Eugenics and dysgenics

2011

2011-07-19-WP-Dvorak-Barry-Christopher

Marion Barry’s son following in his addictive footsteps, tragically
by Petula Dvorak
Washington Post, 2011-07-19

Talk of the apple and how it doesn’t fall far from the tree did abound.
...
You know, that old story about how the father was an addict
and got into all kinds of trouble
and then the son grew up and did exactly the same?

...

There’s a lot of scientific evidence that addiction is genetic.
And there’s no doubt it’s environmental, too.
Kids who grow up with weed on the coffee table
or a parent always balancing a drink in one hand
are probably going to follow that path.

That addiction is so often passed on through generations
“is something people don’t want to talk about,”
said Amelia Arria, the Director of the center on Young Adult Health and Development at the University of Maryland School of Public Health.

...

Parents who are addicts are probably not parenting too well
when they’re raging on with drugs or alcohol,
so there’s that damage to repair.
And even though they might recover themselves,
they can’t always undo the wreckage they’ve left in their wake —
or even admit what they’ve done to their children.

The refusal to address those issues festers in the kids.
And what better way to deal with a problem
than tackle it the same way that dear old mom or dad did?

“This cuts across socioeconomic status,” Arria said.
“Addiction is an equal-opportunity problem.”

[Dvorak emphasizes the environmental factor,
but she did earlier allude to a genetic factor as well.]