The Lived Experience of Being Raised by Single Alcohol-Dependent Father: A Qualitative Heuristic Study

By Shotayo Gabriel Tejuosho Ph.D

This researched work is titled The Lived Experience of Being Raised by Single Alcohol-Dependent Father. The study illuminates the experiences of the author and the coresearchers. It is hoped that professionals will have a greater understanding of children raised by single alcohol-dependent fathers. Even any alcohol-dependent individual reading this book will find the experience under discussion similar to his or her own.

Thus, the book provides experience-based personal accounts of the researchers. The study while answering the research questions will indirectly assist the readers in developing both knowledge and awareness about alcohol-dependent fathers behaviors, attitudes, values, and biases.

Consistent with transformation and self-understanding is the saying that states, To know others, one must first know the self. This research piece assisted the researcher and coresearchers to delve into self-dialogue, self-inquiry, and self-discovery, which will also help every reader toward self-evaluation and reassessment of values in life.

Thus, the findings in the book will empower the readers toward self-awareness, a wider horizon, and the privilege to explore the significant human experience of being raised by a single alcohol-dependent father.

The book is significant to other alcohol-dependent adults raised under the same conditions, as they can potentially learn from the lived experiences of the researcher and coresearchers. Therefore, this study considers the lived experience of single fathers in the context of alcohol dependence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543469431

Shotayo Gabriel Tejuosho Ph.D

The author, Dr. Shotayo Gabriel Tejuosho starts off his career with a bachelor's degree in communication in 1997, Masters in Science Psychology (2010), University of Phoenix, and a doctorate in General Psychology, (2015) Capella University. Since he migrated to the United States in 2007, he has worked with both private and government agencies specializing in health care, behavioral services, therapeutic support services, direct care and community services. Dr. Tejuosho is thorough, resilient, and versatile in discussing issues of human interest such as ageism, gender identity, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, feminism and other topics within his area of specialization. He can impact knowledge, teach and work with adult and adolescent population. Dr. Tejuosho recommends his research piece on, "The lived experience of being raised by a single alcoholic dependence father" to organizations, substance controlled rehabilitation homes, nursing homes and decision-making bodies in the United States and all over the world. The book is a working tool to adaptation for individuals having alcoholic dependence single fathers.

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by Shotayo Gabriel Tejuosho, Ph.D.

Library of Congress Control Number:     2017918425

ISBN:                  Hardcover                978-1-5434-6941-7

                            Softcover                   978-1-5434-6942-4

                            eBook                        978-1-5434-6943-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 11/30/2017

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

770901

Contents

DEDICATION

PREFACE

ABSTRACT

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTER 1   INTRODUCTION

Background of the Problem

Statement of the Problem

Theoretical Framework

Purpose of the Study

Significance of the Study

Research Design

Research Question

Definition of Terms

Assumptions and Limitations

Organization of the Remainder of the Study

CHAPTER 2   LITERATURE REVIEW

Qualitative Research Methodology

Heuristic Methodology

Open-Ended Interview

A Review of Topic and Methodology

Defining Alcoholism

Theoretical Orientation for the Qualitative: Personality Traits

Attachment Theory

Alcoholism in Women

Alcoholism as a Social Factor

Alcoholism as a Genetic Factor

Alcoholism as an Environmental Factor

Adult Children of Alcoholics

Synthesis of the Research Findings

Critique of Previous Research

Summary

CHAPTER 3   METHODOLOGY

Purpose of the Study

Research Design

Target Population and Selection of Co-Researchers

Life Stressor Checklist–Revised

Psychometric Properties for Life Stressor Checklist -Revised (LSC-R)

Demographics and Location

Sampling Method

Establishing Research Guidelines

Preparation for Heuristic Inquiry

Method of Data Collection

Instrumentation

Data Organizing, Analysis, and Synthesis

Expected Findings

CHAPTER 4   ANALYSIS AND PRESENTATION OF DATA

Description of the Sample

Methods of Organizing and Synthesizing Data

Presentation of Results

Thematic Analysis

Patterns and Themes

Exemplary Portraits

Creative Synthesis

Summary

CHAPTER 5   RESULTS, CONCLUSIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS

Summary of the Study

Summary of the Findings

Discussion of the Results

Limitations of the Study

Recommendations for Further Research or Intervention

Conclusion

REFERENCES

APPENDIX A   INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

DEDICATION

W ORTHY ARE YOU, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created (Revelation 4:11).

PREFACE

S OCIETY SAYS, ONCE an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. The lived experience of the researcher with his father was quite different. The researcher’s father became a brand-new personality after many years of alcoholic dependence. Clark Moustakas reflects on heuristic as, in every learner, in every person, there are creative sources of energy and meaning that are often tacit, hidden or denied (Moustaka, 2001).

This researcher and co-researchers had searched for the meaning and essence of being raised by single an alcoholic dependence father through this study. The researcher and co-researchers cannot be identified by names or locations mentioned in the research. The co- researchers gave their consent for the research thus their consent forms are attached.

Names and setting were changed to protect the confidentiality of the co-researchers. The information in the research is not directed towards any individual or group of people. Rather this research is made available to the general public as a self-help tool for children of alcoholic dependent fathers.

ABSTRACT

T HIS HEURISTIC, QUALITATIVE study explores the lived experience of being raised by a single, alcohol-dependent father. There is a lack of heuristic studies that focus on the perceptions of offspring of alcohol-dependent fathers and psychologists and other health care professionals may not be aware of the lived experience of adult offspring of alcohol-dependent fathers. In accordance with heuristic design methodology, the researcher included himself in the exploration of this phenomenon, seeking to understand the lived experience and how it has influenced co-researchers’ lives. The co-researchers, all from Nigeria include four females and six males, ages ranging between 25 and 55 years. Using qualitative methodology and heuristic research design, the co-researchers explored the intense layers of meaning associated with the experience. The results of the study are in threefold. First, the emotional experiences cumulated into anger, bitterness, resentments that degenerated into a sense of insecure attachment for the offspring of alcohol-dependent fathers. Second, the lack of supervision and parental neglect compounded the intensity of the lived experience to such extent that the essence of the lived experience was horrible. Third, despite the deplorable state of mind of the offspring of alcohol- dependent fathers while growing up, the co-researchers came out of the dysfunction through family support.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T O DR. KIM Kostere, who gave me much-needed direction and positive encouragement through the process, thank you.

To Dr. Chip Turner, who skillfully guided me through the research process? Thank you for encouraging, directing, and reminding me on frequent occasions to hang in there.

Dr. Mihalache Gabriela, and Dr. Weston Edwards, for your insightful and detailed directions, thank you.

I would not have been able to start, not to imagine finish this piece, without the encouragement of God. However, God used human agents in the person of my wife, Jimi who gave me all the support and motivation to forge ahead. My children were very cooperative. They endured the hardship of leaving me with the research so that I could sort it out without having to hear their petty talk when I needed time to immerse myself in the data analysis and synthesis. My father, Elder Tejuosho, and mother, Deaconess Tejuosho, supported me with prayers, so much follow-up, and words of encouragement. In memory of my late in-laws, Pa Solola and Ma Solola, I dedicate this dissertation to the GLORY OF GOD.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

T HE FIRST CHAPTER of this study provides a thorough background of the problem that stimulated interest and gave birth to the research topic. Chapter 1 includes the purpose of the research, nature of the research, definition of terms in the research, the researcher’s beliefs, assumptions, and limitations. Next, the chapter describes the research design; an expatiation of the heuristic methodology, and the research questions that exist within this study. This chapter concludes with an exploration of potential researcher biases that may play a role in the outcome of the study, including the researcher’s plan to prevent these potential biases from influencing the eventual outcomes.

Background of the Problem

The researcher has been married for about two decades; with three kids. The researcher comes from a family of nine, which includes the father, the mother, and seven children. The researcher happens to be the third-born child in the family. In the 1960s, when Western education was unattainable in Africa, the researcher’s father studied overseas. He went back to Nigeria and rose to the position of a senior medical personnel at one of the government agencies. The researcher’s mother was a successful trader making it by all standards. Despite having a large family, which is a source of pride in African culture, all was not well in those days. Based on the researcher’s father’s alcohol dependence and physical abuse, his parents were separated. His mother left their home when the researcher was a teenager. The researcher’s father was physically abusive whenever he drank alcohol, and this led to her several hospitalizations. She became overwhelmed and had no choice other than to move out of her matrimonial home.

As a teenager, the researcher lost parental attachment, motherly advice, care, and love. The researcher had to be raised by a single alcohol-dependent father in the absence of his mother. The researcher’s father as an alcohol-dependent person had nothing to offer his children. Instead of the researcher learning acceptable and commendable behaviors from the father, he found himself imbibing his father’s mode of physically abusing his mother and use of vulgar language, disrespecting his mother and other siblings. These challenges prompted questions in the mind of the researcher in the early years of his marriage, but there were no answers to them. The researcher wondered why he was not an alcoholic but still had the behaviors and attitudes of his father when his father acted under the influence of alcohol. There is no gainsaying that the researcher had internalized the father’s behaviors without his awareness.

This led to the problem being considered in this study, which relates to the question, what is the lived experience of being raised by single father who is alcohol-dependent? In retrospect, the researcher has come to understand how much his father’s drinking habit has affected his moral values, lifestyle, and relationships with people in the community. The researcher was of the opinion that there are other people like himself who have passed through or are passing through the same predicament. This is the motivating factor for this research.

The subject of this research stemmed from the researcher’s life experiences. Heuristic inquiry, as explained by Patton (2002), is the personalized voices of the co-researchers that come to the forefront in the study. Heuristic research also integrates dialogues between the researcher and co-researchers (Moustakas, 1990). The co-researchers portray the essences and meaning of the experiences.

Statement of the Problem

Theories of alcohol dependence in the 1960s and 1970s uncovered the function of alcohol and family dynamics through which theorists apply family system perspectives in understanding alcohol problems (Locke & Newcomb, 2004). The concern at that time was that children of alcoholic parents were more at risk for pathologies which include alcoholism, behavioral and mental illness unlike other children rose in alcohol-free environments (Slutske et al., 2008). The problem of alcoholism was then associated with family factors, parental substance abuse, and substance use by the siblings. The loss of family dynamics was found to confound values and attitudes, leading to substance abuse and alcoholism. In past cases, it is not certain to determine the cause of substance use, whether it is biological or due to genetic factors (Ulbricht et al., 2013).

Adult children of alcoholics were marked as forgotten children because clinicians and researchers focus more on the alcoholic parents, ignoring the family members (Hussong, Zucker, Wong, Fitzgerald, & Puttler, 2005). The situation changed over the last two decades when more research studies focused on the effects of parental alcoholism on children (Eiden, Colder, Edwards, & Leonard, 2009). Past literature portrayed drug use disorders, especially alcoholism, as problems of men (Mattson, O’Farrell, Lofgreen, Cunningham, & Murphy, 2012).

Despite women were reported to drink less, they exhibit co-occurring co-morbidities of psychiatric problems, the process of how alcohol metabolize in women was different from that of men. (R.C. Kessler et al., 1994). Because of differences in level of drinking and metabolism in both men and women, the result of research outcome cannot be generalized to both gender as relates to alcohol effect on cognitive and motor impairments (Sullivan, Fama, Rosenbloom, & Pfefferbaum, 2002).

Research indicate that intervention for treating women alcoholic was less understood than men intervention approaches (Fals-Stewart, Birchler, & Kelley, 2006). Empirical evidence supports women exhibiting more adverse effects from parental alcoholism than men (Schumm, O’Farrell, Murphy, & Fals-Stewart, 2009). Diagnosis associated with father’s alcohol dependence indicates lower warmth and sensitivity at 2 years of age (Eiden et al., 2009). Family violence, and physical or sexual abuse have been found to occur frequently in alcoholic and dysfunctional homes (Fals-Stewart, Kelley, Fincham, Golden, & Logsdon, 2004).

Alcohol dependence was the number one cause of the researcher’s father becoming a single parent. His physical abuse of the researcher’s mother was unbearable for her, and this led to their separation. Family system theorists recognize marital conflicts as a major contributing factor to poor parent–child relationships. Especially in families with conflict and poor effective coping skills, there were scarcity of family models to address the arising issues (Lucas-Thompson & Granger, 2014). Parental alcohol dependence, either on the side of mother or father, has often been associated with poor parenting skills and inadequate child supervision (Alonzo, Thompson, Stohl, & Hasin, 2014). Divorce is one of the negative outcomes of parental marital instability and problematic offspring adjustment. Life transitions from adolescence to adulthood become difficult for young adults raised in a challenging environment of alcohol dependence (D’Onofrio et al., 2006).

Alcohol dependence is one of the common pathologies in the society. Statistics reveals that between 9% and 31% of individuals in a family has a diagnosis for alcohol dependence (Agrawal, Narayanan, & Oltmanns, 2013). Another problem associated with alcoholism is psychiatric disorders such as major depression, anxiety disorder (Kessler, Pajak, Harkin, & Jones, 2013), and aggression (Testa & Derrick, 2014). Intoxication results in a narrowing of perception and cognition, focusing more attention to salient environmental cues and less attention to less salient cues. Intoxication forms part of the basic reasons for instances of husband physical and verbal aggression toward their spouses (Keller, El-Sheikh, Keiley, & Liao, 2009). A major part of the problem identified for this research is a lack of understanding of the lived experience of being raised by a single alcohol-dependent father.

Theoretical Framework

Based on a review of the literature, it appears that this study is the first of its kind, as it describes the lived experience of being raised by a single alcoholic father. The study is purely grounded in the experiences of the co-researchers through open-ended questions. It allowed the co-researchers to have complete control over the information shared and, thus, the themes that emerged from the data. The purpose of the study was for the co-researchers to share their lived experience of being raised by single alcoholic fathers, thereby generating more in-depth understanding and awareness of the topic. This study explored the perspectives of the adult offspring through their words and points of view. Moustakas (1990) states that heuristic research is the only method that give the co-researchers the privilege to see and understand in a different way.

As a result of exposure of alcohol-dependence individuals to substance toxic substance, cognitive and neurological testing indicated that they displayed brain impairment (Campanella, Noël, & Tomberg, 2010). The Disease Theory states that a disease cause’s problem drinking in the brain. The American Medical Association supported this claim in 1956 and classified alcoholism under both psychiatric and medical sections of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The fifth edition of the DSM (DSM–5) made substantial changes by removing alcohol dependence and substituting it with a continuum of substance-related disorder (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). In DSM–IV (APA, 2000) in the previous edition, describes abuse as mild but this was revised in DSM -5 (2013) as severe and a single diagnosis provided, which is a severe broader spectrum of symptoms. Thus, an update term is substance use disorder under which alcohol dependence is classified (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).

However, despite the high global rate of alcohol abuse, research on alcohol dependence remains sparse in Nigeria. This study examined the level of perceived alcohol use and effect among undergraduate students in Owerri, Nigeria (Chikere & Mayowa, 2011). In regard to alcohol consumption, adolescents living with one parent compared to two-parent households are said to have severe risk of behaviors such as abusing alcohol (A. Beseler, Vilegen, Luyten, & Blatt, 2008), tobacco, and marijuana (Oman et al., 2002). Similarly, negative life events such as illnesses, death in the family, parental conflicts, and alcohol use have an effect on the children’s behaviors.

Therefore, this study of the lived experience of being raised by single alcohol-dependent fathers contributes to knowledge of alcoholism. Thus, the theoretical contribution will be to give concrete perceptions on the phenomenon and wider knowledge base findings in the field of alcoholism and single parenthood. Studies examining individual-level risk factors suggest; effects on self-esteem, depressed mood, and lack of self-efficacy and problem-solving ability of adult children alcohol-dependence parents (Chassin, Flora, & King, 2004).

Purpose of the Study

This heuristic study is purposed to illuminate the experience of being raised by a single alcohol-dependent father. With the illumination of the experience, it is hoped that professionals will have a greater understanding of children raised by single alcohol-dependent fathers. The co-researchers,