According to the Random House Dictionary of the English Language (1966), alcoholism is defined as a condition due to the excessive

use of alcoholic beverages. Alcoholics can be of any age, background, income level, social, or ethnic group. Alcoholism causes a variety of physical consequences that are well known and easy to recognize. How many times have you heard about the consequences of alcoholism? But have you taken them into account? Alcoholism is also known as a family disease. The purpose of this essay is to discuss the effect of the alcoholism in family. In my opinion, alcoholism ruins the entire family. Parental alcoholism may affect the fetus even before a child is born. Alcoholism can affect the babies physically and mentally. A pregnant woman who take alcohol during their pregnancy may give birth to a baby with irreversible physical defects. This is because of the Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS). FAS is one of the three top known causes of birth defects. According to the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, about 5000 babies worldwide are born each year with severe damage by FAS; another 35000 babies are born with more mild forms of FAS. Babies born with FAS are shorter and underweight compared to normal babies. Besides that, babies are also at risk to get mental defects. This will lead to the difficulties in learning and problems in social skills when the FAS babies grow up. Such findings are common: low self-esteem and excessive self-consciousness are highly correlated with the presence of alcoholism in a childs immediate family (Berger, 1993). Besides that, parental alcoholism also have negative impact on their children. Many of these children have common symptoms of loneliness and fear of abundant. These children live in unstable home environments. They never know what to expect from their alcoholic parents. They also may not have friends and may be afraid to go to school because of shame that their parents are alcoholic. While, older children of alcoholics may show such depressive symptoms as obsessive perfectionism, hoarding or staying by themselves. These children will have high levels of anxiety and stress. Young children of alcoholic may have frequent nightmares and crying. They also more often to have problems in school. The stressful environment at home prevent them to focus on studying. This will affect their school performance. This effect on children proven by an article that say five out of six studies indicated an association between parental alcoholism and child misconduct (West & Prinz, 1987).

Parental alcoholism can also destroy the relationship between husband and wife. The divorce rates between alcoholism partners is much higher. This is because, in alcoholism family, very often the spouse has to perform the roles of both parents. Family responsibilities shift from two parents to one parent. This will cause stress to the spouse and will create a lot of problems that will lead to divorce. Fear of arguments and violence are persistent, contributing to the anxiety and causing emotional hyper vigilance (Turney, 2007). That is why alcoholism is a major factor of premature widowhood. Furthermore, the marital abuse between alcoholism partners increased. Having financial difficulties is another issue that alcoholism family have to deal with. From financial issue, the spouse may have feeling of hatred, self-pity and become physically or mentally ill. All this will lead to marital abuse. Today, experts who study alcoholic families know that family and marital problems often start because of alcoholism. In conclusion, affects the whole family. Alcohol affects each member of the family, from the unborn child to the alcoholics spouse. Its affect results in not only physical problems for the alcoholics, but also may result in physical and psychological problems for other members of the family. Therefore, in my opinion, treatment is complicated and often is not completely successful, so the best way to overcome this effect is each family members should avoid themselves from taking alcohol.

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REFERENCES Berger, G. (1993). Alcoholism and the family. New York: Franklin Watts
Turney, L. (2007). Children of alcoholics: Getting past the games addicted parents play. Do It Now Foundation. Retrieved November 2, 2007, from http://www.doitnow.org/ pages/808.html. West, M., & Prinz, R. (1987). Parental alcoholism and childhood psychopathology. Psychological Bulletin, 102(2). Retrieved October 31, 2007, from PsycARTICLES database.