Setting the Children’s Teeth on Edge? The Influence of Parental Alcoholism on Children’s Wellbeing

Abstract

The research on the impact of alcoholism on the family indicates that alcoholism often poses threat to the wellbeing of the family, the most affected ones being the other spouse and the children. Alcoholism often poses serious risk to the emotional, cognitive, behavioural, physical and social wellbeing of the abuser, the partner and the children. Most of the researches have explored the impact of parental alcoholism on the negative outcome on psychosocial development of partners and children, very few documented studies have been carried out on the positive aspects of life such as wellbeing and futuristic hope in the children of alcoholic parents (COA). This study attempts to explore the relationship and the difference between QOL and Hope in COA and children of non-alcoholics (CONA). The study was conducted on a sample of 60 children each between the age of 12 to 15 from alcoholics and non-alcoholic parents drawn from a district of Kerala using purposive sampling technique. The measures used were QOL-BREF by WHO (1996) and Children Hope Scale (CHS) by Snyder et al. (1996). The data was first analyzed using the descriptive statistics, the normality of the data was checked using Shapiro Wilk test, Mann-Whitney U test was used to find the difference between the COA and CONA on QOL and Hope. The relationship between the variables was assed using Spearman rank correlation. The results of the study indicate that there is significant difference in QOL among the children of alcoholics and non-alcoholics. The COA demonstrated comparatively less Hope than the CONA, however there was no significant difference among them. The QOL and Hope were correlated only among the CONA. The study has implication for positive intervention for the COA, parental and school based interventions such as preventive, remedial and holistic counselling or therapy.