Behaving with Children

In many ways, children were perceived by the women as the symbolic counterparts of drugs. This also makes drug-affected bodies the symbolic counterparts of children. In this chapter, I explore this charged relationship between women who use drugs and children, who are traditionally women’s responsibility to look after. The women describe various strategies for taking responsibility, for both symbolic and real-life children. This is achieved through various and opposing strategies; through the use of drugs, through spatial separation between children and drugs, through talking to children about drugs or through telling them as little as possible.