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This IS a serious thread. I know of a real case, let's just say very close to home, in which this happened; apparently it happens all the time up here, at least in more working class / less yuppie families.
The mother in this case was a widow; her husband permitted their son, about 5 years older, parties in the garage, and even cleared out a spot on power company land (they live out in the sticks) for him to party in the summer when he was 16 years old. He himself did not drink much, but his friends often got intoxicated. She was always much stricter than her husband, and did not approve of his laxity, but the daughter herself convinced the mother that everyone drank and their parents allowed them to as long as they supervised them, so she permitted a few drinking parties in her house or near her house, the first of which was her 16th birthday party. And yes, the daughter was fond of Jagermeister. That all changed when she stabbed a girl, intoxicated, outside a local club (which her mom did not permit her to go to, but she went anyway) on their "16-and-over" night and was charged with second-degree assault (later mitigated to fifth-degree assault).
Do I disapprove? Yes, of course. But do a lot of parents, good in other respects, let their kids and their friends drink at or near home, thinking they'll just drink anyway and be safer under their watch? Yes.
Leave your narrow comfortable middle-class Anglo mindset at the door.
So alas, we get to the punchline. Why not just start with the actual facts from the get-go? What exactly was the point of this thread?
...there's some misinformation floating around in this thread about the law regarding serving alcohol to minors. There is no "federal" drinking age. And it is not automatically against the law in many states for minors to consume alcohol... it's OK in Minnesota to let your kid have a glass of wine at dinner...
While it may be all right to let your child have a glass of wine at a celebratory event, it's a whole different legal, ethical and moral issue to serve it to someone else's minor, underage child.
While it may be all right to let your child have a glass of wine at a celebratory event, it's a whole different legal, ethical and moral issue to serve it to someone else's minor, underage child.
Agree, don't do it! It's illegal and you are sending a message to your daughter that it's ok to pick and choose the laws you want to follow which is not good either! Add the liability it's just an accident waiting to happen!Also I wouldn't let her sleep over anyone's house because you just got tipped off to what's going on!!
While it may be all right to let your child have a glass of wine at a celebratory event, it's a whole different legal, ethical and moral issue to serve it to someone else's minor, underage child.
While it may be all right to let your child have a glass of wine at a celebratory event, it's a whole different legal, ethical and moral issue to serve it to someone else's minor, underage child.
My point was not to make any legal, ethical or moral argument about serving anyone else's child but to correct factual misinformation that so often accompanies threads on this topic. Especially when that misinformation serves as a premise of the dubious (and frankly ludicrous) conclusion that serving your minor child alcohol will turn them into career criminals.
To throw in a few more of my comments on this subject:
First, most high school students will have a drink some time in their high school career, and many will drink regularly. Few of them will become career criminals, but many, if not most, will live an immoral lifestyle for at least some time in their lives.
Second, many families - at least locally - take the stance that supervised drinking with friends is better than unsupervised drinking with friends, so they let them drink either at home or at a spot where they can check on them from time to time to make sure nothing is getting out of hand. They often don't actually provide the alcohol, only set up or supervise an environment for its consumption.
Third, I think those parents, who obviously believe that their children are going to drink no matter what, ought to have stricter control of their kids and keep tabs when they're out and about. Almost every high school student has a cell phone these days; parents should make good use of this fact, especially considering they pay for most of them. If the child does not answer or (more likely) does not respond to their texts, there should be consequences.
Fourth, there is a difference between facilitating a drinking party with friends and occasionally allowing wine, beer, caipirinhas, or Jack-and-coke at family gatherings. The first I don't approve of and is illegal in most states (due to the presence of other non-related persons), but the second I do approve of, and even condone, as a way of teaching kids to drink responsibly and in moderation.
OP- What was your point in starting this thread? Do you really have a 16/yo asking to attend/throw a drinking party? I get the impression that isn't the case. Please don't waste our time. Just be up front if you're taking the pulse on a local news story.
Would it be nice if we could do what is done in Germany? Yeah.
It's illegal. We've got that.
However, it's also useless to fight the culture which is an admixture of narrow-minded special interests picking a politically naive and easy target (youth), that Anglo-American middle class mindset described earlier (the quasi-puritanical culture which very, very subtly is quite anti-alcohol), and the resultant idiotic binge-drinking culture.
My sister was going to have her sweet sixteen and wanted my mother to allow beer to be served at the party (basement) My Mother said absoutely NO, so my sister (thinking she was smart) said then she didn't want a sweet sixteen party.
She didn't get one.
Funny how when you are young you think your parents are mean. But when you become a parent you all of a sudden "get it"
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