Helping Women Helping Children: Drug Policy and Future Generations (From Confronting Drug Policy: Illicit Drugs in a Free Society, P 291-318, 1993, Ronald Bayer and Gerald M. Oppenheimer, eds. - See NCJ-159507)

• NCJ Number: 159517
• Author(s): P A King
• Date Published: 1993
• Length: 28 pages
• Sale Source: Cambridge University Press
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This article discusses the traditional approach to the issue of women's drug abuse, and proposes an alternative approach which takes into consideration the unique relationships between mother and fetus, and between parent and child.

Abstract

The dominant social response to women's drug abuse has been primarily legal, highly punitive, and targeted at pregnant women. This approach is predicated on the belief that the interests of the mother and fetus are in conflict, and therefore, has given rise to the perceptions of the deviant drug-abusing mother and the vulnerable unborn child. The alternative framework presented here broadens the range of strategies to be considered in designing drug policy for women by assuming that maternal-fetal and mother-child relationships need to be understood in terms of interactions in which the needs of one define the needs of the other. State intervention in the form of nonpunitive and noncoercive strategies in the form of education and treatment programs are more likely to protect women, their children, and their families the long-term harm that results from mothers' abuse of psychoactive drugs. 6 notes and 61 references