One important consideration in investigating the relationship between parental divorce and offspring alcohol use is that parents with alcohol problems are more likely to have relationships that end in marital separation or divorce (Becoña et al., 2012), suggesting that any association between divorce/separation and drinking outcomes may simply index familial drinking risk (Arkes, 2013). Studies that control for familial history of alcoholism, however, still show robust associations between child adversity and adult risk for alcohol use disorders (AUDs) (Pilowsky et al., 2009), and specifically, associations between parental divorce/separation and lifetime alcohol dependence (Thompson et al., 2013). Both Sartor et al. (2007) and Waldron et al. (2014a; 2014b) demonstrate that associations between parental divorce/separation and age of first drink remain significant even when controlling for family history of alcohol dependence. Associations between family history of alcoholism and lower-level consumption measures tend to be of smaller magnitude and less consistently observed, however, than associations with alcohol dependence (Jackson & Sher, 2005).
