Unlike distal and proximal effects, time-varying effects of parents’ alcohol-related consequences are within-person comparisons and thus address questions of timing. Time-varying effects of parents’ alcohol-related consequences were only a marginally significant predictor of father’s report of children’s externalizing symptoms but they were a significant predictor of both mothers’ and adolescents’ reports of externalizing symptoms, though only among non-COAs. Thus, our most consistent finding is that children are at greater risk for externalizing symptoms when their parents’ are actively abusing alcohol, but only if their parents are below diagnostic levels. This effect was limited to maternal symptoms, perhaps reflecting a greater disruption to the caregiving environment or the effect of a later developing form of alcohol-related problems. For families in which parents meet diagnostic criteria for alcohol use disorders, this lifetime diagnosis and the proximal effects of parent’s alcohol-related consequences have a much greater impact on the child’s risk for externalizing symptoms; the timing of children’s externalizing symptoms does not appear linked to that of their alcoholic parents’ alcohol-related symptoms.
