Parents.

The preponderance of health conditions in the low-income parents cannot be overlooked. Some of them suffer from physical ailments. Michelle complains about limitations from her heart condition and Andrea was forced to discontinue her volunteer work at the school due to problems managing her diabetic condition.

In the present study, many of the parents disclose having psychological problems; these presumably interfere with their ability to find or keep a job as well as their general parenting. One participant who had grown up in a home with a strict alcoholic father had been in treatment herself for an alcohol addiction. She indicates that in their adult years, she and all five of her siblings have had problems with alcohol addiction. She claims:

I wasn't a drinker, I use to drink socially, never, never drink in front of my kids until I met my ex… and he was an alcoholic. And it was either like join him or leave him or join him, something like that, I don't know the saying but anyways, more or less I joined him and I shouldn't have. But I never drank like you know until he started drinking and then I started…

At the time of the study, this mother was involved in a treatment program. Her ability to work and play with her children varied, "Sometimes I do [work or play] sometimes I don't, just depends on my mood I guess." She reveals that she had been working on her own to overcome her alcohol addiction and had left the alcohol successfully for six months, but circumstances in her life created so much stress for her that she turned back to the alcohol as a way to try to help her cope with the reality of her world, "I started getting well. But when I found out about [my youngest daughter] being uh -uh- being uh really uh - not advanced, but devanced or whatever like she's not comprehending and just a whole lot of problems piled up, so I kind of like slipped." She goes on to say, "My middle child, she goes to Mental Health…it's just counseling…She was sexually molested…I just found out, but I knew, I knew…She blurted it out at school and uh…I had an idea anyways." She said that her sister had been molested by the same family relative and when he died, her sister "never knew until he died, then she started having flashbacks."