Influential Factors of Parental Substance and Alcohol Abuse on Children’s Academic Achievement

There is much research to support the idea that parental involvement benefits a child’s educational performance. There is also strong evidence demonstrating that parental substance or alcohol abuse increases a child’s risk for behavioral problems that include drug and alcohol abuse, social-skill deficits, and low educational attainment. Very little current research has focused specifically on children of substance abusers who, against the odds, achieve academically. This study investigates the relationship between parental substance or alcohol abuse and children’s academic achievement. Data will be collected using a self-report survey from adult-children who self-identify as being a child of a past or present substance or alcohol abuser. This study hopes to identify strategies that were used by the subjects to surmount family dysfunction and which helped them to achieve academically. It is expected that these strategies could be used as interventions to help other students by encouraging their academic progress and achievement even amid dysfunctional, substance abusing family situations. Positive psychological theory and resilience theory concepts are used as a backdrop.Substance abuse, specifically alcohol abuse, is the most prevalent psychiatric disorder in the United States (Murray & Lopez, 1996), with an estimate in 1992 of 14 million adults who abused or were dependent upon alcohol (Grant et al., 1994). The problems of drug and alcohol addiction are worthy of attention as they create concomitant social, economic, and psychological consequences for everyone involved. For example, the collective effects of tobacco, alcohol, and drugs exact greater consequences on the welfare of the American people than any other single preventable factor (Mulvihill, 2005). The total costs ascribable to addiction are approximated at more than $400 billion every year, including health care costs, low worker productivity, and crime (McGinnis & Foege, 1999). Substance and alcohol abuse can have deleterious effects not only on the individual user but on immediate family members as well, especially children. In 1992, approximately 10 million children under the age of 18 were living in homes with at least one parent classified by DSM-IV criteria as having a past-year diagnosis of alcohol abuse or dependence. The same study found an estimated 28 million children living in households with at least one parent who’d been dependent or abused alcohol at some time in their life McNair Online Journal Page 2 of 19 (Grant, 2000). Abuse of alcohol or drugs by one or both parents has been observed to create high levels of family dysfunction (Blackson, Tarter, Martin, & Moss, 1994). Children of alcoholics and substance abusers (COA’s and COSA’s, respectively) are typically exposed to disorganization in the home including negligent and/or abusive parenting, financial hardships, and possible social isolation in attempting to conceal the disease from family and friends. Parental substance and alcohol abuse threatens the achievement of the child’s full potential by exposing them to a stressful, chaotic, and often frightening home (Black, 1981, Fillmore, 1987). Though alcohol abuse and its effects have been prominent topics in research for decades, issues involving substance abuse other than alcohol have been given less attention. For this reason, few national studies exist that estimate the number of children living in homes with parents who abuse or are dependent upon substances other than alcohol. Much of current psychological research has focused on the negative aspects and risks involved for children who grow up in a dysfunctional home plagued by drug and alcohol abuse. Though a causal relationship is difficult to establish, there is a substantial research base supporting a relationship between parental substance abuse and ensuing problems in offspring. These children are considered to be “at-risk” for many developmental problems including substance abuse, psychiatric problems, social-skill deficits, and educational attrition (Claydon, 1987; Potter-Efron, 1987; Kinney 1991; McGinnis & Foege, 1999). A new trend in psychological research has emerged called positive psychology that emphasizes positive features of human behavior categorized as human strengths and virtues (Peterson & Seligman, 2004; Goleman, 1992). Positive psychologists have developed a classification system of virtues and character strengths in the way that the DSM has cataloged mental illness and problematic behavior. As this is a new field of psychology, McNair Online Journal Page 3 of 19 specific theories have yet to be articulated (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). The classification system identifies six virtues consisting of twenty-four measurable character strengths. The system is as follows: 1. Wisdom and Knowledge: creativity, curiosity, open-mindedness, love of learning, perspective 2. Courage: bravery, persistence, integrity, vitality 3. Humanity: love, kindness, social intelligence 4. Justice: citizenship, fairness, leadership 5. Temperance: forgiveness and mercy, humility and modesty, prudence, selfregulation 6. Transcendence: appreciation of beauty and excellence, gratitude, hope, humor, spirituality (Peterson & Seligman, 2004) This research changes the focus from that of maladaptation to positive adaptation. With respect to this study, positive psychologists would focus upon the children of substance or alcohol abusers who do not develop adverse outcomes. The child’s strengths, those that allowed them to “achieve more than the absence of distress and disorder” (Peterson & Seligman, 2004, p. 17), would also be highlighted. Positive psychology and its classification system parallels psychological and sociological research on resilience. Though the definition of resiliency differs between theorists, generally resilient people are those who have adapted well psychologically despite a context that significantly threatens their development. In fact, according to a longitudinal study of at-risk youth performed by Benard (1997), when tracked to adulthood, 50% to 70% of the youth grew up to be successful, confident, competent, and caring individuals. Resilience is used in this paper in its most general form and adds attending college as a definition of successful adaptation. McNair Online Journal Page 4 of 19 One aspect of a successful adaptation for at-risk children who were raised in homes where one or more parents/guardians were drug abusers or alcoholics is attending college. In today’s society, those who hold a college degree still earn more than those who do not (Hecker, 1998) and are more employable (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1999). A college degree is not only important on an individual level but also on a societal level as, “educational attainment, measured in terms of the highest degree or level of schooling attained by the adult population, is the international currency used to assess the strength of a country’s economy and its standard of living” (Ruppert, 2003, p. 7). Forging a path to obtain a college degree is an academic achievement, especially for those who have matured in an environment not necessarily conducive to this accomplishment. So, how did these children of alcoholics and drug addicts accomplish this feat? Research indicates that when parents show an interest in their child’s education by getting involved, students adopt a mastery goal orientation to learning where they are more likely to seek challenging tasks, persist through academic challenges, and experience satisfaction in their homework (Gonzalez-DeHall, Willems, & Holbein, 2005). Unfortunately, a plausible reason for lack of parental involvement in a child’s education is parental substance or alcohol abuse. Concerned parents and educators alike may be interested in the question of where did this child’s commitment to education come from? What factors influenced their development of academic skills that led them to pursue a college degree? In this study, I have chosen to focus on the children of substance and alcohol abusing parents who have overcome family challenges to achieve in academics. This study will explore how parental substance and alcohol abuse affect children’s academic achievement. Working from the adult-child’s perspective, achievement will be operationalized as enrolling in and attending college. Responses to a self-report survey and McNair Online Journal Page 5 of 19 questionnaire will highlight family struggles that have been overcome in order to pursue academic achievement. It will also determine strategies used by the students to overcome family dysfunction in order to attend college. It is possible these strategies will help other students who find themselves in similar family situations who must implement special techniques to advance academically. The main hypothesis for this study is that adultchildren’s academic achievement may have been fueled by a need to distance themselves from parents’ lifestyle or perhaps by fears of finding themselves in situations similar to that of their parents. It is also hypothesized that sources other than the parent(s)--whether a person, establishment, or the media-were major influences in helping to encourage the adult-children to achieve academically.