This chapter analyzes current evidence between parenting styles and adolescent substance use for the European context. As opposed to traditional results obtained in Anglo-Saxon contexts with European-American samples, evidence from emergent research across European countries (Sweden, United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Slovenia, and Czech Republic) shows that adolescents from indulgent families perform as well as those from authoritative households on substance use (and personal disturbances). Furthermore, regarding self-esteem and school performance, indulgent parenting style performs even better than authoritative parenting style in the European context. Accordingly indulgent parenting emerges as the optimum parenting style across a wide variety of European countries (including Northern, Southern and Central-Eastern European countries). This recent evidence fosters the possibility of implementing similar strategies in family prevention in Europe, given that parenting styles seem to be working in the same direction across very different cultural backgrounds even when participants, as in this research, show different levels of substance use and different distribution of parenting practices are found across countries. The implementation of programs to promote family drug prevention in Europe based on established risk and protective factors is therefore an urgent need.

Key Words: Family socialization, Parenting Styles, Youth Outcomes, Youth Substance Use.