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A silent story: An analysis of the effects of parental alcoholism on African-American adults. Do the effects parallel or diverge those from white adults?
Abstract
This study investigates the effects of parental alcohol problems on African-American adults and notes the areas where the effects diverge or parallel with those of white Americans. Secondly, this study attempts to connect parental alcohol problems to different social issues that are plaguing the African-American community today. I know of no studies that have made this connection. Results indicated that the process of parental alcohol problems is similar but also different for African-American and white adults. A similar relationship appeared with frequency of drinking, frequency of drug use, alcohol misuse, and emotional and psychological problems. The differences between the two racial groups emerged with divorce and independent effects of parental alcohol problems. White adults were more likely to divorce and report frequent drinking and drug use than African-Americans. Another distinct difference that materialized in the findings occurred with father's alcohol problems. For African-American adults, father's alcohol problems tended to push people to the more extreme endpoints of alcohol consumption and problems than with white adults. Father's alcohol problems also had more of a negative effect on the other hand, positively influenced various problems for African-Americans and had less significant effects for whites. These findings are consistent with previous studies that suggest that children raised in alcoholic families are more likely to experience problems in adulthood than children of non-alcoholics. However, these studies focus primarily on white middle class respondents with intact marriages. My study replicates these findings using models for both Blacks and whites comprising a nonclinical random sample. Gender differences were not obtained in the overall pattern of results. Although the sample size is relatively small for African-Americans compared to whites, it is possible to make a connection from the results presented in this study with various social problems that exist in the African-American community today (alcohol misuse and consumption; and drug use). However, additional research in this area is warranted to be more confident in making this connection.
Subject Area
Individual & family studies|Ethnic studies|Black studies|African American Studies
Recommended Citation
McNeal, CoSandra, "A silent story: An analysis of the effects of parental alcoholism on African-American adults. Do the effects parallel or diverge those from white adults?" (1996). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9712518.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9712518