This study has some limitations. First, we relied on limited measures of family processes. For instance, paternal support and control were excluded because they could not be ascertained for all family structures. Similarly, paternal modeling was not available. Second, the Add Health data are more than a decade old. Cohabitation continues to be a growing family form (Bumpass & Lu, 2000), making it possible that the composition of adolescents in cohabiting stepfamilies may have changed over time. Nonetheless, the findings documented here are consistent with those obtained in other research on family structure and adolescent well-being using different data (e.g., Brown, 2004). Third, this study relied on cross-sectional analyses, meaning that causal inferences cannot be drawn. It is possible, for instance, that an adolescent's risk behaviors influence parental socialization. Alternatively, unmeasured factors may be associated both with family structure and adolescent risk behaviors. Fourth, family structure was measured at one point in time and thus does not capture family instability. Although adolescents who reside with two biological parents presumably have been in this same family form throughout their lives, nearly
