Parenting in the Midst of a Drug Problem

Efforts were made to recruit men who were the main carers. However, the great majority of those interviewed were mothers, as they were almost always the parent with the main childcare responsibility. A high proportion of women were parenting alone (64%). Current relationships among problem drug-using women were, with one exception, with men who also had drug problems. As reported in other research (Chance and Scannapieco 2002), these relationships were not characterized by permanency and only 

Good and evil are names for what people do, not what they are. All we can say is that this a good deed because it helps someone, or that is a bad deed because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels. 

Drawing on the interviews with parents I will first outline their views on the force of their dependency problems and then move to depict some of the routines associated with drug use as a means of showing how these necessarily impinge upon the care and wellbeing of children, even despite the efforts of the parent to protect them from exposure to drugs and the associated lifestyle. 

If you re taking the heroin, that s your master, know...I don t know anybody that s been able to do it yet take the drug and look after their family and things like that... that s the bottom line, it just doesn t work. 

I ve never known it to work anyway. I ve seen it all over the years and I don t think there s anybody that s managed it. 

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Drugs so fettered her relationship with her daughter that it was the exception not the norm to hold and play with her or to take much pleasure in the process. This sense of emotional disconnectedness was characterized similarly by many other parents and was part and parcel of the overwhelming experience of parenting whilst also in the midst of a drug dependency problem. 

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