Hungover middle-class parents who leave children to fend for themselves

Parents are damaging their children through their alcohol use without realising they are doing it, experts believe.
In many well-off families, hungover parents are leaving their children to fend for themselves as they sleep off the effects of their drinking the night before.

There are also fears that parental drinking at home is encouraging children to see excessive alcohol use as normal and follow in their footsteps.

The Scottish Government now wants to highlight the unintentional damage that parents could be doing to their children through their drinking behaviour.

They believe the effects go much further than the parents with the most severe alcohol problems.

It is hoped that an advertising campaign, featuring a lone child staring through closed curtains as his mother and father sleep off their hangovers, will drive home the message to parents.

The focus on families came as the SNP administration pledged to make tackling Scotland's damaging relationship with alcohol a top priority for their second year in office.

Research studied by the Scottish Government reveals the extent of harm caused by drinking in families.

It has estimated that a quarter of youngsters on child-protection registers are there because of parental alcohol or drug abuse. And one in three divorce petitions in the UK cite excessive drinking by a partner as a contributory factor.

But ministers are keen to stress that even moderate drinking can affect children and family relationships.

Shona Robison, Holyrood's public health minister, said one result of drinking was that mothers and fathers were not around when their children got up in the mornings, leaving them to entertain themselves.

Parents who are hungover also lack the energy to play games with their children or take them on trips, meaning they miss out on spending quality time together.

"There's also, importantly, a message about what the children are seeing," she said. "Are we teaching the next generation about how to abuse alcohol? What we need to do, surely, is to not set bad examples.

"Everybody wants the best for their children and they want them to grow up and have the best life they can, but we sometimes do things we don't realise, that children pick up.

"Children do replicate the adult behaviour, and what they see adults do, they think is OK. So do you really want your kids growing up thinking that abusing alcohol is a normal thing to do?"

The Scottish Government wants everyone to examine their own drinking and consider whether it could be having an impact on family life. It is estimated that tens of thousands of children are living with parents who drink to problematic levels.

Tom Roberts, the head of public affairs at charity Children 1st, said: "Addiction, whether to opiates like heroin or to alcohol, is a problem for all areas of Scotland – urban and rural.

"However, many more children's lives are adversely affected by parental alcohol abuse than by parental substance use. Children whose parents abuse drugs or alcohol often struggle.

"When it is not desirable for children to remain with their parents, we have pioneered the use of family group meetings, which bring together the extended family where a child is at risk of being taken into care, and which often lead to a child being cared for by a grandparent or other family member."

The Scotsman