I thought this was an interesting story, and I’m not quite sure how I feel about it:
In a nutshell, a father decided to host his son’s after-prom party on the condition that guests could drink all they wanted, but they had to fork over their keys and had to stay the night. His intent was to protect the kids, as the party would have otherwise been at a local beach where at least some kids would have engaged in drunk driving or drunk swimming.
(As an aside, he was initially arrested for the crime of providing booze to kids, but was released because he had done no such thing --the kids brought their own bottles.)
I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this. I certainly don’t think alcohol = evil and I plan to eventually teach my daughter how to drink responsibly as I do nowadays. But what I will do my best to discourage, prevent, and punish is alcohol abuse --excessive drinking to the point of being wasted, especially if it’s habitual. I know I won’t have a 100% success rate here (nor with unsafe sex, nor probably with drugs), but I want to get as close as I can. Given that, I don’t think I could have just sat in a lay-z-boy and read a good novel while my child got shitfaced a few feet away. Even if it DID mean he’d just do it at the beach otherwise.
On the other hand, it might be a good way to make an object lesson out of hangovers, especially if I opened all the blinds and hid all the asperin the next morning. :)
But I would find it much harder to get wasted knowing that dad was in house and knowing what could probably happen the next morning. Less of course if it was my friend’s place, but still, hesitant on the whole wasted bit cos some guy has my keys.
Then again, it could be because my family did such a great job instilling some sense of responsibility in me.
Discovering alcohol is a part of growing up (since alcohol is prevalent in our society and all). I think it’s commendable that the parents were firm yet open about it, and present to chaperone. Although keg stands and other binge drinking party tricks are stupid and gross.
“It’s almost all binge drinking. It’s not having a glass of wine with your parents at the dinner table. This is heavy drinking, and the parties are where it most often happens.”
…
Riggs won her battle, and as of July 1, Kansas made it illegal for parents, or anyone, to allow minors to drink on their property – whether they provide the alcohol or not.
Guess no wine at the dinner table anymore. And forget about teaching your kids tolerance and moderation. Alcohol is an evil that must be disspelled by not allowing it or pretending it doesn’t exist. They’ll figure it out soon enough, when they’re 21 and have 9813479475 shots of vodka in one sitting.
I’m with Thrrrpt on this one. I don’t much care for the whole “they’re going to do it anyways, we may as well make it safer” line coming out of parenting and schools these days. How about teaching them not to do it until they can take responsibility for their actions? I apply this blanket generalization to alcohol, smoking, sex, etc. We all may quibble on concepts or ethics or morality or such with these traditional taboos, but teaching responsibility doesn’t seem to be out of line.
Of course, parents don’t even really have the right to name their kids, so… :P
The year I graduated from high school went to a friends graduation party and her Dad did the same thing. I thought it was a good idea and he didn’t get arrested for it.
“It’s a recipe for disaster to take teens and alcohol and immaturity and mix them together,” says Francine Katz, Anheuser-Busch’s vice president for communications and consumer affairs.
I guess no more sexy-party commercials from Anheuser-Busch?
I’m in agreement with shift6 although not so much for moral reasons as for practical reasons. Teenagers shouldn’t drink, it’s both dangerous and illegal. Every study I’ve seen shows a correlation between high teen alcohol consumption and parents with a liberal attitude towards alcohol consumption. The more kids are exposed to alcohol the more they will drink, it’s as simple as that. Parents who give alcohol to their teens are saying it is ok to drink. The parents might think that they’re teaching their kids to drink with moderation, but what do teens know of moderation?
But you can’t buy beverages with more than vol. 3.5% from the state liqour monopoly until you are 20. You can be served at pubs etc though. I guess the median debut age for significant alcohol consumption would be around 15 though, at least where I grew up.
I’ll tell you what almost never works, parents telling their kids not to drink while being free-swilling boozehounds themselves. Like a concentration camp, it’s all about making examples!
I’d have to say that neither throwing down a mandate of abstinence nor holding all-night keggers for your children’s benefit are very good ideas. Extreme ends of the spectrum, so to speak.
I’m in agreement with shift6 although not so much for moral reasons as for practical reasons. Teenagers shouldn’t drink, it’s both dangerous and illegal. Every study I’ve seen shows a correlation between high teen alcohol consumption and parents with a liberal attitude towards alcohol consumption. The more kids are exposed to alcohol the more they will drink, it’s as simple as that. Parents who give alcohol to their teens are saying it is ok to drink. The parents might think that they’re teaching their kids to drink with moderation, but what do teens know of moderation?
Based on personal experience, I have to disagree with you.
My parents were always open with me about alcohol…not in a “drink all you like” way, but in a “we understand that you might drink, here’s the facts” way. Consequently, I had a pretty decent understanding of the up and down-sides of booze by the time I hit college. Consequently, while I did certainly party a bit, I knew my limits and didn’t do anything dumb. Meanwhile, the other kids in my dorm - the majority of whom had been raised under very strict “alcohol = bad” rules - went absolutely apeshit. Their “now we can drink” excitement, combined with their complete inexperience when it came to actually drinking led to more binge drinking, puking, unprotected sex, drunk driving, general dangerous behavior and overall stupidity than you could possibly imagine.
More like, any country except Canada and the US…? (not sure about the UK)
Anyway, it’s all about reverse psychology… my parents are culturally European in some ways and so our house has always been pretty much about having a sip or a glass of wine with a fancy home meal at dinner time as we grew up over the years, fun mixed drinks at christmas after we were over about 18 years old, etc. I can think of only a single time I threw up after drinking and it was also the single and only time I passed out (it was my 21st birthday and I bought a keg and threw a party at my apartment in college, I wasn’t going anywhere, so I drank past what I normally do since I usually have to drive or walk home sober enough to pass foot patrol police).
