Supporting Parents in Recovery from Opioid Use Disorder

Lessons learned from developmental science on parenting and adolescence

Estelle L. Berger, Ann-Marie Barrett, Simone Mendes, Leslie D. Leve, Jennifer H. Pfeifer, & Camille C. CioffiJuly 2022

Based on a National Survey between 2009 and 2014, 8.7 million children in the United States lived with at least one parent with substance use disorder. Within that group, 623,000 parents struggled with opioid use disorder (OUD). Little research is dedicated to adolescents with parents engaged in treatment for OUD, in regard to how to support the family unit rather than just the parent or the adolescent separately. We conducted a narrative review of the literature on parenting, adolescent development, and opioid use. Because there is limited extant literature on OUD and parenting, we expanded our search to include substance use in general. 

When considering the key developmental tasks of adolescence—establishing a sense of autonomy, clarifying personal identity, building peer and intimate relationships, and cultivating meaning and purpose—in tandem with effective parenting styles, we offer recommendations for youth, parents, treatment providers, schools, and policymakers on how to support adolescents when a parent is engaged in treatment for OUD. To both repair the parent-adolescent relationship and mitigate intergenerational transmission of substance use disorders, treatment approaches should be informed by the scientific knowledge of adolescent development.