“I was a soccer mom—high or not”: The intersecting roles of parenting and recovery

Abstract

AbstractObjectiveThe overarching goal of this study was to analyze qualitatively how parents in a state‐mandated family treatment court (FTC) intervention revised and performed their parental role while navigating a novel recovery role.BackgroundA large proportion of parents are involved with the child welfare system for reasons related to substance misuse. Prior literature makes clear that navigating child welfare interventions is incredibly challenging given the many requirements and expectations parents must meet to resume parenting without state oversight. No work to date has explored the role strain arguably inherent to the experience of being tasked with simultaneously revising the parental role and adopting and performing a new recovery role in the context of nonvoluntary state intervention.MethodData came from transcripts of in‐depth, semistructured interviews with 21 parents who were former participants in FTC. Interview questions were designed to elicit rich, personal narratives, with probes for concrete examples wherever possible.ResultsVariation in parents' role definitions and trajectories of both parental and recovery role performance were used to develop a typology of roles: role enactors, role revisors, and role rejectors. The three groups differed in how closely their views around substance misuse, parenting, and recovery aligned with the role expectations put forth by the state, leading to varying degrees of role strain and conflict across groups.ConclusionFindings shed light on the experiences of parents involuntarily participating in both child protective interventions and substance use treatment—a growing proportion of parents that have been largely ignored in prior literature.