What Impact does an Adult Substance User Have on Mothers, and How Do They Make Sense of Their Experience?

Previous research has focused on the impact of substance use on the whole family system, and whether certain family dynamics are common in families with substance use in them. This research, conducted in the UK, explores the specific experience of being a mother of a substance user and their phenomenological experience from the perspective of mothering metanarratives in western cultures today. The findings were complex due to the amount of data, but the theme of loss ran through all of the impacts, as well as being a major part of how the participants made sense of their experience. Loss was therefore the focus for studying the impact on the participants. The findings showed the complexity of mothering for this group of women and how their experience is largely misunderstood and unsupported in our society, where mother blaming is culturally acceptable.