Understanding Addiction: Adult Children of Alcoholics Describing Their Parents’ Drinking Problems

Margaretha Järvinen

doi:10.1177/0192513X13513027

Understanding Addiction: Adult Children of Alcoholics Describing Their Parents’ Drinking Problems

Margaretha Järvinen

Department of Sociology

6 Citations (Scopus)

718 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Based on qualitative interviews with adult children of alcoholics, this article analyzes three different ways of conceptualizing drinking problems: alcoholism as disease, alcoholism as volitional behavior, and alcoholism as a socially conditioned phenomenon. The interviewees (13 women, 12 men, average age 39 years) were recruited among employees at a large workplace who in a preceding survey had classified their parents as having “alcohol problems.” The analysis reveals a pattern in which adult children’s understandings of their parents’ drinking problems, in essence the ways they think alcoholism should be explained, are associated with the ways they describe their relationship to their parents and the hardships of their childhood. The article suggests that differences in childhood experiences may lead to different ways of understanding the phenomenon of alcoholism, just like differences in understandings of alcoholism may affect recollections of childhood experiences.

Original language	English
Journal	Journal of Family Issues
Pages (from-to)	1-21
Number of pages	21
ISSN	0192-513X
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X13513027
Publication status	Published - 9 May 2015

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AB - Based on qualitative interviews with adult children of alcoholics, this article analyzes three different ways of conceptualizing drinking problems: alcoholism as disease, alcoholism as volitional behavior, and alcoholism as a socially conditioned phenomenon. The interviewees (13 women, 12 men, average age 39 years) were recruited among employees at a large workplace who in a preceding survey had classified their parents as having “alcohol problems.” The analysis reveals a pattern in which adult children’s understandings of their parents’ drinking problems, in essence the ways they think alcoholism should be explained, are associated with the ways they describe their relationship to their parents and the hardships of their childhood. The article suggests that differences in childhood experiences may lead to different ways of understanding the phenomenon of alcoholism, just like differences in understandings of alcoholism may affect recollections of childhood experiences.

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Understanding Addiction: Adult Children of Alcoholics Describing Their Parents’ Drinking Problems

Abstract

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