Introduction

One of the leading causes of death related to personal lifestyle in the United States is Alcohol abuse. Alcoholics make multiple trips to the hospital each year and, as a result, can cause severe amounts of stress on their families. Children of alcoholics, in particular, are greatly affected by their parent’s misuse of alcohol. Children, in the early stages of development, are vulnerable and are at a higher risk of developing psychological disorders as a result of their parent’s lack of warmth and support. Many children exhibit negative outcomes in adulthood like antisocial behavior, anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, and substance abuse (Park & Schepp, 2014). As a result, several researchers aim to find out how a child’s development is impaired by their alcoholic parent’s and ways to prevent those developmental issues. Studies show that psychological and psychosocial development are the most impaired when dealing with one or more alcoholic parents (Hussong et al., 2008). Social competence, behavior, life stressors, and family dynamics can be impacted when a child is raised by one or more alcoholic parents, which can negatively affect the child’s long-term psychological development.

Impact on Social Competence

The quality of peer friendships, and the behavior in the company of those peers, is how social competence is determined in young children. According to a number of long-term studies, children who do not form healthy social relationships with their peers early on end up with underdeveloped social skills in their teen and adult years. When looking at mental illness and crime in adolescents and adults, social competence is thought to be the best predictor of why these behaviors occur (Eiden, Colder, Edwards, & Leonard, 2009). In addition, children with high quality peer relationships are at a decreased risk for loneliness and aggression and have a higher academic success rate (Hussong, Zucker, Wong, Fitzgerald, & Puttler, 2005).

One peer group that may have a high risk for developing social problems later on is children of alcoholics (Hussong et al., 2005). One link between low social competence in children is poor parenting, especially in the early years of development. According to social learning theory, the presence of antisocial behavior and depression in parents could have a direct influence on inappropriate social behaviors in children when modeling occurs. As a result, alcoholic parents exhibiting these behaviors could very well have a direct negative influence on the social competence of their chil