RNs- Mostly first born? Alcoholic fathers?

The saying goes......90% of all nurses are codependent, the other 10% are in denial.

Hi Felixa.....good observation about mothers.....although I personally did not mention my mother's life-long hyperchondria and chronic mental depression ( on meds ) on my last thread......
I was seen by a psychiatrist......upon my family's constant pressure for me to be "evaluated"......and his opinion????????????? "Get as geographically far away from your family as possible....you are fine Robin". I
n fact, he offered me a job at his facility upon graduation !!!!!!!

:icon_sad: good thread. my dad is an alcoholic, he and my mother drank when we were young and i always felt responsible for my brother who is 4 yrs younger. my mum also had post-natal depression after he was born in 1973, was given Valium by the GP, and never got off it to this day. Now she doesn't drink at all, but has chronic debillitating illness, dad is trying to only have a few beers, but vodka is his drink of choice when he wants to block the world, and it makes him into a real Jeckyll & Hyde character--ruined our Christmas last year! He's trying to improve this year, so who knows, we may have ourselves a merry little christmas after all? interesting background into this, why do people who have had to nurture siblings and parents in their childhood feel the need to be in the health field? I have no great answer, I just know that being a midwife in the NNU is what I was born to do! that feeling in your childhood of having to look after your family who are abusing any substance or alcohol must play a part somewhere!

wow this thread caught my eye, and I'm fascinated. I am not yet an RN, won't graduate until next year so I didn't answer the poll, But I am the first born and a daughter of an alcoholic father. What is it I wonder that attracts people like me to nursing?
Great research topic!

Oldest child of alcoholic father.

I think maybe women with such parents may be motivated by wanting to make things right, and to gain feelings of self esteem and empowerment by becoming nurses, but we don't realize that nursing often does not provide these things.

Just guessing here.

Oldest child, mother crazy and alcoholic. Father crazy but his didnt' surface til I was an adult. Read the book "Adult Children of Alcoholics" by Janet Woj-i-something when I was 35 and the bells went off!!! Out of 13 characteristics, I had 12!!!!!!!

Youngest child, alcoholic father, now crazy and estranged- pickled his brain I guess, Mother not alcoholic, growing up controlling, emotionally cold/distant- pretty good relationship now

This is fascinating. I never thought about it, I am the first born for my mother and father (father is dead now) I am the child of recovering alcoholics and addicts. My step father is also a recovering addict, my biological father died from complications of drug abuse when I was an infant.

I start clinicals in April. I have wanted to be a nurse my whole life but jst delayed it thinking I couldn't do it. Maybe we want to take care of people but we want some structure behind it and not just be used to death like what we are used too. (hahahah) I also wonder if living around dramatic drunken people made many nurses and soon to be bookworms who will read everything. Or do we desire the technical end of learning because there is a structure in it and a results (might not be what we want but there is always a result in learning or doing a procedure) Living with addicts or alcoholics is predictably unpredictable. That in itself can be dull after a life of it.


I don't know but it is a good research topic, wish I had thought about it when I was taking Advanced Argumentative Research.

I am 3rd of three girls. Mother is a seemingly charming woman who has narcissistic/histrionic/sociopathic personality disorders. Father is cold/distant alcoholic. I have washed my hands of these two. Boy, do I have issues, LOL.

I have listed myself as being first born child of an alcoholic father, even though he was my stepfather. I have never met my biological father, and not sure if I want to...thats another story. But I lived with this man for 8 years, and watched the physical and psychological terror he put my mother through. So I think I do come in that category, as I did not know until I was ten that he was not my father...I'm glad he isn't