ABSTRACT
This chapter will focus on the voices of women as they explore and make sense of their daily experiences as mothers who are dependent on heroin and other substances. As drug use becomes an increasingly ‘normal’ part of everyday life, it becomes also an increasingly important part of family life, with more and more families having one or both parents, and even grandparents as well, who are dependent on illicit drugs. In contrast to other chapters in this volume, and in distinction to the normalisation thesis proposed by Parker, Aldridge, Measham and others which suggests that recreational drug use is now a ‘normal’ part of everyday life which creates few problems and requires little managing, this chapter takes a somewhat different approach. It is concerned with the struggle of parents to maintain ‘normal’ family behaviour despite the impact of parental substance use. The chapter aims to examine the ways in which families may struggle to ‘normalise’ behaviour that is inherently disruptive of ‘normality’ and, in particular, the chapter explores the way in which parents may simultaneously (and paradoxically) try to portray their behaviour to their children as being both ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’.
