Alcohol and Children
01/08/2011
Parents play a pivotal role in their children's development during their adolescence. Alcohol abuse can interfere with parenting skills and marital relations, which in turn has serious effects on adolescent development and adjustment. Parents who abuse alcohol place their children at increased risk for alcohol and drug use as well as for serious psychological problems. Both genetic and environmental factors affect a child's development, and both may increase risk for future alcohol abuse. The belief that alcoholism tends to run in families is a commonly held, which could well indicate that social learning processes are the main factor in the development of alcoholism.
There are also physical effects on the children of alcoholic parents, which may even start to manifest before birth. Alcoholism can affect the foetus before a child is born. In pregnant women, alcohol is carried to all of the mother's organs and tissues, including the placenta, where it can pass through into the foetus and be absorbed by the baby. As a result, if a pregnant woman drinks an alcoholic beverage, the concentration of alcohol in her unborn baby's bloodstream is at the same level as her own.
A pregnant woman who consumes alcohol during her pregnancy may give birth to a baby with Foetal Alcohol Syndrome, or FAS, which is one of the three top known causes of birth defects. About 5,000 babies are born each year with severe damage caused by FAS, while another 35,000 babies are born annually with more mild forms of FAS leading to later difficulties as the child develops.
