Given that paternal alcoholism is associated with decreased relationship quality for both husbands and wives, which in turn is associated with lower parental warmth and sensitivity, might relationship quality mediate the association between paternal alcoholism and parenting? Recent research has begun to examine this. Keller, Cummings, Davies, and Mitchell (2008) examined the association between parental problem drinking, family functioning and child development longitudinally in a community sample of families with kindergarten aged children. Results showed that paternal problem drinking was associated with greater marital conflict one year later, which in turn was associated with decreased parental warmth. Marital conflict was also associated with increased parental psychological control. This study is noteworthy in that it documents the important mediating role that the marital relationship plays in linking parental drinking to negative parenting behaviors. Moreover, it examined these pathways longitudinally and focused on more complex family processes than previous research studies. However, the parenting measures were aggregated across mothers and fathers. Thus, the individual effects of paternal alcoholism on parenting could not be determined for each parent separately. Doing so would be
