But it's way more serious than that, and it doesn't seem to be going away. Well, for one thing, it doesn't look much like a Norman Rockwell painting. It's a place where a kid's needs are so often downplayed or ignored, and family life is so centered around the drinking parent, that the emotional scars can last a lifetime.
Incest is twice as likely among daughters of alcoholics than their peers.
Children of alcoholics are three to four times more likely to become alcoholic than the general population. And no statistic can measure the psychological pain that children of alcoholics grow up with and often carry into adulthood. Until recently, children of alcoholics weren't even considered all that different from other kids with problems. Often, they were ignored by treatment programs, which focused on the alcoholic parent. Now that's changing.