Parents' Themes of Children and Parenting during Early Recovery from Substance Use Disorders

Background: Relapse prevention among parents in recovery from substance use disorders (SUD) can help maintain safe and stable environments for children. Yet, substance-related treatment goals often require parents to prioritize their individual needs while not explicitly helping them to meet the competing needs of their children. The purpose of this study was to better understand parents’ experiences of children and parenting during recovery from SUD.

Methods: Using a constructivist grounded theory approach, 25 in-depth, two-hour interviews were conducted with parents (15 mothers, 10 fathers) in early to on-going stages of SUD recovery. Participants’ time in sustained recovery ranged from 3 months to 15 years. The sample mean age was 37, and number of children ranged from 1 to 6 with an average of 2 children. Children’s ages ranged from 0 to 21 years; 60% of respondents reported at least 1 child was under the age of 5. Using theoretical sampling to identify a diverse sample of individuals who had and had not actively engaged treatment services, participants were recruited through poster fliers, Craigslist advertisements, recovery community leaders, and SUD treatment services. Interviews elicited parents’ experiences of recovery, parenting, and how they interact across intra- and interpersonal contexts. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and focused codes were developed in parallel with data collection.

Findings: Larger themes for parents included concerns about the impact of parental substance use and abuse on their children and their relationships with their children as well as questions about how to talk with their children about their SUD and recovery journey. Parents described relationships with children as “evolving” during recovery, moving from “standoffish” to “trusting”, and “learning to parent differently” from their own parents and from how they parented while actively using. Children as potential relapse triggers emerged as a larger theme, specifically related to children’s needs for emotional support, their concrete needs, and parenting reminders of negative events from their own childhood as potential triggers. Finally, children as motivators for sobriety maintenance emerged and a desire to be “their best self” for their children. Although similar themes emerged for mothers and fathers, temporal relationships between recovery and parenting differed for fathers compared with mothers. Fathers described a “sobriety first” experience while mothers described efforts to simultaneously integrate recovery and parenting.

Conclusion: These parents’ experiences provide critical information about ways social workers can shape and facilitate recovery supports that maintain safe and stable environments for families. Interventions that enhance the potential motivating aspects of parenting and offer support for the more challenging aspects of parenting for parents in recovery may be beneficial. Most importantly, findings can inform the development of tailored recovery-oriented interventions to address the integrated recovery and parenting needs of parents across early to ongoing stages of recovery. Future research might examine the ways in which perspectives on children and parenting shift over time in recovery. SUD interventions that are sensitive to parenting needs across stages of recovery are needed to better support parents within the context of recovery from substance-related problems.