Substance abuse and parenthood among troubled youth: transition issues
Parents with drug addiction issues are particularly prone to be reported to the Director of Youth Protection in mistreatment cases, even though becoming a parent could motivate a change in their way of life. However, this new status, on its own, is rarely enough to sustain lasting changes in their lives, to oppose the underlying psychosocial problems, and to reduce the actual risk of report to Youth Protection services. From a larger qualitative research on parenthood among at-risk youth (aka street youth), our study aims to understand parenthood experience combined with drug addiction issues, while focusing on the way those parents invest both their children and their drug addiction. A conceptual qualitative analysis was conducted on eight semi-directive interviews. Our results consist in making a model of the place and role of those children and the drug addiction in the lifepath of these parents. New clinical perspectives are discussed for intervention among those vulnerable young parents at-risk of mistreatment.