Breaking the Cycle: Young People’s Stories of Protection and Support While Growing up with Parental Substance use Disorder

ABSTRACT

There are expectations for parents to provide their children with emotional, social and economic security and predictability. Parents with a substance use disorder (SUD) are often unable to meet the norms and expectations of good parenting, and their children are vulnerable to developing problems with mental health, social relationships and substance use. Through in-depth interviews, the authors explored five young people’s stories about protection factors during their childhood around parents with SUD. The interviews were analysed using a narrative approach in accordance with Polkinghorne’s concept of the paradigmatic analysis of narrative data. In the informants’ stories about their childhood, safe living conditions, significant relationships and respectful and caring conversations with professionals were interpreted as important protective and supportive factors. The findings are discussed within sociocultural theories about parenthood, family life, and how people create meaning from and coherence of experiences and events through narratives.

KEYWORDS:

• Protective factors
• intergenerational transmission

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Turid Wangensteen

Turid Wangensteen is educated in social work with children (1991), in family therapy (1996), and Master in Public Administration (2014). She worked for many years as a therapist, leader and researcher in a treatment program for persons with substance use disorder. The Ph.D. thesis titled: When stigma and shame stand in the way. A qualitative study about children’s experiences and needs while growing up with parental substance use disorder was submitted in June 2019.

Lena Catherine Lossius Westby

Lena Catherine Lossius Westby is educated in Social work with children (1997) and Master in family therapy and systemic practice (2013). The Ph.D. thesis titled: Processes of marginalization in the Norwegian child welfare service: a qualitative study on how parents of marginalized families with children experience the help from the child welfare service and the interactions resulting from the intervention was submitted in March 2019.