Allowing Underage Drinking a Risky Choice for Parents

Spring and summer bring many occasions of increased pressure and opportunity for people under the legal age of 21 to drink.  After spring break, we run right into the prom and graduation party season that lasts all summer.  One of the reasons underage drinking occurs with such frequency at this time is many parents allow it to occur.  Recent studies have shown that nearly half of underage drinkers actually get their alcohol from their own home.  Some parents dismiss underage drinking as a harmless rite of passage or feel that if they allow the drinking to take place, but take the car keys, they are keeping kids safer.  Before you make this decision, consider the following. 

1. Aside from your own children, it is illegal to give alcohol to a minor or to allow underage drinking to occur in your home.  If the police come to your home and determine that there is underage drinking going on, you may be arrested and prosecuted.
2. You may not be able to keep every drinker from leaving your party.  If one leaves and crashes a car, you could be held responsible.
3. Teens who are allowed to drink by their parents have been shown to experience more harmful consequences from their drinking than those who are not.  Committing crimes, becoming victims of crimes, getting into fights, and emergency room visits for a variety of reasons come as a result of alcohol abuse.  There is much more to the discussion than just drinking and driving and most teens do not confine their drinking to just the supervised times when their parents allow it. 
4. If you allow underage drinking to occur, you send the message that the law does not matter.  How many other laws are okay for your son or daughter to break?
5. Underage drinking is not inevitable.  In anonymous surveys, teens who report that they do not use drugs or alcohol routinely report that the number one reason they don’t is to avoid disappointing their parents.  When parents repeatedly stress to their children that they expect them to avoid alcohol and drugs it can make a powerful impact.