The current study examined the longitudinal association between paternal alcoholism and parental warmth and sensitivity and the role of marital satisfaction as a potential mediator of this relationship in a sample of parents and their infant children. This study addressed some of the aforementioned limitations by examining these associations separately for mothers and fathers while controlling for parental symptoms of depression. Families in which the father met the criteria for alcohol abuse and/or dependence and families in which neither partner met such criteria were assessed at three time periods one year apart: when infants were 12, 24, and 36 months old. It was hypothesized that fathers' diagnostic status (alcoholic vs. not) at 12 months would be longitudinally predictive of decreased marital satisfaction at 24 months and that this in turn would be predictive of decreased warmth and sensitivity at 36 months. Furthermore, it was believed that these associations would continue to be significant after controlling for prior levels of parental depression (see Fig. 1).
