Similarly, it is important to examine how these mediational pathways differ between male and female adolescents. For instance, boys display slightly higher rates of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use than girls (York, Welte, Hirsch, Hoffman, & Barnes, 2004). Research suggests that parental monitoring tends to impact boys’ alcohol use more strongly than girls’ (e.g., van der Vorst et al., 2006), and girls’ cigarette and marijuana use more strongly than boys’ (Griffin, Botvin, Scheier, Diaz, & Miller, 2000; Lac & Crano, 2009). Other studies indicate that parental closeness may have a stronger effect on substance use for girls (Choquet, Hassler, Morin, Falissard, & Chau, 2008; Kelly et al., 2011). We thus examined whether parental closeness and monitoring mediated the association between parental and adolescent substance use. Further, we examined whether these pathways varied between male and female adolescents and by the gender of the parent.
