Law to Punish Parents For Hosting Underage Drinking Leads To More Drinking When Parents Away:
Story here. The cause and effect is speculative, but that's pretty much what I would have guessed.
Law to Punish Parents For Hosting Underage Drinking Leads To More Drinking When Parents Away:
Story here. The cause and effect is speculative, but that's pretty much what I would have guessed.
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All it takes is for one kid to get their keys and wreck their car. At least in NJ where I hail from, a social host in that case would be liable even for a single car crash by the underaged driver, not to say anything if they get into an accident with another car or with others in the car with them.
Don't risk it.
For this precise reason 'cool parents' ought to maintain a willful ignorance to what is going on. I'll try to dig up the citation but I recall a case in my hometown where tort liability was rejected where the plaintiff couldn't prove that the parent actually knew that underage drinking was going on. IIRC, all the kids attending testified to the fact that the parents never entered the basement where the drinking went on (or some such).
You think wrongly, at least in a lot of states.
Even if it has been the better part of a decade since I graduated from highschool, I doubt the situation's changed much.
There's always a few parents that openly let kids drink at their house. Those are the parties you could never convince your parents to let you go to if they knew where you were going because everyone knew what those parties were.
There were a few more where the parents maintained semi-willful ignorance. IE the kids hung out in the basement or upstairs and parents rarely bothered to check on them. But they're often semi-aware of what's going on.
The kids whose parents actually actively monitored what other teenagers were doing in their house went to other peoples houses for parties, or waited until their parents left them for the weekend to try to throw a party.
Some parents in category one and two are conscientious but justify their actions in one way or another. Generally it's something to the effect that the kids are going to do it anyway, but as long as I'm here no ones going to die and they're not going to burn the house down.
Laws that punish parents simply move the conscientious parents out of categories one and two and put them in category three.
I am too lazy to look up the RI law.
Consider the case of a parent "Al" who allows his daughter to go to a party hosted by "Betty," the mother of his daughter's friend. Al doesn't know there will be drinking at the party because his daughter didn't tell him. Al does not typically allow his daughter to drink. Al calls Betty up and asks if she's going to chaperone the party the whole time, and Betty says yes.
So when Al discovers that his daughter has been drinking alcohol under the watchful guardianship of Betty, ought Al to have a criminal complaint against Betty?
Does the situation change if (a) Al asks Betty if there will be drinking, and she lies and says no;
or (b) if Al informs Betty that his daughter is not allowed to drink, Betty agrees to prevent Al's daughter from drinking, and then fails to prevent her?
or (c) if Al informs Betty that his daughter is not allowed to drink, Betty neither agrees nor refuses to prevent Al's daughter from drinking, and then fails to prevent her?
If we accept that there can be criminal liability for "corrupting the morals of a minor" (even apart from serving controlled substances) I don't see why civil liability is out of the question.
But what damages could Al get for betty's allowing his daughter to drink despite his wishes?
Find/buy/procure your own liquor. Makes the drinking more enjoyable. Secure your own site, free of adult influence.
Of course kids are going to drink. Rite of passage. Helicoptor parents now want to do the job for them?
Do they buy their porn, and pay for their hookers too? Once the AIDS generation passed through and well meaning parents starting buying the kids condoms, instead of having them face that grown up moment of getting it on their own...
No wonder our Best and Brightest have the country in such a mess. Down deep, they really can't do anything for themselves without Mama or Daddy financing it. How sad.
To give up your independence for a few free beers, or probably a bottle or two of wine (grown up tastes, remember) at that. Sad, sad, sad. Give me a boy who marches in and buys his own rubbers and mag, if he likes, and figures out how to cage his own booze for the party, that he sets up himself.
No, I don't think you necessarily see more accidents from these parties either. What the well-meaning parents miss, is that by taking the responsibility from the kids, or young adults, and making the world "safe" for them, they never learn any limits. Because Mama has always buckled you in, sheathed your penis, provided the party spot with parents helicoptoring in nearby. So the kids don't learn to drink -- moderately -- in high school, and that growing up period is pushed to the big colleges where no Helicoptors are around. With no limits, and a wider variety of drugs than just alcohol (which is of course an illegal drug at that age if we're going for the legality stigma) kids get to step up to batting practice in the big leagues.
These parents mean well, but you have to trust and leave your kids alone to do their growing up on their own. You can't do it, or buy it, for them. They've got to make their own mistakes early on, or feature their own limited successes, in many aspects of life -- including drinking, sex, and partying. Face it grownups, you're leaching off the kids because you don't have parties of your own.
Then never another problem. When a teen can have a beer or two whenever wherever they want they only want a beer or two. It wasn't cool to pound a bunch in binge drinking anymore.
Troops, on the other hand, we had problems with usually related to gulping liquor to prove their manhood. I thought on it and noted that the troops grew up as teens in America, where we as society trained them to prove coolness by binge drinking.
See, if you lived in a community where you were used to dealing with your own problems instead of expecting outside help, you'd know the answer to that one...
I called and asked if you'd be chaperoning the party. And you said, Yes and didn't mention the authorized drinking? First, I'd deal with my kid. Then, damn right I'd want the laws enforced against the Party Hosts, adults or kids.
That's called "Contributing to the Delinquency of Minors" where I live, because underage drinking other than with your own at your own table in your own house is against the law. If my kid drinks with other kids, that's a rite of passage. If they do so with the encouragement or have the drinks provided by the adults, that's going to be more -- and better liquor likely -- than they'd procure on their own.
Parents can be creeps. How many of those parties, where the drinks and free condoms are provided, do you think would videotape the kids because it's "cute"? Under 18, they're all matched evenly. Kids beware other kids. Over 21, don't mix with the kids partying. 18 - 21 is the gray area for me.
LOL.
Obviously, not from Wisconsin and not a true German.
For reference purposes, my parents never provided alcohol for me, nor did they condone any consumption of alcohol on my part as a teenager, and as of
However, the change occured not when I was 21, but when I returned home for the summer after my first year of college. They accepted that I'd been drinking at college and were subsequently OK with me drinking in their presence.
Unless you want to repeal the laws against underage drinking, any adult who facilitates the consumption of alcohol by a minor (esp of someone else's child) is contributing to the delinquency. I don't see any way out of that. Now some may say that laws regulating the consumption of alcohol by minors are an unnecessary burden on personal liberty. Let them speak up.
To push the analysis: what if an adult possesses marijuana legally (say in a jurisdiction where medical marijuana is allowed) and gives weed to someone else's child. Should THAT person be criminally punished for contributing?
See, if you lived in a community where you were used to dealing with your own problems instead of expecting outside help, you'd know the answer to that one...
Hey, cut me some slack, my oldest kid is only seven, I'm not required to deal with this kind of problem yet. I'm just askin' ... I'm not convinced yet whether it's a good or a bad idea to have these "social host" laws.
I just want to point out that there's more to the story than whether they encourage or discourage underage drinking.
I believe that parents ought to be able to make decisions regarding the upbringing of their own kids. I suppose that would mean that I should disapprove of "social host" laws, since I think parents should be able to allow their own kids to drink (and I do believe that). But taking somebody else's kid into your own house, with intent of assisting the child in doing something objectively harmful in opposition to the child's parent's wishes? It seems almost akin to giving a lift to a child who wants to run away from home... which might well net you kidnapping charges, am I not right? (Obviously, IANAL)
Yes, some parents do this, such as when dad pays for the hooker for son's 18th birthday present. But that's been going on for decades, centuries.
What really blows my mind is that, in a couple very wealthy communities I know of, parents pay for apartments for their high school-age kids. Several years ago I had the misfortune to share an apartment building with several kids who had their parents do so. What the place looked like on a Sunday morning was beyond belief.
AFAIC, anything that makes it more likely that kids will drive drunk has a net societal disutility. The effect of DUI fatalities overwhelms all the other policy concerns by sheer volume and tragedy.
By the way, the Pope is Catholic.
Otherwise "delinquency"? Hardly, except in the most technical legal sense.
I knew where my parents' liquor was. It didn't matter if I had friends over. (Even now a decade after they gave it to me [since I did drink, but except for a little brandy on a cold night, or at weddings, or Passover wine, they never did], I've still got it, and my kids know where it is. It's probably too old to re-re-gift, but it does provide a time capsule of hostess gifts from the 1960s.)
If you're not stupid, it takes a few months, and a little puking, to learn how to drink, and a little longer to refine your taste.
At this point I've got kids who think I'm going to go out and wrap my car around a tree if I have a beer with dinner, or that I'm running a meth lab because I like to leave apple cider warm until it develops a bite and some fizz. DARE and the public schools have made my job harder. It's not insurmountable -- I got over trying to apply "drinking alone is a sign of alcoholism" to the fact that my mother sometimes had that mid-winter brandy, or that mid-summer Piels (she could make a $1 6-pack last 2 years!) and my father didn't join her.
It's quite legal in many states to give your own kid alcohol in your home (e.g. Maryland). Those states generally prohibit purchase and possesion (in addition to public intoxication and drunk driving, etc.), rather than consumption. Other states (e.g. Pennsylvania) prohibit consumption. I plan to be civilly disobedient so my kids don't spend September of their freshman year vomiting cheap beer and missing class.
So the question is, ought a parent have the *criminal* legal system on their side when some other adult supervises and shelters his child in disobeying him with respect to alcohol or other drugs?
The default assumption should be that any party not involving pinning tails on donkeys will have alcohol, whether authorized or not. If your kid won't obey your strictures on alcohol, don't let him go.
Absolutely.
There's always one straight kid, usually more, in the group who assist in getting the others home. Kids can plan these things just as good as adults, you know. Maybe better.
If you don't trust them to procure and drive home without committing any DUI's early on, when do you think they're suddenly going to pick up this ability? When they magically turn 21?
Of course parents have the absolute right to introduce their children to alcohol in a respectful manner. That's not what these parties are about.
Theyre about buying your own kid popularity, so you can be the cool parents who help the others rebel against those smart parents who don't want their kids drinking with adults outside their own home.
The idea that these party parents are doing a good deed is so laughable to me. Kids will drink. Period. Amen. End of story. We don't need adults, other than their own family members, to decide when and where and what kinds of liquours the kids are introduced to.
That's the parent's job.
Police still enforce "contributing to the delinquency of a minor law" no matter how educated and well meaning those hosting the parties are.
(And if you're buying the boy a hooker past his 18th birthday celebration, how sad. You either didn't get your job done, parents, or you're dealing with undesirable stock that probably you shouldn't pay to breed.)
That's not civil disobedience drinking with your own children. It's when you start getting tempted to teach Johnny's girlfriend how to drink with you and Johnny that something is amiss.
Other than their own, parents have no place assisting underage drinkers. Period. No matter their good slippery slope intentions "But if they go drink in the park, they might get arrested or wrap their car arounda tree."
More likely, they'll just stumble home and sleep it off.
Kids have been drinking forever. We all know that. Only recently have the lines between young people, and adults/their parents become so blurred.
I would again posit that there's something in the makeup of those "social host" parents -- something missing, some vestige of lost youth being recaptured through their child. They want to be "friends" with the kids. Equals. Rebels against the big bad, grown up world of silly laws that keep the Kids down. Libertarianism run amuck. The kids wise up to it soon enough -- that those types are feeding off their youth, but they usually play it out long enough to take the concert tickets, the free booze, the rented hotel rooms and limos, etc etc. In the end though, they're kids and naturally they move on to become grownups themselves. And then the social hosts are left ... with each other. Divorce and bitterness often results.
In short, don't do it. Tell junior, "No, you can't have the car Saturday" and whatever trouble you can manage to get into I want you home by 11." Then, you go/stay home on a date with your spouse instead and appreciate grown up pleasures. Youth parties are overrated, and you really owe it to the kids to let them grow up independently and learn consequences early on.
But thankfully, we're still not at the point and place where the default assumption is that Johnny's parents are "hosting" the lavish spread -- giggling and clicking pictures in the corners, and somehow doing all the other parents a favor taking responsibility for the initiation.
It is in Pennsylvania.
And only recently have neo-prohibitionists made the penalties for drinking (rather than causing harm when drinking) so irrationally high that reasonable parents might choose to host a the formerly clandestine party to "save" their kids from the criminal record associated with what used to be an appropriate slap on the wrist, or the auto accident in a 300HP automobile.
Which then lead the neo-prohibitionists to call for social host laws, and keg registration laws, and other ineffective uses of my taxes.
These laws are about gtting people to entirely stop drinking, by force of law. Neo-prohibitionist is exactly the right term.
More likely yes, however, the total disutility of this scenario is: (probability of a DUI accident)x(disutility of the average DUI accident). The smallness of the first term is easily overwhelmed by the largeness of the second.
I guess we'll have to disagree then Altimer.
Any parent who has to play host to his kids' FRIENDS drinking is not reasonable. Do what you like with your own; stay away from other people's kids.
It's actually protective parents like you who endanger the freedoms of all. Maybe some day life will learn ya and you'll see that.
Lol.
You never plan it, Chris! Just one day you wake up and find you are living through your children, instead of leaving them alone to grow up just as you and your buddies did.
Why not host an asshole-free party for your middle aged friends instead, and leave the kids to figure out the drinking games on their own. Trust them -- they're not so stupid as y'all seem to think, unless maybe yours are poor drivers because the parents never really let them risk. Also, if you really want to be cool social host parents, provide the drugs other than the alcohol, eh? Keepin up with the Joneses and all that. Don't want em driving to score... Lol.