In yesterday's W$J, psychologist Stanton Peele makes the case for allowing minors to drink alcohol with their parents. According to Peele, allowing children to drink alcohol in the home with their families reduces the likelihood of binge drinking and related problems. On the other hand, allowing minors to attend unchaperoned parties may be setting them up to be binge drinkers.
n societies where children drink with their parents, this typically means giving a kid a small amount of wine or other alcohol, often watered down on special occasions or a family dinner. Many European countries also lower the drinking age for children when they are accompanied by parents. In the United Kingdom, for example, the legal age is 18, but for a family at a restaurant it is 16. In France and Italy, where the legal age is 16, there is no age limit for children drinking with parents.
But what might all of this mean for teen drinking problems in America?
Several studies have shown that the younger kids are when they start to drink, the more likely they are to develop severe drinking problems. But the kind of drinking these studies mean -- drinking in the woods to get bombed or at unattended homes -- is particularly high risk.
Research published in the Journal of Adolescent Health in 2004 found that adolescents whose parents permitted them to attend unchaperoned parties where drinking occurred had twice the average binge-drinking rate. But the study also had another, more arresting conclusion: Children whose parents introduced drinking to the children at home were one-third as likely to binge.
"It appears that parents who model responsible drinking behaviors have the potential to teach their children the same," noted Kristie Foley, the principal author of the study. While the phrasing was cautious, the implication of the study's finding needs to be highlighted: Parents who do not introduce children to alcohol in a home setting might be setting them up to become binge drinkers later on. You will not likely hear this at your school's parent drug- and alcohol-awareness nights.
When I was a waiter in Texas I was instructed to check for ID to confirm that a parent/child relationship existed (which made for a de facto minimum age of 16 to consume alcohol with parents present), and to remove the alcohol from the minor's possession when the parent was not immediately present, when the parent went to the bathroom or left for any other reason.
And no, I've never one to have alcohol regularly, let alone a binge drinker.
Here's another premise I challenge any reseracher to disprove:
Families who introduce their children to the concepts of weapons responsibility at a young age are less likely to produce adults who disregard weapons responsibility.
Most restaurants were unaware this was legal.
Says the "Dog"
On the other hand, I do know plenty of parents who over drink, and the kids see them do it. Not surprisingly, that is the environment where the kids are also likely to end up as alcoholics. Indeed, I have a memory of one parent giving me a martini when I was around 18 or 19. It was horrid. So, when I threw out half of it, he refilled my glass. No surprise, at least two of his offspring have serious drinking problems, 35 years later.
Various neuroscience studies have raised a number of interesting questions that relate to law. For example, some work published in Nature showed that the average brain does not mature until age 25. Furthermore, the final part of the brain to mature is the part that deals with impulse control and decision making.
Is there a family in America who would allow their kids to have a drink with them at dinner, but don't because they believe it is illegal?
I do not allow grant the glass of wine in public, not because it is illegal, but because I do no want the hassle in case it bacame an issue with busybodies.
Jam from Houston, Texas
Your analogy is not very good, because guns do not have the same pervasive presence in daily social life as alcohol does. Perhaps I am begging the question, by blithely accepting that alcohol belongs in civilized life while guns do not [I am biased in that personally I don't drink or use guns, so I wouldn't mind if both disappeared from regular life!] but I think that's a good description of the challenges that the average kid is likely to face.
this is (and should be) a parental right. unfortunately, many nanny state leftists want to strip parental rights, but that's another story.
i have told parents numerous times that it's perfectly legal (when they had no idea) but it is not legal to allow OTHER children (not your own) to drink in your house.
rcw 66.44.270
A gun is tool, nothing more. Granted, it's a tool designed to kill things, but one can with very little imagination come up with other means of making "bad things happen" to other people, or even oneself.
However, one thing a gun forces a person to do is to consider the immediateand personal consequences of his actions in a way that, say a 4000-lb. automobile, never seems to effectuate (assuming of course, that we're talking about a fairly conscientious person in the first place).
There is a disconnect in this country between the actions of the voters, who are essentially wielding deadly power, and the feeling of responsibility that should accompany that power because the results are inevitably so external to the voter that the effects of the results are never felt directly.
Other than that, firearms are so prevalent in our society that I really don't think that you can characterize them as not having a pervasive presence in our lives, or even as having much less of a presence than alcohol.
I've always felt that demystifying alcohol (or guns) decreases the allure.
Teaching at a university in the South, it seemed to me (personal observation, not scientific study) that the worst drinking abuses (now called binge drinking) were by students who had no history of responsible drinking and went wild when they were away from parental oversight.
whit, I didn't realize righties were such loose people with regards to alcohol if you only blame 'lefties' for stripping away parental rights.
My understanding is that a parent or guardian cannot purchase alcohol to be consumed by an underage child in a public place but they can serve them alcohol in a private place. We had a case recently where the judge ruled that a corridor in an apartment building was a public place.
I don't know whether life is more or less complex than in the "good old days," but for sure it is complex. Our schools and our parents and other mentors may (or will, particularly in the typical public school today on the subject of gun safety!) not be able to teach us all these things, or at least, not by experience, but the more, the better.
Certainly, if one learns a bit about gun safety, moderate drinking and safe driving, some of the others, such as drugs and lawnmowers and power tools, will be a bit more obvious when and if the occasion arises. Unfortunately, some parents who grew up in the drug culture - and may still be smoking a little pot or snorting a little coke - don't seem to see any problem with their children doing what they did when they were in school. Considering the deleterious and insidious effects of drugs on such things as academic performance, one is hesitant to introduce one's kids to them "in moderation." In addition, while alcohol consumption by minors, particularly at home under parental supervision, may be a legal gray area, I don't think that any such exists for drugs, even marijauna....
i cited a specific law. in many jurisdictions, it is hardly gray. it is specifically authorized under the law
Map
The study to which you link doesn't give the hard data behind the various studies, and I'm skeptical that it really supports what you suggest. These meta-studies don't really say much except to support their author's biases. The studies are of rats, or look at heavy drinking, not what we are discussing here.
I'm of the school of thought that says that drinking should be introduced in the family setting...I was, and my kids were, and it worked like a charm. Seems to me that on the whole families should decide these things, not bureaucrats and pressure groups.
I pity all the French and Italian teens with their severely damaged brains... their learning and memory skills were irreperably harmed!
On the other hand it never occurred to me to teach my sons about the proper use of alcohol. Since then I have realized that selective prohibition has not worked any better than general prohibition. What we have now is massive noncompliance with the legal age to drink law where a very high percentage of the 17 to 20 year age group habitually violate the law.
If a person in that age range is killed by alcohol the most frequent cause of death is an accident caused by a drunk driver not by an overdose. A drunk with a gun is another cause of death but at a much lower rate.
Alcohol related traffic deaths steadily declined for a number of years and I have not examined the most recent data but my impression is the rate of decline has slowed. I doubt there is a single factor responsible for the decline because cars are safer so there are fewer fatalities and the police are much better at spotting drunk divers and preventing them from causing an accident are factors that should be considered. In some states the bars can get reduced liability insurance rates if they train their staff in how to prevent drunks from driving and that is another factor. Education programs at the high school and college level do not seem to be very effective. It may be that education in the home is more effective because the children are younger.
When I was a kid there was no sex education and my mother was a nurse and she taught my sister and I about sex. I would have gladly skipped the part about abortion but we learned about that even though we did not want to. I was appalled about the hogwash my friends thought was true about sex.
I wonder if kids today have a lot wrong information about alcohol. Scaring them does not work.
1) Mid-Evening, when College Kids, having torped a twelvepack with their roomie before going to the party they may not drink at go out to the social scene
2) Late at night (traditional version)
The traditional version (2) wraps the DUI driver around the tree. The new version (1) wraps the DUI driver around the family mini-van going home from Friday night pizza.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110010555
But beware of the dangers of our litigatious society, in which half of all couples end up getting a divorce.
Even if it's legal to give your kid booze, if you end up in divorce court some day, your ex may claim you gave the kid booze, distort the context in which it occurred, and argue that that weighs in favor of your ex -- not you -- getting custody of the kids.
(Depicting you as an avid supporter of child drinking may also be used to make you look like a drunk, to help support false claims of domestic violence on your part -- virtually all requests for domestic violence restraining orders are granted, even when based on nothing more than a bare allegation lacking specific details ("I am in fear" is a common boilerplate allegation in a petition for a domestic violence restraining order, which is often granted despite lacking any specific allegation of assault or battery)).
If my wife wants to give our daughter a little bit of wine when she's a teenager, I likely won't object, but I don't plan to be the one doing it.
(Note: I am not divorced, and have never been in a family court proceeding or criminal proceeding of any kind).