Should You Drink For The Kids?

Last week, New York Times blogger Paul Clarke suggested that drinking in moderation is a good parenting tactic, as it gives children an example of how to — and how not to — drink themselves, when the day arrives. The theory goes that extremes in either direction — bingeing on alcohol or shunning it completely — will give kids an unrealistic and unhealthy attitude towards alcohol. The author explains that in his own early drinking days, it was the teens with teetotalling parents who had the worst drinking habits.

I suppose it’s a relatively plausible notion. My own parents, raised themselves by teetotallers, drank in moderation around their children. I guess I turned out okay. And now my partner and I are moderate drinkers, if the definition of “moderate” can include sharing a glass of wine about 3 times a year. By Clarke’s definition, we probably aren’t drinking enough to give our kids the right attitude towards alcohol.

Then again, I don’t know if I think it matters — outside the extremes of telling children all alcohol is evil, and being an alcoholic — how much a parent drinks. Every child is going to have their own relationship to this “forbidden” activity as they get old enough to make decisions about it on their own. It will depend on their peer relationships, their chosen social activities, any number of unpredictable factors, including, perhaps genetic makeup, how any individual approaches alcohol.

Back in my teen days, while I was not having sex, I was also not drinking. And my no-sex-having best friends weren’t really drinking either. There was no grand design to any of this. We weren’t part of any program or club or religious group. We just had other things to do and placed a lot of value on our brains. We also found ridiculous some of our peers’ notions that drinking something you don’t even like until you don’t know what you’re doing and then can’t remember it the next day was “fun” or defined “party.”

I guess I was a geek and I still am. But I am no more convinced that binge drinking is a natural part of adolescence than I am that sex is. (Witness cultures that have different attitudes towards alcohol — mostly looser ones — and their lack of a youth drinking problem.) I wish I did know how to program my children to share this attitude, but I simply don’t. Meanwhile, my partner and I will continue to control our drinking based on our own preferences and good sense and let our daughters know they should do the same when they are of age. Hopefully they will choose wisely.

What are you doing on the alcohol front? Do you think there’s any way parents can sway kids’ future choices about drinking?

image: blog.larrybodine.com