Despite well-documented associations between marital instability and alcohol use disorder (Cranford, 2014; Kessler et al., 1998; Waldron et al., 2011), relatively few studies of parental separation and offspring substance involvement consider correlated risk from parental alcohol or other drug dependence. Parental separation during childhood may be uniquely predictive of early drinking by offspring, which in turn increases risk of dependent use (Grant & Dawson, 1997; Grant et al., 2001). It is also possible that the relationship between parental separation and offspring alcohol involvement can be accounted for by risk factors common to parental separation and substance dependence, including heritable risks (for a review, see Dick & Agrawal, 2008).
