In addition to examining additional mediators of the paternal alcoholism-warm/sensitive parenting association, future research might also examine whether marital satisfaction still plays a significant role among older children of alcoholics. Also, although the current study focused on paternal alcoholism, future research might also examine alcoholic mothers and whether the same pattern of results holds for couples where the wife is an alcoholic and the husband is not. Another future direction would be to compare the parenting behaviors of couples where both partners are alcoholic with couples who do not engage in problematic alcohol use. Given that patterns of congruent drinking behavior (i.e., where neither partner drinks and/or where both partners engage in problematic drinking behavior) have been shown to be associated with increases in marital satisfaction (e.g., Homish & Leonard, 2007), future research might examine if such increases in marital satisfaction are in turn associated with positive parenting behaviors or if the marital satisfaction-positive parenting association only occurs when neither parent drinks.
