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As a child growing up, was alcohol permitted in your household?

N

NetWareHead

THAT guy
I saw this article today on cnn.com titled "Is underage drinking ever OK?" and it starts off with a story about a father and off to college 18 year old son and how they have a beer together, kinda like a first time thing between father and son. The article discusses several other parents' approaches to their children growing up. So I started thinking of my own childhood...

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/02/living/labor-day-underage-drinking/index.html?hpt=hp_c3

My parents are Italian born and I'm first generation of my family to be born in this country. My dad says when he grew up, Italy had no drinking laws and he never thought to control/limit alcohol to his children. I can remember partaking in wine (mixed with some water) as a child (I'd estimate 5-7 years old) during family dinner. As I got older, my dad let me try some liquor he would have as an after dinner drink. When I was a teenager Dad and I would drink beer while watching TV. He was raised the same way and didn;t think twice about letting me drink, as long as it was responsibly. Dad never drank to excess and looked down on drunkards as lowlives. I never ever saw him drunk and he would never even drink to excess during holidays etc... Now that I think about it, espresso and coffee was the only forbidden substance when I was a kid; my parents said it would stunt my growth and wasn't good for kids. Lol...

All my life, I thought it was kinda strange how wide-eyed my friends were when I mentioned my dad and I drinking together. I can't even count how much shit I got from buddies. They all knew my dad had a sizeable liquor cabinet at home but I always refused to gice them access to it. When I visited friends' houses, their parents kept the liquor cabinet practically under lock and key and there were never any beers in the fridge. Some houses had a special fridge for dad's beer, usually in the garage and the kids were taught it was off limits to them.

Growing up this way I never saw the allure of alcohol or felt the need to binge drink. Sure I got drunk a few times in high school and more than a few times in college. I just never had the "thirst" or craziness for alcohol that other people in my age group did and I never had to sneak around my parents. One thing I found was that all the guys who were the craziest for alcohol either had alcoholism in their family or parents denied them alcohol on basis of legality. My dad thought the law was stupid and said in his house it was his rules. He only cautioned me about friends of mine raiding his liquor cabinet when they visited home and he flat out forbade me to have parties at home where minors would be drinking, presumably out of liability issues.

Anyone else grow up this way? How was alcohol handled in your house? How long did it take before you could comfortably drink with your parents? Do any parents here raise their children with free but responsible access to alcohol? Did it work out for you and your kids?
 
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There was beer, wine, and I think whiskey in the house, plus maybe a few other liquors.

I was allowed to take tiny tastes of some of it. I didn't like any of it though, so there was never any real risk of me drinking any of it on my own. And I knew it was off-limits anyway.
I still have no taste for anything with alcohol in it; I think any of it tastes pretty nasty.


I never saw either of my parents get drunk. I don't know if my dad ever got drunk at all after I was born. My mom would only ever drink a bit of wine on rare occasions. So I grew up not really having any interactions with any drunk people.
 
My parents were very liberal with alcohol. I was given samples a number of times, but never really cared for the taste of it. I didn't really get into drinking until I was older as a result (no "forbidden allure"), and it took me almost no time to develop standards and not touch the cheap stuff.

Now that I'm making my own I probably drink more than I ever have in the past. Good quality AND cheap, what's not to like?
 
It was in my house. When I was around 15-16 my parents would let me and my friends drink at the house. Their view was if we were their we weren't out drinking and driving or getting in trouble somewhere else.
 
there was always booze in the house, but my parents dont drink much and dad never let me try any as a kid. he made his opinion of drugs clear, basically that users are losers kinda deal, but we never really talked about drinking, that i can recall.

i never drank much until i was maybe 24 or 25. now i mostly drink socially and homebrew my own honey meade.
 
i would have wine with dinner often after age 15. no beer or hard stuff but a occasional glass of wine.
 
My parents let my try wine and beer when I was in my teens. I hated the taste and it pretty much kept me off alcohol until I was about 22 or 23. Even today I don't drink a lot. Only beer or saki. I've never been drunk either.

My parents aren't heavy drinkers. They'll have a beer when they're out with their friends but at most they do it only once a week.
 
actually thinking about it. I remember my dad offering me beer when i was 17 or so.

but wine was offered at least every weekend. we would have HUGE family dinners and we all had wine.
 
My parents always had liquor of all types in the house. They would let my brother and I have a sip of wine every once in a while, and it wasn't a big deal.
 
My parents rather have me drink than smoke...

But in direct answer to OP's post:

When I was 16 my uncles scolded me for not drinking and having a beer with them by saying "C'mon, be a man! You're not a man unless you drink!"
 
Destiny said:
My parents rather have me drink than smoke...
Click to expand...

/this.

my dad said he didn't care if i drank or what i drank. BUT if he ever caught me smokeing he said he would kick my ass.

oddly he caught me smoking pot and he didn't care. just gave me warnings on what kinds to get. but a cig? oh boy the one time he caught me he kicked my ass.
 
I was allowed to drink at the hunting camp at 17, but I didn't really have any great desire to either. My friends and I started drinking a bit at that age but it wasn't facilitated by our parents. Kinda funny tho, that was 15 years ago. My sister is 4 years younger and by the time she was my age I would say around half of the parents in her age group were facilitating drinking by buying booze and giving them a place to drink. Not ours tho.
 
I had ultra-fundamentalist parents. Your body is "the temple of the Holy Ghost," which thou shalt not defile. Verily, liquor was not permitted anywhere in our household under any circumstances. My parents wouldn't even go to a party if booze was there.

And they used grape juice for communion instead of wine. Supposedly the Bible made a mistake when it said Christ turned water into wine; that never could have happened.

Christ -- I think I'll have another beer.
 
My father's German side was liberal with alcohol, but my mother was irrational, and tedious to listen to, so I only got it occasionally.
 
No. My mother never ever drink. My dad did drink at big family gatherings but only moderately.

I did try alcohol when I was old enough but did not understand why people hooked on it. Same with smoking.
 
Yep, but no one drank. The "big" event was when we actually did open a bottle of wine we received as a gift. Also, it turns out that no one knew that wine went bad over time... My first "serious" tasting of wine was with a huge bottle of unfinished, open red wine that'd been sitting at room temperature on a shelf for about a year.

Guess who didn't get into alcohol until his mid-20s...
 
didn't we already have one of these threads?

parents didn't drink, i didn't drink until i turned 21. rarely drink now. don't care for the taste of alcohol.
 
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