risky behaviors, including alcohol use. Because older adults’ social networks tend to be smaller and include mostly emotionally close relationships, such as close family members, it is unsurprising that we found a link between support from family and alcohol use among middle-aged adults (Antonucci et al., 2004; Levitt, 1993). Finally, among young adults in our sample, only friend support, but not family support, was associated with alcohol use. Young adulthood is characterized with changes in responsibilities associated with adult social roles, such as marriages and parenthood (McCormick et al., 2011). It is possible that family support is already reflected in these adult roles. For example, prior research has shown that new adult social roles are inversely associated with drinking because of increased social control that these new roles/responsibilities offer (e.g., Barr et al, 2017; Christie-Mizell & Peralta, 2009). Our analyses of age differences based on broad age categories revealed interesting age differences in pattern of associations between social support and alcohol use. An important next step would be to examine the within-person pattern of change in these relations across the adulthood years.
