Mixed messages, alcohol confusion

Today's parents know from their experience of being teenagers that strict family rules about under-age drinking rarely work - but their more open approach to alcohol is not the solution either, according to research. Louise Holden reports.

Modern parents remember what it's like to be a teenager: insecure, vulnerable, influenced by peers, hungry for adult pursuits while deeply distrustful of adults themselves. These parents know the heart-stopping risks they took and the seamless lies they told to get away with it. They do not want to be lied to in the same way, so they attempt to forge a new kind of parenting approach, just permissive enough to bring their teenagers closer and to encourage greater trust and communication.

This is one of the findings of a new study commissioned by a group called the Mature Enjoyment of Alcohol in Society (MEAS). The group was set up earlier this year to examine Irish attitudes to alcohol and to raise awareness of problems and solutions. The study, which was carried out independently by Behaviour and Attitudes Ltd, examines the relationship between teenage and parental attitudes to alcohol. Overall, the report does not offer a blueprint for successful parenting, but it does reveal some interesting features of modern family life.

Some of the most striking aspects of the study relate to parental attitudes and styles. In an effort to keep inevitable adolescent vices under control, parents are taking an approach that is radically different from that of their own parents. Many parents allow their children to drink in their company, the report claims, or on special occasions, from a relatively young age.

"This is often justified on the basis that the regime operated 'in their day' was much more strict but no more successful; alcohol use was covert, illicit, hidden and a tempting 'forbidden fruit'. However, allowing more controlled use in the home clearly does not substitute for illicit, out of home experimentation, which is still commonplace," the report states.

It's obvious what parents of teenagers are trying to achieve. We all know that children in France, Italy and Spain are not commonly found in drunken street brawls or vomiting in alleyways. The reason, we have always been told, is that they have a more relaxed attitude to alcohol. There is no mystique about wine, which is an integral part of family mealtimes. Beer is not cloistered away in pubs; in continental Europe customers can get a beer in McDonald's and it's no big deal. We have made an attractive taboo of alcohol in Ireland.

Parents are trying to reverse this by allowing children to try alcohol at home, to get their first giddy high in a safe and controlled environment. They hope that booze will become an open subject and that teenagers will not feel they have to lie about it. But so far, the strategy is not working.

According to the MEAS survey, teenagers are drinking the family wine and then still lying about the flagon of cider in the park. Is the culture of deceptive drinking too robust for parents to kill it with kindness? The authors of the MEAS report conclude that it is.

"Essentially, the use of alcohol under age, and being untruthful with one's parents about it, is effectively a cultural phenomenon, in that it is well-ingrained in Irish society, and largely repeated from generation to generation," the report states.

Obviously parents are not going to return to the parenting styles that they experienced - it didn't keep them away from the bottle in their teens. Older generations of parents said a resounding "no, and not another word about it" to under-age drinking, a command that teenagers in the 1970s and 1980s cheerfully ignored. A "yes but" approach isn't improving matters either.

So what's the answer? What does MEAS want parents to do? The group's chief executive, Fionnuala Sheehan, admits there is much in the report that might confound parents but also points to some practical measures that it seems to suggest.

"There is evidence of widespread youth dishonesty about under-age drinking (how much, how often, etcetera) and despite the greater empathy many parents hope to foster, this does not seem to be reciprocated by their children with a more honest dialogue about alcohol," she says. "A worry highlighted by these studies relates to a probable decline in parents' contact with their children's friends' parents. Many don't seem to have the time to forge links with other parents, but others undoubtedly don't have the inclination. If anything, parents can seem suspicious of, and defensive when, alcohol use is raised by other parents; quick to defend their own children, and slow to discuss their approach to it honestly."

A central requirement, Sheehan contends, is for more genuine and open discussion about alcohol among parents. Variations in approach from family to family lead to a "divided front". When teenagers from several families get together, the rules of the most lenient family tend to apply. Teenagers who are refused alcohol in their own homes will get it in the home of another family in which under-age drinking is either openly sanctioned or where a lack of vigilance creates the right environment for it.

Sheehan doesn't believe that an open approach is necessarily the wrong one, however.

"Talking to children about the responsible use of alcohol from a young age is important, but the discussion has to go on right through the teenage years," she says. It also has to start early - of those teens in the survey who had drunk alcohol (64 per cent), the median starting age was about 13 years old.

Talking is important, but so is doing. The main thrust of the current MEAS awareness campaign is to remind parents that the way they use alcohol is far more influential than what they say about it. Refusing a teenager a glass of wine at the table while polishing off two bottles yourself is almost certainly the wrong approach.