Given the evidence for unmeasured family environmental effects that influence risk for both childhood maltreatment and alcoholism, we next explored whether measured environmental risk factors can account for the childhood maltreatment–alcoholism association. Childhood maltreatment often occurs in the context of the same familial risk factors for alcoholism (Famularo et al. 1992; McCurdy & Daro, 1994; Fergusson et al. 1996b; Dong et al. 2003), possibly creating an association between maltreatment and alcoholism attributable to familial factors. We examined whether the environmental risk for alcoholism associated with childhood maltreatment would decrease in magnitude after adjusting for a variety of familial covariates (parental psychopathology, parenting style, parental demographic variables). Results were consistent with this hypothesis and provide evidence that alcoholism risk associated with childhood maltreatment is significantly attenuated after adjusting for the contributions of the familial risk factors we examined, including parental substance use, lack of parental warmth, and father's antisocial personality characteristics.
