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New findings from SSW study
Parental alcoholism downgraded as main cause of emotional problems

By David J. Craig

In the past 20 years, numerous studies have shown that children of alcoholics are more likely to develop serious emotional difficulties as adults than children whose parents do not abuse alcohol. But a new BU study shows that other childhood experiences, such as suffering sexual or physical abuse or being raised in an cold and distant environment, are linked statistically with long-term psychiatric problems more strongly than is parental alcoholism.

Margaret Griffin, a research assistant professor at the School of Social Work (left), Cassandra Clay, an SSW clinical associate professor, and Maryann Amodeo, SSW associate dean, say the link between parents' alcoholism and their children's long-term emotional problems is more dubious than many human service providers believe. Photo by Vernon Doucette

The study's authors at the School of Social Work hope their work will debunk a myth they say is common among human service providers: alcoholics necessarily are poor parents and their children are bound to have serious psychosocial problems as adults. The study is based on interviews with 290 African-American and white women from Boston. It was conducted by Maryann Amodeo, SSW associate dean, Cassandra Clay, an SSW clinical associate professor of social work, and Margaret Griffin, an SSW research assistant professor of social work. Amodeo and Griffin are the principal investigators.

"We found that while parental alcoholism is associated with poor adult outcomes, it is not a significant factor in and of itself, and that other life events have a more important impact in the long term," says Amodeo. "We also heard many women describe how an alcoholic parent may have been intoxicated some of the time, but on days when they weren't drinking, he or she helped with homework, supported the child in athletic activities, went to school PTA meetings, and in general was very active in the child's development and was someone the child felt very close to."

The study, funded by the Greater Boston Council on Alcoholism and SSW's Alcohol and Drug Institute, was launched in 1999. The subjects were divided equally between African-American women and white women. About half had been raised by a chronic alcoholic for at least 10 years as a child, and half were raised by parents who were not alcoholics. They all answered standardized questionnaires to gauge their psychiatric health and discussed their lives in lengthy open-ended interviews. They represented a broad range of age, from 20 to 65, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

The researchers found that daughters of alcoholics did report more often that they received clinical psychiatric treatment as an adult (41 percent, compared with 31 percent among daughters of nonalcoholics) and had a drinking problem themselves (23 percent, compared with 13 percent). They also were more likely to report that they often felt depressed, were generally dissatisfied with life, and had poor self-esteem.

However, when the researchers distinguished between the impact of parental alcoholism and several other variables strongly associated with alcoholism, such as sexual abuse and physical abuse, simply having been raised by an alcoholic parent was found to have no statistically significant impact on any of seven adult outcomes. They found that being sexually abused as a child, on the other hand, dramatically increased the likelihood that a subject would have a psychiatric problem or low self-esteem and be poorly adjusted socially as an adult. Being physically abused as a child greatly increased the chances that a subject would report being depressed regularly and have a drinking problem in adulthood. Other factors that proved crucial to the subjects' well-being as adults included whether as an adolescent they had an adult in their life in whom they could confide, whether their family communicated well, and whether their family often experienced conflict.

"Many previous studies on the effects of parental alcoholism didn't differentiate between having an alcoholic parent and all these other variables we measured," says Griffin. "That was our goal -- to look at the impact of parental alcoholism in the whole family context. To ask, exactly what is it about having an alcoholic parent that affects adult outcomes? As a result, we've produced a wealth of new information not just about people with alcoholic parents, but about the context of childhood, the family environment, and adult outcomes."

Furthermore, many studies on parental alcoholism recruit subjects only through alcohol treatment agencies and clinical centers, so they deal, says Griffin, only with "damaged people."

"Another thing that got lost in a lot of the previous research is the fact that most children of alcoholics adapt just fine as adults," she says. "They are more likely to have problems, partly because they are more likely to have been sexually abused, for instance, and less likely to have cohesive families. But if they don't have alcoholic parents and they suffer the other types of abuse, the long-term impact can be just as severe or worse."

Social service providers would benefit by recognizing that fact, says Amodeo. "I think there is a belief among human service providers that alcoholics are drunk all the time, abusive toward their children and their partner, and that their families do not have healthy routines," she continues. "There definitely are stereotypes that alcoholics' families necessarily are dysfunctional in a particular way. We'd like to overturn those assumptions."

The researchers currently are analyzing their data to determine the impact of the frequency and severity of sexual and physical abuse on these women in adulthood, as well as the impact of race and social class. They expect to submit the study for publication by June.

1 February 2002
Boston University
Office of University Relations