ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on three categories of parents who receive particular attention in research: abusive parents, alcoholic or drug-dependent parents, and parents who suffer from depression. Parents who abuse their children, compared with parents who do not, have been more frequently abused or harshly treated themselves. Abusive parents, especially those who are sexually abusive, lack empathy for their child, and have unrealistic expectations of what the child can do for them. Children experience a wide variety of relationships with their alcoholic or drug-dependent parents. Although a majority of children of alcoholics do well, a greater proportion of such children than of controls exhibit emotional problems and conduct disorders, and use alcohol or other substances. Emotional or psychiatric problems, at times called mental illness, involve disturbances in the way people feel, think, and relate to the external world. Among the most severe, or psychoses, are schizophrenia and manic depression.
