A national portrait of family structure and adolescent drug use

Using 3 years of data from the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, we examine the distribution of drug use among adolescents aged 12-17 years by family structure. In addition, we investigate the plausibility of two hypotheses that purport to explain the association between family structure and adolescent behavior namely economic resources and residential mobility. The results of cross-tabulations and multivariate logistic regression models indicate that the risk of drug use, including problem use, is highest among adolescents in father-custody families (father-only and father-stepmother families), even after controlling for the effects of sex, age, race-ethnicity, family income, and residential mobility, The risk of drug use is lowest in mother-father families. Economic resources and residential mobility fail to explain these relationships, thus casting doubt on their ability to explain the association between family structure and an important adolescent behavior.