Individual characteristics such as sex (Morgan et al., 2010) and race (Werner et al., 2016) appear to play a role in risk of trauma exposure among the offspring of parents with AUD. In the National Survey of Adolescents, males were significantly more likely than females to witness violence (Hanson et al., 2008). The same study found that females were sexually assaulted at significantly greater rates than males (13% girls versus 3% of boys) (Hanson et al., 2008). Guina and colleagues suggest that the greater incidence of sexual violence among women may explain the excess in women of post-traumatic stress symptomology and disorder rates (Guina et al., 2016). There were no differences by sex in rates of physical violence in the National Survey of Adolescents (Hanson et al., 2008), although a meta-review of 25 studies concluded that males experience both physical assault and witnessed violence at consistently higher rates than females regardless of parent AUD status (Tolin & Foa, 2006).
