Author(s): Liezille Jacobs and Julian Jacobs
Objective: This study highlights how alcohol dependence in the context of family development in post-apartheid South Africa results in inordinately large social, economic and health problems in society at all levels. The main research question was how did your drinking affect your family?
Methods: The life story interview method was used to investigate how 10 married mothers and single lesbians’ drinking influenced their children and family’s development. How the participants make sense of their worlds in general and how such person-and context-specific systems of meaning-making or discourses impacted on their alcohol dependent experience within the family context was captured using a discourse analytical approach and presented with themes.
Results: This study’s main finding is that because Apartheid’s policies disintegrated the family system and the notion of Ubuntu was lost, the women were prone to alcohol dependency.
Conclusion: This study cautions policy makers to become more aware of the uniquely defined construct of a family in the context post Apartheid policies and of alcohol dependence in post-apartheid South Africa and to consider the development of family-based treatment models.
