The living arrangement may differentially influence IDU parents' motivation to reduce HIV risk as a function of gender

Abstract

Studies that examine data from drug-abusing parents typically investigate the impact of parental behavior on their children's well-being and focus almost exclusively on the impact of mothers. Other approaches have examined the level of parental involvement among parents in drug treatment and find that a higher level of parental involvement is related to lower levels of addiction severity. Recent research examines the specific role of fathers and suggests that the promotion of responsible parenting may serve as a positive motivational influence among fathers participating in drug treatment. The present study investigated the influence of the living arrangement on improvements in HIV-risk reduction variables among 151 IDU parents who participated in the Community-friendly Health Recovery Program intervention. A gender×living arrangement interaction demonstrated greater enhancements in social and personal motivation to reduce HIV risk among fathers currently living with their children vs. fathers not living with their children while the opposite pattern of outcomes was demonstrated for mothers. Findings indicate that a parenting role that includes living with children may differentially influence parents' HIV-risk reduction motivation as a function of gender.

Keywords:

• HIV infection
• HIV intervention
• injection drug use
• parents
• drug treatment

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the National Institutes on Drug Abuse for their career development grant support, K23 DA017015 (Copenhaver P1), and Connecticut Department of Public Health-AIDS Division DPH Log #2004–154 (Copenhaver P1) for grant funding to conduct this study.