This study examined the relations of psychological distress and both alcohol and drug use with parenting, and explored the interactive effects of both alcohol use and drug use and psychological distress on parenting outcomes. The study examined associations between psychological distress and alcohol and drug use across the first 5 years of raising a child and parenting qualities at child age 6 for 185 adolescent mothers. Most research on alcohol and other drug use by adolescent mothers has focused on the prenatal period. Overall, alcohol and drug use was relatively low, but drug use was associated with more mother-reported unrealistic expectations of child behavior and more attributions of child intent to annoy parent by misbehaving. Maternal psychological distress was associated with maternal reports of negative control (yelling, pushing, spanking, etc.) and alcohol use moderated the association between psychological distress and negative control. At low levels of alcohol use, more maternal distress was associated with greater negative control. At higher levels of alcohol use, maternal distress was not related to negative control. Neither psychological distress nor alcohol and other drug use were related to maternal behavior during an interaction task. Future research was suggested to examine the causality of the results. It may be that young mothers could be helped by intervention focusing on both the underlying psychological distress and enhancement of parenting skills. References