Alcoholic women in treatment: the question of stigma and age.

Both alcoholic women in treatment and a matched group of non-alcoholic women feel that social attitudes are more negative towards female intoxication and problem drinking than towards male intoxication and their drinking problems. Alcoholic women report significantly more negative attitudes, both social and personal, than do the non-alcoholic control women. The older group of alcoholic women are consistently harsher than the younger in their judgments, both of social attitudes and in expression of their own opinions. The less negative attitude of younger women alcoholics may reflect more liberal attitudes of younger persons but there is a curious juxtaposition in that younger alcoholic women report more family and social rejection than do older alcoholic women. There is dissonance in younger alcoholic women's report of less negative attitudes and more experienced rejection and stigmatization. Perhaps more rejecting social attitudes towards younger alcoholic women are related to their greater likelihood of public rather than private drinking. When the total sample (438 women, alcoholic and non-alcoholic) is compared in terms of positive family history versus negative family history, those with positive histories are more likely to agree with disapproving statements about women's problem drinking. Significantly more women with positive histories believe that social attitudes are more disapproving of women alcoholics then men, and they believe, to a significantly greater extent than those without such histories, that the effects of maternal alcoholism are worse than those of paternal alcoholism.