smoking (Dick et al., 2007). There is also evidence that parental monitoring mediates the impact of parent alcoholism on offspring outcome. Latendresse and colleagues (2008) found that parental monitoring partially mediated the association between alcohol use by parents (frequency of use, intoxication, and problems) and by their teenaged children (frequency of use and intoxication) in a large epidemiologic sample in Finland. Greater parental discipline, however, predicted more frequent alcohol use. This association may have reflected parental reaction to adolescent alcohol use rather than proactive child management. Chassin and colleagues (1996), studying adolescent offspring of alcoholics, found that parental monitoring partially mediated the association between paternal alcoholism and growth in child’s substance use over time. Thus, there is reason to believe from these findings and from the findings of others (Lamborn et al., 1991; Mounts and Steinberg, 1995) that the adverse effects of a high family density of alcoholism might be either exacerbated (moderated) or partially explained (mediated) by lower-quality parenting practices. Either finding would have important implications for the development of intervention strategies to minimize risk for early drinking in a highly vulnerable subgroup.
