Comparisons of the drinking styles of family members of alcoholic probands with those of probands' spouses and spouses' family members were made to investigate factors that may contribute to similarity in alcohol use of spouses. Some support was found for the parental image theory, which predicts that a person will seek a mate with traits liked and without traits disliked in the opposite-sex parent. Alcoholic male probands tended to find spouses who were the daughters of alcoholics. Alcoholic female probands were found to have a high frequency of both alcoholic fathers and husbands, but they do not necessarily occur together. Phenotypic or primary assortative mating/contagion appears to explain more of the interspouse association than social or secondary homogamy.