Despite the well-documented detrimental effects of parental divorce on long-term psychosocial outcomes, surprisingly little is known about the effects of childhood or adolescent parental divorce on adult drinking outcomes. One study, using U.S. population survey data (Wolfinger, 1998), found that respondents reporting that they ever drank more than they felt they should were more likely to have experienced childhood parental divorce. In a British birth cohort study, experiencing parental divorce, especially prior to age 16, increased the odds of drinking problems as measured by the four-item CAGE (Hope et al., 1998). Both of these studies utilized large representative samples, but neither controlled for parental alcoholism in the analyses. A third study, based on a mail survey of adult HMO members, showed that childhood parental divorce increased the risk for considering oneself a problem drinker or alcoholic, even after adjusting for parental alcohol problems (Dube et al., 2002).
