Although there is general agreement that high risk offspring are more prone to experience disorders during childhood and adolescence, significant gaps in our knowledge of specific risk factors associated with development of child and adolescent disorders persist. Complicating the study of increased genetic susceptibility for alcohol dependence (AD) using offspring from families with multiple cases of AD is the concurrent environmental exposure to AD relatives that often results in greater adversity, especially if the relative is a parent. Although gene by environment interactions have been demonstrated for alcohol dependence and other psychiatric disorders, specifying salient environmental influences has been challenging for the field (Gunzerath and Goldman, 2003). Among the issues needing further study are the role of familial/genetic loading for alcoholism versus the influence of parental alcohol dependence, and more specifically the role of maternal versus paternal alcohol dependence. Additionally, the possible contribution of parental comorbid conditions in the development of these disorders, and the temporal progression of psychopathology in childhood and adolescence have largely been unexplored. With two large-scale family studies ongoing in our laboratory in which third generation
