Our second hypothesis suggesting that the mother-daughter dyad would be the most protective pair among the four possible dyads was not supported. Our data provided no support for the notion that daughters would benefit from protective interpersonal and family factors in substance use prevention and intervention. We found that sons benefited from easy parent-adolescent with respect to smoking and marijuana and that easy parent-adolescent communication was not associated with substance use among daughters. Our findings are inconsistent with current literature suggesting that girls are particularly influenced by interpersonal and family factors (e.g., Razzino et al., 2004; Tildesley and Andrews, 2008), at least to the extent that ease of communication is representative of such factors.
