Underage and when you were of age? I know a friend whose parents don’t let him drink alcohol even as a 20yr old despite even when going out for a special occasion to a pub (age of majority is 18 here in Europe). I guess it depends on the country one lives in and the culture of their parents
Not a lot of alcohol in my house growing up, so it was never really an issue. But my parents would occasionally have a drink, and once when I was a kid I asked for a taste and my mother let me have a sip of her scotch. That pretty well convinced me alcohol wasn’t for me, and I still remember how bad it tasted.
Not sure if that was my mom’s intent to turn me off from drinking, but we never had alcohol problems.
My parents were very relaxed/sane when it came to alcohol. If they were having wine or beer with a meal and one of us showed interest, we were offered a sip. We’d try it and make a face.
When I was 18, I remember taking a beer from the fridge, watching tv and sipping it. If I did that repeatedly I’m sure it would have earned a comment but I never pushed things.
I raised my kids the same way. They are now adults who rarely drink. They knew I smoked cannabis. My daughter has never partaken, my son tells me he likes it (although we’ve never shared a bowl, that would be too strange for me).
My parents were pretty relaxed but also kind of strict at the same time. From the time I was fourteen or so, I could pretty much drink at will subject to the following non-negotiable rules.
1 - I had to keep my grades up and keep up with my chores.
2 - They would buy most anything I wanted to drink but they were not going to PAY for it. If I wanted to drink, I needed a job to earn my own money.
3 - No sharing of alcohol with my friends. No hiding of alcohol or alcohol consumption from my parents.
4 - If I had even one drink, I was in for the night. I was not allowed to travel off the property even if I wanted to go somewhere WITH my parents.
5 - ANY attempt to use alcohol as an excuse to not perform expected activities was met with stoney silence (if I was lucky). More likely I’d get a sharp rebuke followed by immediate suspension of my drinking, and most other recreational privileges. Trust me, when Sunday morning church time came around, Mom had no sympathy for a fifteen year old with a hangover.
Within those limits, alcohol was not treated as much of an issue.
Would I be right in saying that most of you and your parents didn’t come from extremely religious or deprived backgrounds?
My friends parents say that they themselves come from countries where life is “tough”. I suppose that’s why they have the repulsion to any type of recreational substances. Even legal ones and when their kids is overage. His mother seems to think that cannabis is a “hard” drug
My parents were both WW2 children and lived their entire lives in the same smallish Kansas farming community and were solidly middle class economically. Dad was fairly relaxed about religion, Mom was a good Catholic most of my life but split with the church before I hit twenty.
My mom was Jewish and my dad was P(rotestant or resbyterian, I can never remember). We didn’t really do religion. We had a xmas tree and Santa brought presents. My mom lit candles in her menorah and mumbled a prayer, but it was a solitary thing. No church/shul.
Deprived? I’d guess lower middle class. Three kids, only dad worked.
A little bit of wine with dinner or maybe Anisette with desert was common for me. At my sister’s wedding, I was only 12 and got drunk on the champagne punch and the next day I did not get in trouble, just a talk from my Dad about not drinking too much and how did I feel? “like crap dad”, “well and that alone is good reason not to drink too much”.
In most states letting your underage children drink at home is still not a crime (thankfully). Each parent can and should make their own decisions on this.
Never. Daddy drank alot, as did the rest of my family. But, underage imbibing was frowned upon. I never could being t1 diabetic. I remember my older brother coming home wasted and being severely punished.
Grew up in a Mormon house. Drinking would have been right up there with murder.
My extended family is Roman Catholic, and large; my grandmother had nine children. When I was a lad we went to many family parties where everyone was drinking and partying. I think I started drinking beer at around the age of 15. No one cared. 
I have a 19 year old daughter. When we are watching a movie at home, I will often make her a strawberry daiquiri or Margarita.
On holidays, the kids, which is to say, people over about six got a measured tablespoon of wine spooned into their Sprite.
Once we turned about 16, we were allowed to have a single, small glass of wine on the holidays. Nothing stronger. My uncle let his kids have a beer when they turned 18, and once he let them have little sample bottles of Rolling Rock. They were about 3 ounces. My mother was stricter with me, but she made it known that it was a question of what was legal, and not necessarily what she agreed with.
However, on my 18th birthday, my parents did get a special bottle of sparkling white from Russia, and serve it (it was something very good, better than Champagne, if you ask me). They gave small amounts to all my friends, regardless of age, and nothing came back to them. This was 1985, though. I think if thy did this today, some parent would call the police.
The result of this is that alcohol was never forbidden fruit, and my brother and I never drank outside of what our parents allowed us. We absolutely never drank at parties with our friends. It wasn’t cool to us, and neither of us liked beer, anyway, which was always what there was-- cheap beer.
Now, I drink very rarely, pretty much just on the holidays, and my brother doesn’t drink at all. And I actually am thinking pretty seriously of not drinking at all, because I have heard that alcohol is considered a carcinogen. It has a 15% association with breast cancer, and a strong association with some other cancers. Both my parents died of cancer, and my father was only 67. There have been several other cancer deaths in aunts and uncles, and my paternal grandmother had breast cancer, although it didn’t kill her (she actually survived it by a good 17 years, and died of a stroke at 83). But if I can stave off a deadly cancer by a few years by not drinking, it’s worth it.
I think the alcohol laws are ridiculous in this country, FWIW. 19 is plenty old enough to make up your own mind about what you want to drink.
My parents drank, and by the time I was a teenager, I don’t think it was any secret that I would drink while out with friends. After I graduated from high school, my mother would buy me moderate amounts of booze if I asked (wine coolers, that kind of thing). It was no big deal at all.
:dubious:
I’m T1, I drink, and know several other T1s who also drink. Sure, you have to watch your blood sugar some, but I never found it that difficult. Hell, eating a bagel or doing a hard workout are more of a challenge, blood-sugar-wise, than drinking in my opinion.
Strict as hell. If I was going to mooch off of them I had to drink the cheap shit. I had to kick in some cash to help cover the top shelf.
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It’s hardly even worth posting, because there’s not much to say in my case. My parents weren’t strict about drinking because they didn’t have to be; it was never really an issue. My parents themselves were mostly non-drinkers, but they weren’t teetotalers either. (My dad had some beer in the basement fridge that a friend had given him, that stayed there for literally years and became a family joke.) And I don’t remember either of them ever telling me to or not to drink, beyond my mom telling me I could have a wine cooler if I wanted, when she brought some home from the store one time while I was in high school.
(Oh, and they were plenty religious—active in the church, true believers, Mom was a preacher’s kid—but the church didn’t really teach anything one way or the other about drinking, either.)
Starting around age 6, at holiday dinners you’d get about thimbleful of wine. The explanation being that small people get a small amount, and larger people get a larger amount. Around 12 that meant about 1/2 a glass of wine. Around 16-18 a full one. I probably could have asked for a cocktail in my late teens but never bothered. When I went to France at 17 they signed a permission slip saying I could drink while over there (I had a glass of wine here and there, and some beer, but was hardly a lush).
I’m pretty sure these days they could get arrested for that where I currently live.
None of us grew up to have drinking problems. Actually, I’m on the low end of consumption for most people I know who aren’t teetotalers.
My dad is an alcoholic and my mom’s family were all alcoholics (my mother is not). Family parties and day-to-day life were pretty much beer-fueled annoyingfests. My brother and I never found drinking to be a desirable sport and while we’re not teetotalers we’ve regulated our own drinking more than any lecture or even mention of alcohol from our parents ever could. By the time we were driving we were already designated drivers.
I never had the desire to drink alcohol until my mid-20s because beer and liquor smelled horrible and no one around me drank wine. My littler brother had literally a few sips of beer before he went to college but my mom didn’t allow any more than that.
I didn’t consult my parents about underage drinking. They never brought it up either. I did what I did on the down low, and kept them from finding out. They probably assumed (correctly) I went to high school parties and had a few beers (or more). Like most things, we simply didn’t discuss it.