This study tested hypotheses concerning the interrelationships among severity of maternal and paternal alcoholism, trauma exposure, resilience, trauma symptoms, and effective adult relationship functioning. Participants (N = 183) were recruited via the internet as well as at meeting sites of self-help groups for adult children of alcoholics and alcoholics in several areas across the United States. Study questionnaires were completed on line. Effective relationship functioning was represented by measures of the three independent domains of intrusiveness, closeness-caregiving and openness of communication.

As predicted, bivariate results indicated that severity of parental alcoholism was associated with participants' exposure to traumatogenic events. Additionally, severity of parental alcoholism was negatively associated with closeness-caregiving and openness of communication in participants' relationship behavior, but not with intrusiveness. Contrary to expectation, resilience was found to be unassociated with severity of parental alcoholism. Effective relationship functioning, in both the closeness-caregiving and openness of communication domains, correlated positively with resilience and negatively with trauma symptoms.

Structural equation modeling was used to establish an adequate measurement model, as well as to test the fit of both a theoretically derived model and an alternative model of interrelationships among variables. Analyses of the measurement model revealed that severity of maternal alcoholism and severity of paternal alcoholism were independent constructs. In preliminary analyses pertaining to model testing, it was found that resilience neither mediated nor moderated the relationship between trauma exposure and trauma symptoms. Resilience did have direct effects on both trauma symptoms and effective relationship functioning across all three relationship domains measured in this study.

The tested model fit the data adequately. However, an alternative model, in which no relationship between trauma symptoms and relationship functioning was predicted, fit the data equally well. Results were therefore inconclusive regarding the adequacy of the theoretically derived model. Nonetheless, the model testing analyses provided a foundation for further understanding of how severity of maternal and paternal alcoholism, trauma variables, and resilience relate to adult relationship behaviors. Theoretical and clinical implications of these findings were discussed, as were limitations of the study and directions for future research.