This study is limited in some ways. First, we did not assess parenting style as a time-varying variable because the primary goal of the current study was to examine the effects of parenting during adolescence on later development. Although we measured parenting style only at Wave 1, the literature suggests that parenting style is relatively stable over time despite significant changes in marital status and household structure (Barber, Maughan, & Olsen, 2005; McNally, Eisenberg, & Harris, 1991). Second, our measurement of parenting style differed slightly from historical measures of parenting style such that some of our parental acceptance items referenced both parents and family. The difference in measurement could have led to some measurement error. Third, research has shown that college students tend to report heavy drinking and HED more often than their peers who do not attend college (e.g., Dawson, Grant, Stinson, & Chou, 2004). We were unable to fully control for college matriculation in our analyses because of the temporal sequence of the data and developmental nature of analyses. College matriculation could not be treated as a time-varying
