Parent drug-use problems and adult intimate relations: Associations among community samples of young adult women and men.

Abstract

Clinical and anecdotal evidence suggests that being raised by drug-abusing parents may create problems with intimacy in later life. Nearly all previous work has failed to consider other types of family dysfunction as a precursor to problems with adult intimacy. Many empirical analyses of adult children of drug users (ACDUs) have been compromised by several methodological and conceptual inadequacies, including sample biases, overly simplistic operationalization of ACDU status, and limited analytic procedures. Structural equation models were used to analyze data from a community sample of men and women to address many of these defects. For both women and men, parent drug-use problems predicted poor family support, and family support was strongly associated with good adult intimate relations. Furthemrore, for men, more parent drug-use problems reduced dyadic adjustment, increased dependence, and had a specific effect on reducing dating competence. For women, parent drug-use problems had no direct effects on adult intimacy or relationship variables