indicated very few statistically significant associations between parental alleles and offspring alcohol outcomes, and no statistically significant associations between parental alleles and relationship discord and divorce. In view of these weak polygenic associations, and as with any nonsignificant result, we caution against overinterpreting our null indirect effects as evidence that parental relationship discord and divorce are not mechanisms through which genetic risk for alcohol problems is transmitted across generations in African ancestry families. Rather, the pattern of evidence observed here highlights the challenges to partitioning already weak associations, and the need for larger sample sizes to establish a more robust genetic signal for alcohol problems in African ancestry populations. It also worth noting that others have documented racial/ethnic differences in the associations of alcohol use outcomes with a range of adverse childhood experiences19, 50, further underscoring the importance of considering racial/ethnic differences in efforts to understand how genetic and environmental factors come together to influence alcohol problems. Accordingly, our findings should be considered as initial evidence, and clearly additional research on the intergenerational transmission of alcohol problems in diverse populations is warranted.
