In both the interpersonal and broadly defined childhood trauma models, we observed a significant interaction between race and single-parent-household status, indicating that residing in a single-parent household was associated with elevated likelihood of initiating alcohol use exclusively in White girls. Of the three indicators of low SES examined in the current study, living in a single-parent household is the only one that has consistently been linked to elevated risk for early alcohol use [22,23]. In fact, in Blum et al.’s study based on National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health data [21], adolescents residing with a single parent reported a higher frequency of alcohol use than those residing with two parents, but frequency of alcohol use was actually lower among adolescents from low-income families. It appears then that living in a single-parent household represents more than simply economic disadvantage and, importantly, does not carry the same degree of risk for alcohol use initiation for Black girls as it does for White girls. Consistent with trends in the general population [13], living with a single parent was much more common for Black
