It's hard to believe how depraved, sections of the population have become in Britain. Half of all the underage drinkers are supplied by their parents, many thousands of irresponsible mothers and fathers are turning a blind eye while children as young as ten get blind drunk.
Findings from the Offending Crime and justice survey show that about three million children between the age of ten and seventeen admit to drinking in the past year, the study said there was a strong association between drinking and crime, 26% of those who drank one to three times a month had committed a violent offence.
Home Office Minister Meg Hillier said "Its not something that government or legislation can solve, it's much more of an attitude in society. In the end the buck will stop with the parents" She must be joking.
starrman
23 Comments
The statistics linking drinking and crime have to be used properly. This is not necessarily a cause and effect relationship. There are probably many other related problems not discussed here that need to be addressed.
Also, the description of data is incomplete here. If it turns out that 90% of the kids in the study drink between 1 and 3 times a month, then the correlation is absolutely meaningless.
I'm convinced that first there is a causal element here but second that as you say, there are other related problems (causing both).
I don't think the buck does stop with parents (so, I'm not sure where it stops) but do think government/legislation can only do so much.
*Also of course the incidence of drinking rises with age, 88 per cent of 16-17 year olds, 29 per cent of 10-13 year olds, reported having had a drink in the previous 12 months. I've no figure for offences by age.
One comment about the buck stopping with the parents thing... Even though I think it does -- it doesn't mean that you can always control kids behavior. They do have minds of their own! -- And they are influenced a lot by their peers. But in my mind, parents are always the first line of defense, and having concerned and involved parents can make a huge difference!
Yup. Me da, _ of German descent incidentally but several generations in the past, that link _ made beer at home. Dad was opposed to drinking "the hard stuff" _ a fifth of whiskey would last him about 20 years. On rare times during the Christmas_New Year's holiday period, a small bottle of Mogen David might emerge, for teeny glasses all around. Beer, that was different. Beer was just something one drank. I faked a type of ID card of the time and bought beer at legal establishments, having had a kind of advantage of looking older when I was young and younger when I am old. The societal atmosphere was different then in quite a few ways, incidentally _ but it was still illegal, period. I didn't care then and I don't care now _ but I'm glad I didn't get caught.
There's even a story about that home brew _ which, btw, was awful stuff and often a failure because Dad wasn't adept at determining when it was ready to bottle. I was contacted a few years ago by some classmates about a school reunion, and one woman asked would I mind if she posed a personal question. A bit worried, I said to go ahead and ask. Her question: Could she have the recipe for that beer; it was the only beer she had ever liked.
There was something of a stereotype of newspapermen being heavy drinkers, but I noticed over the years that the stereotype first was vanishing and then had vanished as the current health kick gained momentum. In latter years, I teased in chat and elsewhere online about beer lovers and heavy drinking, but I've found even that is mostly out of style these days.
As I say, attitudes were different, and there was no link between teen beer drinkers and general crime, if one ignores the crimes of underage purchase and underage drinking. Nor did those illegalities produce a disdain for being law-abiding _ my peers would have nothing to do with "real crime," so to speak, like theft or bodily harm, let alone "drive-by" shootings. They fought, but with fists, not knives or guns. But we lived in the country and were naive enough to follow something of a code of behavior that wasn't written but nonetheless was quite strongly applied. In my quite-late teens and living in town on my own, none of the above applied, and I knew a scattering of alcoholic teen-agers.
What all this proves or means eludes me _ probably nothing, but I decided to speak anyway. *s*
One thing which has always baffled me about the uk is, how can it be legal to have sex at 16, but not to be able to drink til 18? I'm pretty certain I know which of these is the more important in the long term. Now i'm in holland, and to drink beer at 16 is legal, which is also the age of consent. That at least shows a little more consistency.
A different way around, is the american way, where kids can drive at 16, but not drink til 21. Again a curious way around but then, theres always the ability to get hold of a gun which pretty much negates any sort clarity there.
I've drunk underage, even been drunk underage a few times (albeit a while ago now *sulks*), and when i came home to mother by god did I feel awkward the morning after! The ability to admonish yourself for doing something like that means you know the difference between whats right and whats wrong. These days, I think that ability is sadly lacking in our kids today, and thats down tothe parents inability to instil this into them, and also the governments crazy pc rules which have parents scared to administer punishment due to the likelihood of being sued for it by their kids!
Yes! We're not going to solve all of societies problems by fixing the family, but it would sure make a dramatic improvement. The divorce rate really concerns me.
"and also the governments crazy pc rules which have parents scared to administer punishment due to the likelihood of being sued for it by their kids!"
Ain't that the truth!
On a side note, it's interesting to me how powerfully "memes" influence our lives. A meme is basically a persistent thought in the societal mind. (Our world, in total, really does act like a big brain when it comes right down to it!) Everyone has their own personal excuses/reasons for what they do. But individual thoughts and actions can not explain societies ills. You have to look at the big picture, and the ideas that persist from generation to generation. How do you change something as powerful as a thought in the global brain?
Ain't that the truth!
not really. (Not in the UK..) In 1998, a UK child who was beaten with a 3-foot cane was awarded damages by the European Court (because of the severity of the beating), but in 2004 a Bill to outlaw corporal punishment failed. Not that beating children is the only way to instill discipline and respect, anyway.
Thanks for teaching me a new word jbravo! My new vocab for the week.
Given that many adults drink large amounts, it is very difficult to turn around and say to teenagers 'do as I say and not as I do'. I lived in London for four years and saw some of the worst binge drinking I've ever seen done by people in their twenties and thirties.
I think one way to help would be to ban alcohol advertisements. They are all pervasive and stick in your mind. They're very effective. I don't drink Carlsberg or Magners but when you've watched enough ads on the telly showing ice cold drinks, you do start to think mmmmmmm!
When all is said and done, I'm really more worried about the increase in violence and fear than underage drinking. I wish people weren't carrying around knives.
i tend to stay away from heavy drinking and heavy drinkers - if i have a drink i limit it to one or two (two being the absolute limit).
getting trashed is a waste of money, its kinda stupid, and hurts the body - plus you lose control of yourself
i say that yes parents are responsible for their children getting drunk - but we could also be responsible by making it not so "cool" to get pissed! (ex: lindsay lohan, paris, etc. - what a bunch of idiots)
On another occasion, I was sitting with my girlfriend in the bar of the local ice-rink. The barman came over and asked her how old she was. "Do you mind?" I asked, indignantly, "This is my wife". "Oh - I'm sorry", he said and gave us a drink on the house by way of apology. We were both 15 at the time.
I mislaid my cherry at 15. The girl who took it was younger, but hers was nowhere to be seen.
My parents didn't drink at all. Nor did they agree with out-of-wedlock sex. My parents had no influence on my drinking or sexual promiscuity - that was peer pressure (although it didn't actually take much). It may be that it was because my parents didn't drink that I was drawn to it - if you ban alcohol advertising you make it mysterious and secret and therefore all the more attractive. Rather than banning alcohol advertising they should have huge posters of dead people, drowned in their own vomit. Now that might work. Working in a volunteer centre for druggies and alcoholics showed me a few things - a few things that guaranteed I never stuck a needle in my arm, drank spirits or took amphetamines more than just a couple of times.
Having said all that, I do believe the buck stops with the parents (and to a certain extent, teachers although they tend to be a bit crap at instilling virtue). My ex-wife and I both smoked all the time my kids were growing up. Today, both adults, neither of them do. We smoked marijuana too and never hid it from them. Of course there was none of this silly ritual involved, it was just like smoking cigarettes. They saw nothing abnormal - it was just a part of their environment. When they were old enough I told them about marijuana and other drugs and alcohol. I pointed out various parents of friends who did go overboard on alcohol and they could see why our lifestyle was infinitely better. I pointed out a friend who had 'died' several times due to drug abuse - he looked terrible, had one lung, one kidney, Crohns Disease, Hepatitis and only half a liver. These were object lessons. They worked. On the occasions my ex-wife and I tried to give up smoking we hid nothing from the children and they saw how hard it was - how angry, miserable and desperate we got - and failed. More object lessons.
Yes I used to binge drink (binge drinking is how it works in the UK because of the drinking laws. If the pubs are only open for a few hours at a time, you only have a few hours in which to drink, so you do so quickly, getting as much as possible into you in the time available. This is changing, but the effect on binge drinking will take longer to sort itself out). But I've never started a fight, never hit anyone in anger, never carried a knife (unless I was camping), never got violent (that's not strictly true, but on the very rare occasion I got angry enough to kick things, I only kicked MY things and they were, only things). I've never stolen anything. Whilst I can agree that alcohol can be the cause of violence (I've seen it), it is not fair to assume that it must.
My kids, despite growing up in an environment that was, shall we say, a bit different; we smoked dope, as did our friends, we lived on a council estate and they went to a rubbish junior school (hobsons choice), have grown into decent adults. The oldest earns more than I do and the younger will too in a few years. The oldest owns more property than I do. He travels the world (he's in Bulgaria now setting up a new office) and drives a nice car. The secret? Education. And they got that from me. I have a friend who paid me a great compliment: he said he was modelling his parenting on mine. It is interesting to see his kids are very well mannered, well behaved, bright and eager. My kids lived by, and went to school along with, people who subsequently went out and beat people up or became crooks. The only difference was we told them how they should behave and showed them by others' examples what could happen if they didn't.
Shock therapy works.
To be honest, I was not ready for kids when the first one came along, but accepted the responsibility of turning him (and then, them) into a human being I would not be ashamed to know. This started from the moment they could comprehend and continued until the eldest went to university (the younger one didn't). My eldest son wanted to play football (soccer) and there were no teams near where we lived so I started one, gathering lads from the area, getting some sponsorship from a local company and joining the league. I treated them all as mates, not 'kids'. They respect me to this day. We had some small successes (I still proudly display my trophies) and handed the team over to another when we outgrew it.
A lot of people think that childrens' opinions are not worth listening to, or that their ideas are 'silly'. But I've found that children can generally see through the crap - most of them can judge an adult within seconds and once you have lost a child's respect, it's gone forever. I've always treated children (not just my own) as little adults and given them the respect I would give an adult. They do respond to that. When they were wrong I told them WHY they were wrong, not just that they were.
I've always treated 'age' as just a number, with no real significance. I accept older (usually, but not always) equals wiser but appreciate that younger never means invalid. We are still great friends, my kids and I and I'm honoured that some of my lads' mates are mine too. What's more, some of MY mates consider my offspring THEIR mates too. That's cool.
In several schools I've worked in we've had huge problems with kids coming in off their faces from God knows what but beyond sending them home and reporting it, we can't do much :(
I would also like schools to have more powers to expel troublemakers. In the UK and Ireland now it's virtually impossible to expel someone. This gives students the idea that there are no consequences to their actions. I think if students realised there was a real possibility of being kicked out of school, their behaviour would improve. I'd rather spend my time with kids who are interested in achieving and try hard. They are the kids who should be rewarded. I work in a catholic school now, so we have a strict ethos on behaviour. For teachers in non religious schools, it's difficult to enforce ideas about things like drink and drugs because the teacher has no idea what that child is taught at home. Sometimes, we were positively discouraged from discussing any 'issues' with students in case a parent might complain. This was in a non religious school in Middlesex.
parenting is a combination of parent and child...there is a danger in treating your children as friends and equals...they expect to have a say in decisions only you as a parent can make for them, because they havent got the prospective yet to see the long term effects of their choices...
treating your children as humans however, unlike some people I know that treat them as their pets....is a good thing...
You're absolutely right. I treated my sons as mates, as stated above, but whilst I'd always listen to reason, or at least, I hope I did, my right to make such decisions was never questioned. The secret is to never forget what it's like to be 5, or 7 or 10 or 15. If you can see things from their perspective, it's easier to point out their errors in judgement, based on your own experience. It's percieved wisdom I think, along with a sense of humour, rather than a rod that engenders respect. I have discovered though that liking 'olden day music' is no barrier, lol.
You cannot treat a child as equal in all things, of course not. If you do, you'll spoil them. You cannot impose rules on an equal and one thing I think we all agree on, is that children (like most adults) need rules.
Q:what worked for me as a kid, and didnt work for my sister later on, actually works again on him..:Q
I don't know whether you've seen Harry Enfield's 'Kevin' character. If not, he's an overexagerated 13 year old teenage horror, full of the angst, growing sexual frustration and anti-parent and all things parentish. He's bloody hilarious. Well, when my eldest son hit 13, he became the very thing Harry Enfield was taking the p*ss of, and so we started to call him 'Kevin', though not having seen the program, he didn't get it. We ensured he watched the next episode and watching his parody cured him. He saw how ridiculous it all was. When we tried the same trick on his brother two years later, he played on it and in turn parodied Kevin. Still, chalk and cheese.......
http://www.yummyuck.com
Hey you know AdGuy always gets the last word! ;)