The Role of Family Influences in Development and Risk

Various influences in the family environment contribute to children of alcoholics’ (COAs’) risk of developing alcoholism and other mental health problems. These risk factors include alcohol-specific influences, which selectively predict alcohol problems, and alcohol-nonspecific influences, which predict a variety of mental health problems. Alcohol-specific family influences include modeling of parental drinking behavior, development of alcohol expectancies, and the family’s ethnic background. Parental psychopathology, the family’s socioeconomic status, and general family psychopathology are examples of alcohol-nonspecific risk factors, which increase the COA’s risk of behavior disorders as well as of alcoholism. The families of COA’s who are at highest risk for alcoholism and other mental health problems are characterized by the aggregation of numerous alcohol-specific and alcohol-nonspecific risk factors.