Citation

Hussong AM, Cai L, Curran PJ, Flora DB, Chassin LA, Zucker RA. J. Abnorm. Child Psychol. 2008; 36(3): 335-346.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina, CB#3270 Davie Hall, UNC-CH, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3270, USA. Hussong@unc.edu

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s10802-007-9181-9

PMID

17891557

PMCID

PMC2785434

Abstract

We tested whether children show greater internalizing symptoms when their parents are actively abusing alcohol. In an integrative data analysis, we combined observations over ages 2 through 17 from two longitudinal studies of children of alcoholic parents and matched controls recruited from the community. Using a mixed modeling approach, we tested whether children showed elevated mother- and child-reported internalizing symptoms (a) at the same time that parents showed alcohol-related consequences (time-varying effects), (b) if parents showed greater alcohol-related consequences during the study period (proximal effects), and (c) if parents had a lifetime diagnosis of alcoholism that predated the study period (distal effects). No support for time-varying effects was found; proximal effects of mothers' alcohol-related consequences on child-reported internalizing symptoms were found and distal effects of mother and father alcoholism predicted greater internalizing symptoms among children of alcoholic parents. Implications for the time-embedded relations between parent alcoholism and children's internalizing symptoms are discussed.

Language: en