of female alcoholics in comparison to male alcoholics. Additionally, several studies utilizing population-based samples have examined the influence of parental gender. Utilizing a sample of 1,030 same-sex twins from the Virginia Twin registry and their parents, Kendler et al. (1994) reported that alcoholism was transmitted to daughters equally as often from alcoholic mothers (n=33) as alcoholic fathers (N=82). Similarly, Lieb et al. (2002) using a representative sample of German 14–17 year olds and adjusting for the number of parents who were alcohol dependent (one or both) reported that progression to hazardous level of drinking over a four year follow up was equally likely in offspring of affected mothers as fathers. One limitation of the Lieb et al (2002) study was the relative infrequent occurrence of alcohol dependence in mothers (7.5%). In another population-based sample 1,514 adolescent twins
