Do you consider alcoholic parents to be unfit?

There are different levels that alcoholics can function at. If the child's basic needs are being met I don't think they should automatically lose their children especially if it's a two parent household. If the kids are running around dirty and unfed, if the person is violent then yeah the state needs to step in.

Alan Smithee wrote:

There are different levels that alcoholics can function at. If the child's basic needs are being met I don't think they should automatically lose their children especially if it's a two parent household. If the kids are running around dirty and unfed, if the person is violent then yeah the state needs to step in.

Yes I do no matter what level of alcoholic they are.

Yeah, what he said.

Tony Marino wrote:

Yes I do no matter what level of alcoholic they are.

Tony, I hope you know I respect your opinion especially on something I suspect you have bitter personal experience with but I can't agree that it's an absolute certainty that all alcoholics are unfit parents. To me, "unfit" means take the kid away and I know at least one case where that isn't true. They could have been a better parent but they weren't unfit. I know of another case where the person was stone cold sober but they had no business having a child in their care.

My aunt was a beer alcoholic - the worst kind because 'you can't be an alcoholic on beer.' She stayed constantly a little buzzed but never staggering drunk.

She raised her grandchildren and managed to get them to adulthood and they seem well adjusted today.

Alan Smithee wrote:

There are different levels that alcoholics can function at. If the child's basic needs are being met I don't think they should automatically lose their children especially if it's a two parent household. If the kids are running around dirty and unfed, if the person is violent then yeah the state needs to step in.

I was involved with a "functioning" alcoholic, and I refused to have kids with him. A drunken parent IS going to affect the child, and even if the physical needs are met, the emotional needs are not. Drunks often make their children be the parent (as was the case with my grandmom--- my mom was the oldest of 10 kids and would have to go to neighbor's houses begging for food/clothes/and beg them to pay the electric bill). Then there is the public humiliation the child suffers when everyone knows the parent is a drunk. Addicts are selfish people (it even says so in the AA big book), and they do not care about the needs of others.

There is a difference between a recovering alcoholic, and a flat out drunk. If someone is going through treatment and has had long periods (and I mean years of sobriety) then a relapse that is dealt with and then treated can be forgiven. But if this person tumbles into a bottomless pit, and blames everyone around them for their own problems, then that is emotional abuse.

Seems like they would be eventually.

Yes they are. Not only do they set a bad example, but if they haven't done something reckless or negligent where their kids are concerned as a direct result of their drinking problem, it's only a matter of time before they do. My parents were both drunks. They went to work, kept us fed, clothed and we lived in a decent house in a decent area. But their alcoholism was a dirty little [non] secret that we had to reconcile and like all drunks their behavior would change during their peak moments and any kind of impromptu scene would happen during their episodes. Plenty of times I would stay home from school the day after their benders because one or both of my parents were too hung over to get up and take us. Miscellaneous bottles of Jack were often kept around the house and because of that by the time I was about 14, I had more than once gotten half buzzed after secretly going into their stash.

So yeah by definition, alcoholic parents are unfit.