Deliberate Family Process: a strategy for protecting children of alcoholics

Summary The authors aim to identify family environment factors that significantly decrease the risk to offspring of alcoholics to become alcoholics or to evidence other kinds of problems in childhood. This paper reports the results of a study regarding the impact of family ritual formation on the behavioral, cognitive, and emotional functioning of school‐aged children of alcoholics, in comparison with children from a matched sample of families with non‐alcoholic parents. Taking a family process perspective, the study demonstrates that those children growing up in alcoholic families which deliberately plan and execute family rituals, valued relationships, and preferred roles are less likely to evidence behavior or emotional problems. It is argued that families with serious problems, such as parental alcoholism, which can still impose control over those parts of family life that are central to the family's identity, communicate important messages to their children regarding their ability to take control of present and future life events. These messages, in turn, can play an important role in the extent to which the offspring are protected from developing problems in childhood, as well as alcoholism in adolescence and adulthood.