Employing the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) as a sample of adolescents and their mothers, the present study connected the onset of adolescents' drinking to certain posited risk and protective factors characterizing their families. Via event history analysis and the discrete-time method, the data analysis involved more than 6,331 pair-interview-year units. The results show that both peer influences and mother's daily alcohol consumption enhance the risk that an adolescent aged between 10 and 14 years will begin drinking. At the same time, the quality of a mother's relationship with her child is an important posited protective factor delaying onset drinking.