Perfect Daughters: Adult Daughters of Alcoholics - Softcover

From Chapter 2 - Home Groan: Daughters In Alcoholic Families

Your Age

Daughters who were born into an alcoholic family may have totally different perceptions and experiences than daughters whose parent(s) became alcoholic when they were fourteen. The younger you were when your parent became alcoholic, the longer you were exposed to active alcoholism and the higher the probability that you were negatively affected.

Additionally, your developmental stage of childhood might have influenced how you perceived alcoholism. For example, a five-year-old sees only the behavioral effects of alcoholism, which she equates with drunken behavior. A fifteen-year-old can equate alcoholism not only with being drunk, but also with a variety of perceived motivations as to why the alcoholic drinks.

Children do not automatically recognize that a parent is an alcoholic. As a matter of fact, many adult children will not accept even now that one or both of their parents is or was an alcoholic. In childhood, recognizing that the parent has a drinking problem occurs in three stages. In the first stage, a child begins to realize that her house is different from that of her friends. However, just because families differ does not mean that something is wrong. During the second stage, the child begins to suspect that the differences between her home and other homes is something that should be covered up or denied because she doesn't want her friends to know. In the third stage, the child becomes aware of what the difference is, which is that her parent drinks too much. Most daughters of alcoholics reach the third stage around age thirteen (Ackerman, 1988), which does not mean that the daughter tells anyone, but rather that she admits to herself that she knows what the problem is in her house. After all, many adult daughters admit the alcoholism only as adults, long after their childhood has ended.

Other factors influence the age at which daughters reach stage three. The gender of the alcoholic parent and whether one or two alcoholic parents were present are both contributing factors. For example, most daughters of alcoholic fathers reach stage three when they are twelve years old. (Approximately 60 percent of the adult daughters in this study had an alcoholic father only.) Daughters of two alcoholic parents typically admit the drinking problems when they are approximately fourteen years old. Perhaps both parents did not become alcoholic at the same time, or if a daughter has two alcoholic parents, she did not have a nonalcoholic role model to compare her adults to. Therefore, realizing the inappropriate behaviors in one's parents may take longer because they were both doing the same thing and not until being exposed to other parental role models does a daughter begin to admit the differences. (Only 20 percent of the adult daughters studied had two alcoholic parents.)

Daughters of alcoholic mothers often do not reach stage three until they are almost nineteen, perhaps because women traditionally have developed alcohol problems at later ages than men, or the daughter wants to deny a drinking problem longer in her mother than in her father. Another reason could be that adult daughters of alcoholic mothers are much less likely to know someone else with an alcoholic mother since only 20 percent of adult daughters have an alcoholic mother only, as opposed to the 60 percent who have an alcoholic father.

Alcoholic Mothers, Alcoholic Fathers

Are daughters of alcoholic mothers affected differently than daughters of alcoholic fathers? You may have entirely different memories, perceptions and experiences of your childhood depending upon the gender of your alcoholic parent. Additionally, if you had two alcoholic parents, the effects of the alcoholism of each one were probably not equally received; that is, you probably identified more with and were influenced more by the alcoholism in one parent than in the other, and experienced more positive or negative feelings from one than from the other. The impact and feelings of adult daughters of alcoholic mothers and fathers are discussed more fully in later chapters.

Contributing Others

While you were growing up, did you have someone special whom you could share your feelings with about your family life? Perhaps the person was another relative, a best friend, teacher, neighbor or, in some cases, your nonalcoholic parent. If you had someone who cared about you and your problems, she or he made a contribution to your life by helping you with your feelings. This special person allowed you to share your family secret. You may not have solved anything together, but just being together with another person and believing that someone else cared about you and supported you was helpful.

Unfortunately, only 13 percent of adult daughters indicate that they had someone with whom they could share their feelings during their childhood. Those daughters who did have such a person in their lives were much less likely to seek treatment as adults than those who had no choice but to keep all of their emotions and feelings to themselves. If you had such a friend, relative or confidante, as you proceed in your recovery from your childhood, you will realize how much she or he contributed to your life.

I wish I could have had real parents. I've always wondered what it would have been like to have someone to care about me and to share my deepest hurts and secrets and successes with.
Nancy

Parenting Behaviors and Styles

Although one or both of your parents were alcoholic while you were growing up, what kind of parent or parents were they? For example, how did the alcoholism affect the ability of the alcoholic to fulfill the parenting role? On the other hand, how did the alcoholism in the family affect the ability of your nonalcoholic parent to fulfill the parenting role?

Many adult daughters express that their strongest negative feelings about their childhood are more associated with how the alcoholic behaved toward them than with the actual drinking. In other words, the parenting that you received or didn't receive can affect your memories about your childhood more significantly than the drinking alone. How much the alcoholic parent attempts to still try and be a parent can affect a child. You may have had a parent who made an effort to be an effective parent, but who was unable to break the addiction from alcohol. Not all parents, alcoholic or nonalcoholic, have the same behaviors or the same styles of parenting. Growing up with a parent who ignores you is different than living with one who tries to control you, regardless of their alcohol use.

We felt that our father really did love us; he just wasn't very good at it. He messed up everything he tried, but he did try.
Carol

Other daughters were convinced that their alcoholic parent would lie awake at night trying to think of what else they could do to upset their daughter!

And when our father used to get us up in the middle of the night and march around the house singing ""Onward Christian Soldiers,"" it would be a school night and we would think that we should be able to sleep like normal kids. And we'd say, ""Mom, please help us, come to our rescue,"" and she never did.
Cathy

Adult daughters indicate that the behavior that they remember most about their alcoholic parent is the verbal belligerence. This type of alcoholic parent is argumentative and verbally abusive, walking all over everyone's beliefs and self-esteem.

Other daughters state that the alcoholic parent was offensive to them, including behaviors ranging from embarrassing them in front of friends, to physically or sexually abusing them. Thirty-one percent of adult daughters experienced physical abuse as children, 19 percent were victims of sexual abuse, and 38 percent witnessed spousal abuse in their families. These rates of abuse were three to four times higher than among women who were raised in nonalcoholic families. Daughters who experienced not only parental alcoholism but also abuse were affected more and differently than adult daughters of nonabusive alcoholics.

In my own recovery, I found that I slowly experienced and found ways to express anger at Dad for his various abusive rampages while he was drunk. The surprise was that I had seen my mother as a victim all those years and never held her responsible for the hell my brothers and I went through.
Valerie

Some adult daughters indicate that the alcoholic parent was passive and paid little attention to them or other members of the family. Other adult daughters state that the alcoholic pretended to be carefree, taking nothing seriously. This approach might have been fine according to the alcoholic's thinking, but adult daughters adjusted to this pattern by taking everything in their lives seriously, perhaps too seriously.

As you might suspect, verbal belligerence and offensive behaviors occur more among alcoholic parents than did passive and carefree behaviors. Additionally, daughters who experienced verbal attacks and abuse indicate far more negative effects than do the daughters of passive and carefree alcoholic parents.

Your Perceptions

Eighty percent of adult daughters perceive that having an alcoholic parent highly affected their lives. Twelve percent indicate that they were moderately affected, and 8 percent believe that they were unaffected. What is the source of their perceptions? Are their perceptions the ones that they had as children, or do they come from their experiences as adult daughters who see things differently now?

Your understanding of your childhood as a child may be totally different from how you remember it now. Whatever most of us define as real, we usually react to as if it exists. Whether it is real or not, we respond to it based on our perceptions. All daughters of alcoholics do not share the same perceptions of their experiences. This section began by asking what it was like in your home as a child. What did you think about your family as a child? Did you perceive and believe not only that something was wrong in your family, but also that you were being affected? If you thought that something was wrong, did you know what it was or did you think it was you?

When I was growing up I just felt very lonely all of the time. I felt like I didn't have any friends, that life was passing me by, and I was depressed often. I can't say that at the time I was experiencing it, I recognized it as being unnatural. You know I thought there was something wrong with me.
Paula

Having an accurate and consistent perception of a situation is difficult when the situation is chaotic and constantly changing, when it contains mixed messages, or when we are not able to understand what is happening. Many adult daughters admit to being confused as children not only about the drinking, but also about how they should behave in their own families.

For example, if you wanted to perceive that your parent did not have a drinking problem, then you would have tried to behave as if your mother was not alcoholic. However, this attempt became confusing when you found yourself doing things to compensate or cover up for a condition that you wanted to perceive did not exist.
Our perceptions of having an alcoholic parent can depend upon several things. The first and foremost is denial. While growing up, if you wanted to deny that your parent was alcoholic, you probably also denied that any problems from drinking existed. On the other hand, you could deny the impact of the drinking by convincing yourself that any dysfunctional behaviors in your family had nothing to do with drinking.

Another way to distort perceptions is to minimize. Such statements as ""It really wasn't that bad,"" ""It didn't affect me,"" or ""He isn't drunk, he just doesn't feel well,"" are all examples of attempting to minimize the impact of the alcoholism in your life.

As a child, how well did you understand what was going on in your family? In other words, did you know that alcoholism or alcohol problems were causing the pain in your family? If you did not fully understand what was happening, you probably do not accurately perceive the situation. As a child, your uncertainty about the situation could explain differences in opinions about what occurred.

All of these different perceptions and their reasons can explain why many adult daughters admit that they recognized the alcoholism in a parent as a child or teenager, while other adult daughters indicate that they did not perceive the problem of alcoholism until they were adults.

My mother was an alcoholic, and I didn't know that she was an alcoholic when I was a child. So for me, being a child of an alcoholic didn't start until I was about fifteen years old. Before that, the experience was more of being a child in a family that was unloved and that I was a troublemaker and not wanted. Because of that, I felt I was to blame when I did find out that my mother was an alcoholic.
Renee

Your Resiliency

A frequently heard cliché is that ""children are resilient."" Although this idea has been around for a long time, only in the past twenty years have therapists and researchers explored the validity of this concept. Much of this interest has come from our concern about ""high-risk"" children. Children who have been raised in troubled families-alcoholic, abusive, emotionally stressful, parents in conflict-or in dangerous physical environments have often been considered at-risk emotionally, physically and developmentally for many problems in their own lives. Certainly daughters of alcoholics fit this category.

On the other hand, some adult daughters were able to go with the flow as children and adolescents. They seemed to be able to adjust to situations, maintain a sense of purpose in their lives and, above all, keep a positive attitude. Parental alcoholism was not going to rain on their parade; the umbrella that protected them was resiliency.

Many definitions are available for resiliency, which can be described as the ability to thrive despite adversity. Resiliency enables people of all ages and backgrounds to lead healthy and fulfilling lives despite formidable obstacles. Different behavioral and emotional outcomes for many adult daughters might result from the amount of resiliency developed during childhood.

For example, while you were growing up, did you have people or institutions in your life that helped you? Did you have places to go that allowed you to feel good about yourself or at least forget about what was happening at home? Avis Brenner believes that all children under stress need an ""emotional oasis"" (1984). The child under stress needs a time-out somewhere from the trauma. Fortunately, some adult daughters had these places to go to and positive people in their lives.

Many studies on resiliency reveal that certain protective factors occur in the lives of high-risk children that help them successfully cope with their situations (Benard et al., 1994; Garmezy et al., 1976; Werner and Johnson, 2000). Children who have these protective factors are more able to endure the dysfunctional situations in their lives and still emerge as relatively competent and content children. The following are the six most common protective factors identified in the lives of resilient children.

1. They know how to attract and use the support of adults.
If ...