Parenting behavior of adolescent children of alcoholics

We compared the parenting behavior of children of alcoholics (COAs) and non-COAs within a sample of adolescent mothers. COAs and their children showed dyadic behaviors that were less problematic than those of their peers on mother-child teaching interactions at 1 year of age, mother-child interactions during structured play at pre-school age and child attachment behavior at pre-school age. COAs reported feeling relatively more rejection as compared to love from the alcoholic parent, but this was not related to their own parenting scores. Similar to other research, COAs reported more historical life stress, more family disruption and more drug use compared to non-COAs, but these measures also were not related to parenting scores. These results suggest that, although adolescent mothers are at risk for parenting difficulties compared to adult mothers, adolescent COAs do not necessarily encounter more problems in parenting their own children compared to other adolescent mothers.