Study findings also suggest that adolescents may be differentially impacted by whether or not the parent has problems with alcohol or drug abuse and criminality. It is likely that the measure of parental mental health history used in this study provided a stronger assessment of parental emotional and mental disorders than of parent problem behavior such as alcohol/substance abuse and criminal behavior. Nevertheless, in secondary analyses, we examined univariate associations between both parental alcohol/drug abuse and criminality (separately for mothers and fathers) and adolescent time-to-attempt. Whereas parental mental health history was a significant predictor (whether or not alcohol/drug abuse and criminality problems were included in its calculation), parental alcohol/drug abuse and criminality was not. A potential explanation for this finding is that parental mental health problems such as depression and anxiety may be ongoing in middle age, and may continue to impact parent and family functioning. In contrast, given normative desistance trends in alcohol/drug abuse, and criminal behavior (Bachman et al. 2002; Sampson and Laub 1990), these problems may have occurred primarily during parents’ adolescence and young adulthood. While such
