One thing I liked about that paper I linked to in my original comment was that it made sure to point out that many of these traits that COAs have are not limited to COAs. The paper doesn't make overgeneralizations, but I will: most, if not all, of the traits of COAs can be found in children of non-alcoholic parents, when those non-alcoholic parents had other issues (mental illness, for example) that resulted in similar neglect and abuse of their kids.

Now that Joss has been a Dad for a few years, I'm wondering if his next few projects are going to have characters with better parents, but bastards for grandparents. (Heh.)