A major influence on the expression of behavioral difficulties in high risk children that is also included in models of alcoholism etiology is the parenting environment (Sher, 1991). There is strong empirical evidence that multiple aspects of the parent-child relationship (e.g., warmth, support, low levels of conflict) and the effectiveness of parents’ child management efforts (e.g., consistency of discipline, monitoring child’s whereabouts) play an important role in minimizing or preventing behavior problems in youth, including substance use and abuse (Dishion et al., 1988; Hawkins et al., 1992). For example, parental monitoring moderates the level of genetic and environmental influences on adolescent smoking behavior. At high levels of parental monitoring, the environment accounts for 80% of the variance in adolescent smoking; at low levels of parental monitoring, genetics assume a greater importance and account for 60% of the variance in adolescent smoking (Dick et al., 2007). There is also evidence that parental monitoring mediates the impact of parent alcoholism on offspring outcome. Latendresse and colleagues (2008) found that parental monitoring partially mediated the association between alcohol use by parents (frequency of
