In the substance use literature, findings regarding gender-matching between parental variables and adolescent substance use outcomes are sparse. Ashley and colleagues (2008) reported that mother cigarette smoking was more strongly associated with cigarette smoking in daughters than in sons. Similarly, Patock-Peckham and Morgan-Lopez (2006) found that when the parent was the same gender as the child, permissive parenting was directly related to impulsivity, a significant mediator of parenting effects on drink control. The same authors also found that perceptions of having an authoritarian father were positively associated with higher levels of neuroticism in males only, where neuroticism was directly linked to alcohol problems and pathological reasons for drinking and indirectly linked to alcohol use (Patock-Peckham & Morgan-Lopez, 2009). However, it is unclear whether the protective effect of parent-child communication varies by the gender of the parent and that of the adolescent.
