The Importance of Family Discord in Explaining Childhood Problems in the Children of Problem Drinkers

Abstract

Two hundred and forty-four 16 to 35 year olds were recruited from a variety of clinical and community sources. One hundred and sixty-four were offspring of parents with drinking problems; eighty were comparison respondents of similar ages and from similar sources. Each was interviewed at length using a semi-structured interview which focussed on, among other things, carefully reconstructed recollections of childhood family environments. The present paper shows that the children of problem drinkers reported very much more disharmonious family environments, and much higher levels of childhood difficulties, than did the comparisons.The degree of disharmony reported by both offspring and comparison respondents ranged from negligible to extreme; thus allowing a test of whether family disharmony or parental problem drinking was a more harmful influence on the incidence of childhood difficulties. It is shown, using path analysis, that all the covariance of childhood difficulties and parental problem drinking can...