The Impact of Alcoholism on Children
Alcoholism is a chronic disease distinguished by the misuse of alcohol. People with alcoholism depend on alcohol mentally and physically and have issues controlling their alcohol intake. Due to this, people with the disease can not only suffer themselves but also impact their families. An exceptional example of a child suffering from an alcoholic parent is the memoir The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. The book is written about the life of Jeannette Walls and how she gets by, dealing with all that is going on in her life, especially with an alcoholic father. The inability of parents to control drinking negatively impacts children; alcoholism in parents creates negative environments for children such as
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A parent suffering from alcoholism can have a lower likelihood to get and maintain a job because of the effects it has on them. “Alcohol makes it harder for the brain areas controlling balance, memory, speech, and judgment to do their jobs, resulting in a higher likelihood of injuries and other negative outcomes” (“Alcohol”). Without having a job parents are scarcely able to provide for their children in the way they need, starting with money for adequate living. "We wore our coats to bed, too. There was no stove in the bedroom, and no matter how many blankets I piled onto myself, I still felt cold” (Walls 176). In the memoir, Jeannette’s father suffered from alcoholism so he did not have a job. Because of this, the family did not have enough income for adequate living, so during the winter months, the children practically froze because of the hole in the roof of the house. People suffering from alcoholism, specifically parents, can harm their children by not providing an adequate living environment because of their inability to work because of the harmful effects alcoholism …show more content…
Alcoholism involved in childhood can lead children most susceptible to have trauma later in life. “Children of alcoholics endure chronic and extreme levels of tension and stress as the result of growing up in the home with a parent struggling with alcohol abuse” (“What”). Children do not need the added stressors of having an alcoholic parent in their household when it can easily be prevented. “According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), one in every five adult Americans resided with a relative who misused alcohol during their adolescence.2 As a general rule, these people have a greater likelihood of having emotional troubles compared to children who grew up in homes without alcohol misuse” (“What”). With a greater likelihood of having emotional troubles and trauma, children could significantly struggle emotionally later in life. Alcoholism in parents can cause children to be more likely to struggle emotionally, physically, and mentally but this can all be prevented by parents not drinking unrestrained amounts of
The Glass Castle is a memoir by Jeannette Walls covering her growth from childhood to adult life. Throughout her journey, Jeannette formed a close relationship with her siblings to combat the often unstable environment created by their parents. Financial instability, constant uncertainty, and persistent hunger burdened the Walls family; however, their adaptive lifestyle overshadowed these daily onuses. Jeannette and her siblings did not make the life-changing realization that they were growing up in an unhealthy setting until their teenage years. The Glass Castle depicts this tragedy, one often filled with false hope and satisfaction.
During her 10th birthday, Jeannette asks her father to stop drinking to make her, as well as the family, happier. This caused Walls to have a mental breakdown and ties himself to his bed preventing himself to drink alcohol. While this process did take weeks, it wasn’t long until Walls returned into his drinking habits again. This incident showed Jeannette that her father wasn’t capable of thinking for his children let alone taking care of himself.
As I read the book, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, I discovered how unfortunate other people’s lives can be. The four Walls children; Lori, Jeannette, Brian, and Maureen, all learned how to take care of themselves and each other. Their parents, Rosemary and Rex Walls, weren’t always there to help them when they needed it most. Based on this, I have realized that the four children yearn for freedom rather than safety. The narrator, Jeannette, admired her parents, especially her father.
On the other hand, Jeannette Walls explains how she was raped at a young age which you would think that many people wouldn’t be able to talk or write about that. She described her rape explicitly from how everything had started from the beginning to where she ended getting raped and what she did after it had happened to her. In The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls had encountered racism at the hands of her very own family. When her and her family relocated to Welch where her father’s mother lived, her grandmother was a racist, she said that black people were the reason the city of Welch had gone downhill and that she would never leave the house because she never wanted to see a black person whatsoever. The memoir allows teens to see real-life situations that Jeannette Walls herself had to go through very young and didn’t fully understand everything yet.
Walls does not live the life she wants, she lives under an alcoholic father and a selfish mother. She and her family experience hardships everyday including the poverty abuse, and molestation Jeannette endorsed. Throughout the story, Walls is trying to find a way to give herself and her family a better life. Walls tries to use the good sides of her father and her mother.
The Consequences of the Walls Children's Insufficient Upbringing In Jeannette Walls' memoir, "The Glass Castle," the author reflects on her childhood and the impact of her parents' unorthodox parenting style. Throughout the book, Walls recounts instances where her parents, Rose Mary and Rex Walls, neglected, starved, and failed to provide a stable home for their children. As a result of their irresponsible behavior, the children in "The Glass Castle" suffered from a lack of basic necessities, emotional trauma, and long-lasting scars. Although Jeannette’s parents’ parenting style can be clearly identified as horrific as it left Jeanette and her siblings afflicted and broken, their unconventional methods can be argued that it actually had a few
There may come a time when a loving set of partners decide to have a child together, which is much easier said than done. These two people must work together and realize that being a parent is arguably one of the hardest jobs out there. Everything their kids do is a reflection of them as well as their morals and decisions. Within Jeannette Walls’s novel “The Glass Castle,” she remembers the trauma that is her childhood. Her parents, Rex and Rose Mary Walls, are not the typical parents.
Growing up with an alcoholic dad showed me the damage that addiction has not only on the individual, but also on the people around. I have seen my mother cry because my dad would rather get drunk than spend time with us. I have seen my father unable to walk or talk. When my dad is drunk, he is a completely different person, short-temper and
The brain cells in the brain of a heavy drinker happens to not work as correctly as a kid that does not drink. Alcohol slows down the cerebral cortex and the way it works to get information from a person’s senses. Underage drinking also messes with the Frontal Lobes their important for planning, forming ideas, and making decisions. If alcohol was to damage part of the brain where the Hippocampus is located it could be very hard for the person to learn new
Her father, Rex, has a severe alcohol addiction that significantly impacts the family’s lifestyle. Rex’s alcoholism leads to emotional instability and frequent, hostile aggression towards his family. One way alcoholism affected Rex, was by causing emotional instability. The article, “Symptoms and help for Alcohol Problems” by author Elisabeth
The effects of drugs and alcohol can highly affect young
The Glass Castle written by Jeannette Walls is a memoir that describes her abnormal if not completely insane upbringing. The story is one that the reader would assume be a fiction, that no parents are that lacking in their authority or so cavalier as to not care if their elementary aged children roam the streets of Phoenix in the dead of night, but the emotion and depth that is felt by each written word can not be written by a person who had not lived through the events that take place. Throughout the novel Jeannette comes to realize that what she loved about her parents as a child would both terrify and annoy her only years later, and while she tries hard to bring her family together somethings can never be fully rectified, but she can prosper nonetheless.
Teaching children to drink safely starting while they’re 18 and living with their parents will help them develop healthy habits which will stick with them, helping them drink
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a memoir relaying the young life of the author as she struggles to live through poverty with her family. whilst gradually ageing throughout the book, Jeannette has to face the hardships of a normal growing girl while also facing problems that go on behind closed doors. Walls gives the reader hard-to-face tales of growing up, acting as a parent figure to her younger siblings due to neglect, and trying to keep the family financially stable. At the same time, as she becomes more mature and fed up with her home life, she tries to break free from her familial roots and move to New York with her siblings. In spite of the fact that the Walls children raise the money and move to New York, their parents follow them there and decide to live on the streets without a home.
ALCOHOLISM How many times have you heard about the consequences of alcoholism? Have you taken them into account? Alcoholism is one of the major problems in society. People don’t take it so seriously but it actually is a disease. The effects of this disease are really serious.