Don't Give Teens Alcohol -- Period!

By Barbara Cooke

Mike and Molly throw the best keg parties in town. The beer flows as burly varsity football players collect car keys at the door. Teens mill around, shouting over the pounding music, hugging and "high-fiving" the couple. Mike and Molly are so popular they could have been voted Prom King and Queen.

The problem is, Mike and Molly graduated from high school 25 years ago, and this is their son's graduation party. And the family is planning a few more beer bashes during the summer.

"Some parents see drinking as a sign of an adulthood. 'Now that you're graduating, you're an adult.' But the kids are STILL under 21," stresses Richard Yoast, director of the American Medical Association's office of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse. "Some parents seek the approval of their teens and want to be looked up to. It astounds me that they think that as long as they are serving the alcohol, they can control their kids' and other kids' actions."

Carleton Kendrick, a Boston area family therapist explains, "These parents think they should be nominated for 'Parents of the Year.' They regard themselves as enlightened crusaders for their teens. They walk the walk and talk the talk. They're so desperate to be considered cool by their kids that they believe the law doesn't apply to them. They think they're wiser and better than the parents who won't provide alcohol."

When you add drinking to natural teenage curiosity and pleasure-seeking, the results can range from throwing up all over someone's carpet and saying something regrettable, to lowered self-esteem of a girl who had sex with several guys at a party, or to tragedies like diving into a shallow pond, or fighting and injuring or killing someone, Kendrick notes. "These parents know that kids are going to drink, but they've decided to be the responsible ones and supervise their drinking. Why not pass out condoms and foam and say, 'You're going to do this anyway so why not here? Go have some safe sex and have fun.'"