When you are a parent, there are some things you cannot control. One of these is your teenager's choice of friends. Many parents attempt it, nevertheless. Some believe that the choice of schools is the crucial factor. Others join tennis or sailing clubs in their attempts to involve their children in the "right" crowd. But the truth is that there is no milieu in this country today that is immune from substance abuse, violence and sexual exploitation.
These overpowering social influences have a momentum of their own which schools and parents cannot police. Rightly, parents worry about boys getting drunk and becoming violent, and about girls getting drunk and being sexually taken advantage of or even assaulted.
Rob Weatherill, a secondary school teacher, psychotherapist and father, tells it like it is for most parents of teenagers: "Who they choose as friends has a bearing on the risks because the only authority teenagers recognise now is peer pressure. They accept only a very small amount of parental authority. When they are out socialising, they are on the streets where the only authority is the gardai, the only adults left who have the right to intervene - in the absence of parental law, there is the actual law."
He recalls his teenage son reading with fascination a drugs information poster hung on a wall at his school. The poster listed all the available illegal drugs and their effects. The information was, for the teenager, more of an enticement to curiosity about drug abuse rather than a discouragement, Weatherill suggests.
He echoes the concerns of many parents when he says: "The educational system is somewhat at fault because it teaches adolescents about their rights. Younger teachers who don't have children are always trying to impress their students by telling them that this is an age of freedom . . . Students are told that they have sexual rights, so as a parent you have no right to tell them about sexual prohibition. The sexuality programmes in schools talk to children as if they are young adults, but they are not adults. I'm not happy about it, but what is much more worrying is the exploitation by clubs and the drinks industry."
This liberal anything-goes atmosphere is far more influential than the teenager's choice of friends, because even the nicest and most sensible crowds are vulnerable. "My son socialises with a very, very nice gang of boys and girls and I'm very happy that there is a mixture of sexes. But when he has parties at the house, I'm not allowed anywhere near . . . We're living in a society where drinking to get drunk is the norm and teenagers' attitude is `it's my Saturday night - who are you to interfere?' As a parent, you really are powerless," says Weatherill.
This powerlessness leaves parents lying awake at night, or ferrying their children to and from social events in an attempt to have some slight control over their children's safety. Many parents cannot go out to dinner because they know that the minute they drive away, there will be a "free house". It's a losing game, Weatherill asserts: "Parents routinely get embarrassed and upset and worried about their children's behaviour. Every day you hear parents saying, `I just wish these few years would just be over.'"
The foundations of healthy, well-adjusted teenage years are built in early childhood, believes Rosemary Troy, a psychotherapist and mother of five grown children. In her view, if children are certain of their values, then no matter how shaky the values of their friends, they will remain immune to negative influences.
"I think that the notion that you can choose the `right' school or club for your child is a load of nonsense. We're living in a time of wonderful social diversity and teenagers should be out meeting lots of different kinds of people. "It doesn't matter if they meet people who use drugs. It's inevitable. But if they are secure in their values, they will make their own choices that are right for them."
There is no way a parent should even attempt to control a child's choice of friends, she says: "Part of growing up is learning what sort of people suit you, and which don't. Friendship cannot be taught. It can only be learned. Children need the freedom to learn what real friendship is."
From an early age, parents need to be continually talking with children about choices, values and lifestyles, she says, so that by the vulnerable teenage years, they are morally capable of standing up for themselves. But having such faith in your teenagers isn't easy, no matter how conscientious a parent you are.
As a currently popular hit song tells us: "I love my freedom, and I love my life, so don't you worry. I'm doing fine." If only parents felt they could believe it.
