Dr. Vernig published this review of the scientific literature surrounding Wegscheider-Cruse’s family roles in the journal Substance Use & Misuse. Wegscheider-Cruse proposed that children in homes where a parent is living with Alcohol Use Disorder adapt to fill pre-defined roles (e.g., The Family Hero, The Enabler, The Mascot, The Lost Child), and despite little evidence, this theory became accepted as accurate and taught to many therapists and other mental health professionals. Dr. Vernig examines the theory and the small amount of evidence supporting it, and proposes alternative ways to understand family dynamics in homes affected by alcohol. This article has been included in reading lists for several graduate Substance Use Disorder counseling classes, and it remains one of Dr. Vernig’s most commented articles.
Abstract
The behavioral health care field has seen attempts to understand the functioning of families in which a parent is dependent on alcohol as a set of roles into which
the other family members fall. The most popular of these classifications taught in the United States includes five roles (enabler, hero, lost child, mascot, and scapegoat) that are used to conceptualize families and individuals in treatment and support group settings, as well as in popular self-help literature. Attempts to operationalize and measure these roles have, however, been fraught with difficulties. The resulting research
base has seen conflicting evidence for the support of such roles, as well as little work on diverse families. The evidence against such well-defined family roles, the questions surrounding their development, and the difficulties of applying such constructs in real-life situations (with numerous confounding factors and unknown associated conditions) may indicate that their clinical utility does not win out over the problems inherent with this manner of classification.