Strollerderby : binge drinking

Should You Drink for the Kids?

Shannon LC Cate — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 23:02:00 GMT

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 T-totalling parents who had the worst drinking habits.

I suppose it's a relatively plausible notion. My own parents, raised themselves by T-totallers, 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?

For other weird things I think, see:

Y Chromosome Does Not Equal "Child Abuser"

Let's Help the Quintuplet Mom from Sudan

Name Your Baby Whatever You Want, For Heaven's Sake!

There's No Such Thing As "Compulsive Caregiver Syndrome"

Teens Don't Need to Have Serious Romantic Relationships

image: blog.larrybodine.com

Pregnant Binge Drinker Faces No Criminal Charges

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 21:45:00 GMT

If there’s anything sadder than domestic violence, it’s domestic violence involving a pregnant woman and an insane quantity of booze. Last week, New Zealand police, responding to a 4 a.m. domestic violence complaint, found a heavily intoxicated woman whose partner had hit her over the head with a bottle. She was nine months pregnant, and had been drinking with her partner for eight hours straight.

The man was imprisoned on assault charges, but police were uncertain about how to deal with the mother-to-be. They considered bringing charges against her for endangering her child by binge drinking, but ultimately decided to refer the case to Child, Youth, and Family—largely because maternal substance abuse is not explicitly outlawed. In some rare cases, pregnant drinkers have been charged with attempted fetal homicide, but New Zealand, like the United States, does not criminalize the simple act of drinking while pregnant.

This recent case has New Zealand police hoping to change that. Detectives involved in the case have called for legislation banning maternal substance abuse, believing that's the best way to stop addicted mothers-to-be from endangering their fetuses. But others feel that throwing pregnant women in jail is not the answer. Furthermore, legislating pregnant women's behavior could be a slippery slope. While many pregnant women feel comfortable having a daily drink, others would never consider consuming even a drop of wine.

What do you think? Should drinking while pregnant be against the law?

Photo: The Daily Mail

They say: Drinking with your kids makes them less drunk

Brett Singer — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:30:00 GMT

Now we've all gotten drunk. Fall down, sloppy, mess-making drunk. My first bad drinking experience involved vodka, straight up, in a garage during a thunderstorm. It ended badly. I had a couple of others, but not too many that included me puking my guts out. But it happens.

According to this article from Time magazine, it might happen less if you drink with your kids. But that's illegal, you say. The drinking age is 21. Well, yes, but not exactly. According to Time, "When Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act in 1984, it explicitly allowed kids to drink at home or in 'private clubs or establishments.' Similarly, under most state laws, it's legal for those under 21 to consume alcohol under certain conditions. Only six states, mostly rural ones, ban underage alcohol consumption completely."

This "have a drink with your kids" thing isn't a new idea. A recent Babble Bad Parent essay by Gretchen Roberts titled Booze Clues talks about the idea of making alcohol something commonplace rather than this big taboo thing, which only makes it more interesting. The Time Magazine article backs up this notion, quoting a paper from the 2004 Journal of Adolescent Health as saying, "Drinking with parents appears to have a protective effect on general drinking trends."

The problem, of course, is when "not uptight about alcohol" translates into "letting the kids get wasted in the basement with their friends." Drinking a glass of wine with dinner is very different from getting drunk. When I sat in that garage, swilling vodka straight from the bottle, it was partly about the alcohol but also partly about being young and stupid. (I'm not condoning it or calling it a "right of passage", nor am I saying it was a sin worthy of caning. Just being honest.) Drinking until you, ahem, hurl, is something that you should only do when you're young and stupid. The other time I got sick from drinking was in college and again, I drank too much and I paid the price. There were other people that I went to school with who got that wasted on a regular basis.

So should you drink with your kids? I don't know. Personally, I don't think kids need wine any more than they need soda. That doesn't mean that we present alcohol (or soda) as something off-limits and exciting. Neither is a particularly big deal in our house, and different people have different rules. As with so many things, behavior that a reasonable person can handle (letting kids have a sip of wine every now and then) can become something else entirely in the hands of an irresponsible moron (hosting a kegger at home.)

Do you think that letting your kids in on the drinking at home will make them more or less likely to overdo it with liquor someday?

image: Addiction Inbox

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Pregnancy and Booze: A Match Made in France

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Tue, 06 May 2008 16:30:00 GMT

Back pain and swollen feet bringing you down? That bloated feeling making you want to jump out of your skin? Make like the French, and have a vodka tonic, or even a couple of sérieux (roughly translated as, “one serious beer.”) According to a new study, 52 percent of French women consistently hit the bottle while pregnant. I knew I was a French major for a reason!

I know what you’re thinking: those French and their hedonistic ways. Well, in this case, the majority of tipsy pregnant mademoiselles simply didn’t know that drinking alcohol presents a health risk to their babies. And we’re not just talking an aperitif before dinner.

Here it gets a bit disturbing: Of the 837 pregnant women interviewed, 13.7 percent had at least one binge drinking episode, consuming five or more drinks, during their pregnancy. (Compare this to American women, of whom only 12 percent consume the medically approved daily drink while pregnant.) Tragically, two of the women in the study gave birth to babies with fetal alcohol syndrome. Let’s hope this study serves as a wakeup call to the French that at least one American dietary obsession just makes sense.

Photo: hoverdontsit.typepad.com