Parental drinking may be influential upon offspring alcohol involvement through social modeling of drinking behavior (White, Johnson, & Buyske, 2000) (social learning theory; Bandura, 1977). Early drinking initiation is associated with parental alcohol use (Donovan & Molina, 2011; Handley & Chassin, 2013; Vermeulen-Smit et al. 2012), with evidence that the transmission may be due to parent-child communication favoring alcohol use (Handley & Chassin, 2013). The association between family structure and adolescent alcohol involvement appears to hold when controlling for current parental drinking (Brown & Rinelli, 2010) and when controlling for perception of excessive drinking in the family (Kuntsche & Kuendig, 2006). However, one study demonstrated that change in marital status during the first five years of the child’s life was significantly associated with drinking initiation prior to age 15 but not when controlling for maternal alcohol consumption (drinker vs abstainer) measured when the offspring was five years old (Hayatbakhsh et al., 2008).
