Parental alcohol problems, both concurrent parental drinking problems and family/parental history of alcoholism, have been shown to be associated with a range of offspring maladaptive outcomes from childhood to adulthood (e.g., Conway et al., 2004; Schepis et al., 2008). Among adolescents, parental alcohol dependence is associated with higher risk for early initiation of alcohol use (Waldron et al., 2014), higher levels of alcohol consumption and heavy episodic drinking (Lieb et al., 2002), more externalizing problems, such as aggression (Hussong et al., 2010) and conduct disorders (Kuperman et al., 1999), and more depressive and anxiety symptoms (Waldron et al., 2009). In this study, we focus on adolescents’ risky drinking, because adolescence is the developmental period when many individuals initiate alcohol use and risky drinking during adolescence is a precursor for alcohol problems later in life (Marshall, 2014). We take a multivariate approach to also consider adolescents’ conduct problems as they are prevalent (Merikangas et al., 2009) and often co-occur with alcohol use and misuse among adolescents (Armstrong & Costello, 2002).
