Children's Needs – Parenting Capacity - Digital Education Resource ...

40 Children’s Needs – Parenting Capacitydependency men are twice as likely to meet the criteria as are women (SAMHSA2007). Men from social class V are the heaviest drinkers among men. However,women from social class V are significantly under the average for women’s drinkingas a whole (Royal College of Physicians 1991).The issue of gender in parental drinking was highlighted by the work of ChildLine(1997). An analysis of all calls received in the year 1 April 1995 to 31 March 1996shows 3,255 children talked about their parents’ problematic drinking. The majority(57%) identified a male figure (fathers, stepfathers, or mother’s boyfriend) as theproblem drinker. Mothers also featured: a third (33%) of children mentioned theirmother or mother figure had an alcohol problem. Just 7% indicated both parentshad a drink problem.Some studies (Seljamo et al. 2006) indicate that a father’s drinking is moreinfluential than a mother’s when considering their children’s drinking patterns at age15. However, other studies (Macleod et al. 2008) suggest that heavy maternal drinkingmay be more influential in relation to children’s drinking (at age 10) than a father’sproblem alcohol use. Research also suggests a link between mothers using cannabisand their children’s use of the drug. Day and colleagues (2006) looked at prenatalmaternal use of cannabis and children’s cannabis smoking at age 14 and found that,compared to non-cannabis smoking mothers, their children experimented withcannabis at an earlier age and used cannabis more frequently. However, maternaltobacco smoking also showed a statistically significant association with cannabis useof the children at age 14.Culture often determines attitudes towards alcohol and drugs and, therefore,the frequency and quantities used. For example, cultures in which religious beliefseschew alcohol are likely to result in lower rates of problem drinking than thosecultures where alcohol is freely available. An analysis of government statistics onalcohol consumption ‘respondents from Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin were less likelyto have drunk in the week prior to interview (5% and 4% respectively) compared to thoserecording their ethnicity as White British or White other (67% and 68% respectively)’(NHS Information Centre 2009, p.18, paragraph 2.6.2). A comparative study of 91people of Protestant background and 70 people of Jewish background showed thatthe Jewish culture and religion, where drunkenness itself or going to the pub andusing alcohol as a social lubricant is not an inherent part of daily life, also make Jewsless prone to drinking than Protestants (Loewenthal et al. 2003).It is clear that drinking is seen to be more culturally appropriate in some ethnicgroups compared to others. However, the cultural influence on drinking patterns hasseveral layers which need to be examined. Most of the United Kingdom studies havetraditionally focused on the alcohol use of immigrants, but immigrants constituteonly a minority of ethnic groups. More recent work suggests that while the overalllevel of alcohol problems remains substantially lower in South Asian communitiesthan in the general population, there is evidence that alcohol problems are on theincrease among first-, second- and third-generation immigrant families (Gharial2007). Similar trends were identified by Orford and colleagues (2004) in their small