Marc A. Zimmerman is Associate Professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education in the School of Public Health and in the Combined Program in Education and Psychology at the University of Michigan. Michael D. Newcomb is Professor of counseling psychology and Chair of the Division of Counseling Psychology at the University of Southern California. He is also Research Psychologist and co-director of the Substance Abuse Research Center in the Psychology Department at the University of California, Los Angeles. Professor Newcomb has published 200 papers and chapters and has written three books. I use data from the 1977-1994 National Opinion Research Council General Social Survey to examine the impact of parental divorce on the alcohol and tobacco consumption of adult offspring.
Divorce greatly increases the likelihood of being a smoker and, for men, a problem drinker.
Parental remarriage completely offsets the effects of parental divorce on men's drinking but does not substantially affect respondents' cigarette use. Respondent socioeconomic characteristics accounted for a portion of the relationship between parental divorce and smoking but did not affect rates of problem drinking. Nicholas H. Wolfinger is Assistant Professor in the Department of Family and Consumer Studies at the University of Utah. His interests include sociology of the family, social demography, and research methods. He continues to study the intergenerational transmission of divorce.