The Effects of Parental Substance Abuse on Perceived Family Well-Being in a Selected Rural Area in South Africa

Abstract

In this study, we focused on the effects of parental substance abuse on family well-being in a selected rural area in the Western Cape province of South Africa, because of the lack of research in this community. The farm workers in this community were paid partially with alcohol, which is historically associated with the tot system. In this study, we used a qualitative approach to conduct semi-structured individual interviews with six known substance-abusing parents and six family members of substance-abusing parents. Purposive and snowball sampling were used to recruit the participants from farms in the rural community. The themes centred on the effects of parental substance use on intimate relationships, parenting, children and family functioning. The findings confirm that parental substance abuse in the selected rural area seemed no different to the effects in an urban setting. We therefore suggest that the sociocultural setting of the rural area underscore the ways in which these effects play out. This is because rural settings make the effects substantially more significant with regard to available resources, geographic distances, the enduring effects of the tot system, and norms regarding alcohol, which feed into risk factors. We recommend that a substance abuse framework redress the obstacles which influence the kinds of support and resources that people have access to and partnerships with farm owners for multilevel and appropriate services. We also recommend that the existing policies be amended to focus more strongly on rural areas.