The Glass Castle Alcohol Abuse

1022 Words3 Pages

Imagine, a little boy sitting at home alone, hungry and scared because he doesn’t know where his parents are. Millions of children live this scenario every day because they have parents who abuse alcohol. Alcohol abuse is an addiction that affects everyone in the drinker’s life. Many examples of this are shown in The Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls and her siblings are heavily impacted by their father’s drinking habit and are constantly forced to take care of themselves. Having a parent with a harmful history of alcohol abuse increases the risk of child maltreatment greatly, alcohol use disorder creates many problems especially when children are involved so government should step in and remove children from that environment.
Alcohol addiction …show more content…

Children living in this type of environment may feel anger, shame, and sadness. They are forced to take on adult roles much earlier because their parents are irresponsible. For instance it shows this in The Glass Castle because the children are forced to make their own meals and fend for themselves because Rex is too busy drinking and Rose Mary is careless (Walls). Alcoholism takes away children’s childhood by forcing them to take on adult roles. Another example of this is when Billy Deel is forced to take care of himself while his father is passed out and constantly drinking, “Billy had a lot of unsupervised time on his hands” (Walls 82). Billy was greatly affected by his father’s alcohol abuse his personality didn’t maturely develop like other children. This is shown when he sexually assaults Jeanette and doesn’t see anything wrong with it, he yells on page 87 “Guess what? I raped you!” (Walls). This statement proves that parents make a huge impact on children, and when children don’t have that, they suffer. Alcohol abuse is not an individual problem, it affects everyone surrounding that person. It isn’t fair for children to be raised in that environment and government should take greater action to protect the children’s safety by removing them from homes like …show more content…

When children live with alcoholic parent’s they are more likely to be in dangerous scenarios including sexual and physical abuse like we see in The Glass Castle. For instance, on page 211 Jeanette’s dad, Rex, drags her to a local bar, and gambles with a man using Jeanette as the prize, after they bet Rex let’s the man take Jeanette up to his apartment who is in seventh grade, if Rex wasn’t that desperate for money for booze he wouldn’t have put Jeanette in that situation to be sexually assaulted (Walls). This helps add weight to my argument that children don’t deserve to grow up in environments like that. The state should enforce stricter laws and oversee homes that could potentially be dangerous. If Social Service’s would’ve helped the Walls children, they would’ve saved them a lot of financial hardships and countless other

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