I struggle with the idea that alcoholic parents don't know better and don't know good from bad behavior, actually criminal behavior just because they were alcoholics. They know good from bad. They may be in over their head, but they are choosing bad.
I was raised in hell and I never grew up and did bad. I would have the perfect excuse for bad behavior. But I never hurt a child, didn't become an alcoholic. Neither did any of my siblings. Conventional wisdom would have had all of my siblings and I being child abusers and alcoholics handing down the tradition, but it didn't happen. 100% of us did not abuse. How is that possible with the present mindset? How did we escape our doomed future at the hands of abusive alcoholics? Who taught us to be good? That theory just doesn't hold any water for me.
Don't get me wrong, I don't hate my parents, I just don't whitewash what they have done. I see it for what it is, bad. Their choice. My choice was to not be like them.