We excuse ourselves rather than accepting responsibility for learning communication skills and effective parenting strategies that reduce and eliminate power struggles and allow us to understand ourselves and our children and teens better. Support is needed for both parents and children. A current movement is that of ACoA, Adult Children of Alcoholics. This is a good example of the effects of one generation's choices on the next. There is a significant correlation between the number of alcoholic parents and the number of abusing parents, as intoxicated people often exhibit rage and other inappropriate behaviors.
Alcoholic parents create environments for children to experience deep shame.
Deep shame is exhibited in one of two ways, superiority, arrogance and rage, or inferiority, self-abasement and withdrawal. Neither of these options is a healthy lifestyle choice. For those who have experienced this in their childhood environment, it is essential for them to grow beyond it and recognize themselves as unlimited spiritual beings capable of positive growth and function, capable of becoming fully responsible for the choices they make in the present moment rather than using the past as their pattern. This is a large undertaking and a vital one. Working with parent groups, I often encounter parents who have been deeply wounded, shamed in childhood, by their parents.