Children of Alcoholics: Growing Up with an Alcoholic Parent

Growing up with a parent with alcohol use disorder has real-life consequences for many adult children. Even long after leaving your parent’s home, you could still be dealing with the aftermath of their alcohol addiction. Children whose parents use alcohol may not have had a good example to follow from their childhood, and may never have experienced traditional or harmonious family relationships. So adult children of parents with AUD may have to guess at what it means to be «normal.»

How Alcohol Addiction Is Like an Abusive Relationship

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How Children Are Affected By Parents With Alcohol Use Disorder

• This open dialogue can be particularly beneficial for adolescents, who are navigating complex emotional and social challenges.
• Notably, information processing biases related to risk for depression and hostility are elevated in COAs (Sher, 1991).
• If you’re an adult child and lived with a parent with alcohol use disorder, there are ways to manage any negative effects you’re experiencing.
• These issues end up affecting their relationships in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.
• In AFDP, siblings of the target adolescents all entered in the study at wave 4 and, by design, completed only 2 assessments.
• Here’s a look at the psychological, emotional, interpersonal, and behavioral effects of being raised by parents who are struggling with alcohol use.

Whether a child’s parent is receiving addiction treatment for alcohol addiction or not, it’s important to offer a safe space for the child. A trained mental health professional can offer more support with identifying unhelpful habits and coping mechanisms and exploring alternatives that better serve you. Couples therapy can also have benefit, how alcoholic parents affect their children according to White, if you believe behaviors rooted in your childhood experiences have started to affect your romantic relationship. This emulation is not just about mimicking behaviors; it’s also about the formation of attitudes and beliefs around alcohol consumption. When parents regularly consume alcohol, especially in problematic amounts, they inadvertently send a message to their children that such behavior is acceptable or even normative.

Health Challenges

Seeking treatment for an alcohol use disorder helps you take charge of your health and wellbeing as well as that of your child. It’s important that your unique parenting and personal needs are adequately addressed so that you can focus on your treatment. Many women with substance abuse issues also have co-occurring disorders such as depression or PTSD, so treatment should address these issues as well. Many adult children of alcoholic mothers face adjustment issues throughout their lives.1 Seeking help for alcohol use disorder is the first step toward preventing these issues and stopping the cycle of addiction and alcohol abuse. The Recovery Village aims to improve the quality of life for people struggling with a substance use or mental health disorder with fact-based content about the nature of behavioral health conditions, treatment options and their related outcomes. We publish material that is researched, cited, edited and reviewed by licensed medical professionals.

People who suffer from AUD often experience changes in brain function, mood, and behavior, and may become socially isolated. For alcoholic parents, it can affect the way they communicate and develop relationships with their children as well. A second set of analyses tested whether COAs and their peers differed on the recurrence of negative stressful life events.

An Alcoholic Parent Can Affect How a Child’s Brain Switches Tasks

Other family stressors with notable odds ratios also referred to physical health problems by various family members (e.g., siblings and parents) and changes in the household (i.e., friend or relative moved in). An additional stressor within the family was having a sibling involved with alcohol or drugs. Family therapy plays a crucial role in the recovery process, as it helps family members understand the effects of addiction and develop healthier coping mechanisms. Moreover, Al-Anon groups are peer-led support groups designed specifically for those affected by a loved one’s alcoholism. These groups provide a safe space for family members to share their experiences, offer emotional support, and learn from one another.

As an adult, though, you can learn to manage and change specific behaviors that no longer help you, which can improve your overall well-being, quality of life, and relationships with others. When you don’t learn how to regulate your emotions, you might find it more difficult to understand what you’re feeling and why, not to mention maintain control over your responses and reactions. Difficulty expressing and regulating emotions can affect your overall well-being and contribute to challenges in your personal relationships. According to White, this may happen partly because children often learn to mirror the characteristics of their parents. “Adult children of parents with AUD may find closeness with others somewhat uncomfortable given a deep-rooted fear that becoming connected to someone else means a significant risk of emotional pain,” says Peifer. Conversely, Peifer notes that some children who grow https://ecosoberhouse.com/article/how-art-therapy-can-help-in-addiction-recovery/ up in these environments may become more attention-seeking in order to fulfill the needs their parents couldn’t meet.

These dimensions are based on the seminal work of Dohrenwend (2000) and differentiate among stressors on the basis of their (1) relation to various life domains and centrality, (2) chronicity or repetition, and (3) perceived severity or magnitude. An alcohol use disorder (AUD) affects not only the user but can also affect the people in the user’s life. Because addiction is a family disorder, spouses, siblings, parents, and children also experience the consequences of an AUD.

• Although people with AUD aren’t “bad” people (or “bad” parents), their alcohol use can create a home environment not suited for a child.
• Negative life events are complex stressors, typically comprised of multiple, unfolding daily hassles and more discrete life events.
• Depending on your specific needs and circumstances, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration can provide resources and information to help you find the most appropriate treatment option for you or your loved one.
• Differences in measurement across studies precluded pooling of these data; rather, we tested each hypothesis across studies that differ in developmental focus, sampling frame and instrumentation, thus providing the potential for more generalizable findings.
• What’s more, children who had to act as parents to their own parents may go on to believe it’s their responsibility to take care of others, which can lead to codependent relationships.

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