Maternal drinking was particularly predictive of high attention and conduct problem scores in our data. Our results are consistent with previous findings that maternal drinking has a greater impact on children than paternal drinking [8,37]. If not simply due to statistical fluctuations, the apparent heightened risk associated with mothers compared to fathers may be explained by impairment of the primary caregiver role, commonly undertaken by the mother, or by drinking during pregnancy. The present study does not have data on drinking during pregnancy, but previous studies have found that moderate prenatal exposure to alcohol increases the risk of conduct problems [10,18] and learning difficulties [6]. Also, since women drink less than men on average, pathological drinking in mothers may indicate a more severe stressor or higher heritable vulnerability to impulse control problems than drinking in fathers.
