Children who have parents that suffer from alcoholism are more likely to have issues emotionally.

Children who have parents that suffer from alcoholism are more likely to have issues emotionally.

Alcoholism is a terrible problem in today’s word, it can destroy someone mentally and physically when to much alcohol is put in to ones body for a long time.  Honestly, that is very common knowledge though. Most, if not all people who drink to much alcohol knows it is bad for them. Something that someone might not think about though is the effect that it has on the people that are around the alcoholic. Alcoholism can take over anyone, and just because someone is a parent does not exclude him or her from letting alcohol take over his or her lives. How can this affect their children? How does having an alcoholic as a parent effect a children short term and long term?

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Very interesting enough one study found some short-term effects that sons of alcoholics are more at risk than daughters of alcoholics to evolve alcoholism and negative effects from being the son of an alcoholic. They are also more likely to get the good effects of drinking alcohol like reducing stress. Depending on if someone feels like this is a good thing or not, another thing that happens with son of alcoholics is that they are less sensitive to alcohol effects. Sons of alcoholics pretty much do not feel as drunk as they are. Normally people start to stop drinking when they start to feel drunk, like their body swaying or words starting to slur. The reason that sons of alcoholics keep drinking or drink more than non-sons of alcoholics is because they are not as sensitive to the effects of alcoholics. The article goes on to tell us that not all sons of alcoholics are a like there are three different types of them. “Finn and col- leagues (1997) found three distinct patterns, or subtypes, of vulnerability to alcoholism in the families of SOA’s: (1) low levels of psychopathology and moderate levels of alcoholism; (2) high levels of antisocial personality, violence, and alco- holism; and (3) high levels of depression, mania, anxiety disor- ders, and alcoholism.” (Finn, P. R.,& Justus, A. 1997)

It is very important to understand the side effects of coming from an alcoholic home. Parents need to know what happens when you’re an alcoholic what they are doing to their children and, how you could be destroying their futures. The children are going to eventually grow up and have to make decisions about their personal view on alcohol, they need to be aware of what could be different for them compared to someone that did not have a parent that abused alcohol. They need to know what challenges that might come their way.

Literary Review and Hypotheses

Alcoholism can leave so many life long side effects, that it can make children also have transgressions during their most important years of their lives. The article that was talked about earlier was one about the sons of alcoholics but it is not only sons that it can affect. One out of every six people has been effected alcoholism. It is estimated that there are nearly 28,000,000 people in the states that have had one or sometimes two parents with an alcohol problem. (Kelly, 1996)

Within those 28,000,000 it is not only male children. Does female children of alcoholics have a harder time coping with life stressors? Than females that can from a non-alcoholic? The study that was conducted included a population of 17 to 24 years female students. The CAST test was then conducted that is the Children of Alcoholics Screening Test it is toassign females to of parental alcoholism and to assign participants to the COA and CONA groups and the to find out if their was a alcoholic parent in the house. There was then The Beck Depression Inventory test to see how they rated with depression. To make this long study short they found that there was not much of a difference between the COA and the CONA group. COA 22 females scored a 78% and 66 CONAs 87% on the no depression scale. 4 COAs (15%) and 8 CONAs (11%) scored within the mild-moderate range. “Only 1 of the COA participants (4%) and 2 CONAs (3%) scored within the moderate-severe range, and 1 COA (4%) scored within the severe depression range on the BDI.” (Kelly, 1996) When it comes to coping skills after being test it results are there looks like there are no differences were detected between the two groups. If you were to just go off of this study it would show that alcoholic parent is not a factor in the females child’s coping skills and depression level. There are a lot of issues with this study though. This study was not randomly selected females; this was on a volunteer basis. The sample sizes were completely off in this experiment.. If you look at the amount the people that was, there was only one female in the COA group and 2 females in the CONA group. The reason the percent is higher for the COA group is because there was only 22 female COA and 66 female CONAs tested. To me this does not seem a right way to conduce a study because your percentages will be completely off. They should have cut out the females CONA group so that the percent’s would better represent the results of the test. (Kelly, 1996)

A better experiment would be to interview each person better before selecting them because in alcoholics home there will be different levels of things. Example would be how much the child sees the parent drunk, how the parent is when drunk, and if the child has to interact with the drunken parent. Some people could go their whole childhoods and never see it, while others are around it and have to see it every night. In a study called Aspects of a Preventive Approach to Support Children of Alcoholics the sample size was a little better. There were 12 children with a mother with alcoholism, 16 with a father with alcoholism, and 4 with both parents with alcoholism. Face- to- face interviews were done with parents and children to determine how the alcoholism affected their lives. The interviews found that children knew of the parents’ alcohol abuse years before the parents realized they did. Children could remember being 4 years old and seeing their parents drinking. Some quotes from them are the following “I saw he always bought much more beer than anybody else in the supermarket.” (Boy, 7 years) “For a long time I had the feeling that if I could say the right words, he would stop drinking . . .” (Boy, 9 years) “I told him (the father) not to drink any longer. And he said he would quit but he never did. And this was the only thing I did. I felt it was no use, whatever I did it was no use . . . I had a feeling . . . I thought he would stop if I told him . . . I had thought about it for a very long time and I felt if he did not stop the very 1st time (I told him) he would not do it the next time either . . . I felt bad, I realized I had to live with it for the rest of my life . . .” (Boy, 10 years) To me this kind of results mean a lot more than a bunch of numbers. Thes…………………………………………………….