It was strictly forbidden. My family is Southern Baptist, and also my father was an alcoholic. As teenagers, my brother and I tended to get schnockered whenever we had the opportunity.
My grandmother had some booze in the house that had belonged to my late grandfather. I remember the day she realized that the level of those bottles were going down, she made the two of us take all that stash and pour it down the sink. We did so, all the while taking clandestine gulps and hiding smaller bottles in our clothes.
I grew up Mormon and didn’t have a drink till I was 30. My parents would have killed me if I drank underage. I’m 46 now, drink occasionally socially (maybe once a month), and my parents don’t know. I doubt I’ll ever tell them.
I grew up in a southern Baptist household. Although my parents were social drinkers: drinks when out to eat; served at dinner parties; holidays; etc. My dad would drink beer when golfing or fishing or out on the lake.
My grandparents would do a champagne toast on Christmas eve. If you were older than ten, the grandkids were permitted to have a small glass of champagne to toast. When my brother and I were fishing on the lake with my dad, once we were 12 or so, he would let us share a beer while we were fishing.
When we were old enough to drive or go out with friends who had cars, we were told that while they would prefer that we not be drinking while hanging out with our friends, that they were once kids themselves, and severely warned us against driving while drunk or getting in the car with another driver that was drunk. All we had to do was call them and they would come and pick us up…no repercussions!
I drank beer through high school, and tried to be responsible.
All in all, no one in my family has a drinking problem, and I attribute that to the practical lessons my parents laid out about being responsible.
My sisters and I would get a 1/2 shot glass of wine before bed every night when we were elementary school age! It must have helped my mom get us to sleep.
If I was at my Italian gramma’s house and complained of a stomach ache she would heat up blackberry brandy for me. She would also give us anisette.
Teen years were the typical high school parties at the beach or in the woods somewhere. Someone would have a keg and we’d always get a bottle of TJ Swann “wine”. I never got falling down drunk tho. Always made it home by curfew, although no one was ever concerned about drunk driving back then (70’s). I’m sure my mom, who always waited up for me, could tell that I had been drinking but she never said anything.
My mom was a drinker but has been sober for 9 years now. My dad would have just an occasional beer. My 3 sisters and I have never really been drinkers since we’ve become adults. Once in awhile, we’ll have a wine cooler, but usually nothing at all. I can live without it.
Youngest of three. My parents were pretty much checked out of the whole parenting thing by the time I was of driving age. I came and went as I pleased; they hardly ever asked where I was going and had no way to check even if they did (this was the early 90s, so pre-cell phones, and still before pagers were ubiquitous).
However I never actually drank in front of them until I was close to 30.
My parents allowed us to have sips of wine or champagne on special celebratory occasions. By the time we were 13 or so, this meant we could have a whole glass of champagne at a wedding for instance and maybe even a second glass. They would also give us a sip of beer or wine on a regular social occasion (like a barbecue) if we asked. We didn’t get our own glasses for that though. They did object to one of our under-aged cousins getting drunk at their after-Christmas party one year.
I didn’t have much interest in drinking in high school and they never caught me on the rare occasion when I did, so it’s hard to know exactly what their response would have been. On the other hand, before my brother turned 21, he had at least two car accidents, a DUI (or maybe two), and several occasions when drinking caused him to fail to be where he was supposed to be. My parents were hard on his drinking. It didn’t have too much of an effect but he just decided one day that he wasn’t going to drink any more.
My paternal grandparents gave me as much wine as I asked for starting at the age of 5 or 6. I don’t ever remember asking for more than a half glass at lunch or dinner. Maybe once or twice, I got a half glass at both meals but I don’t specifically remember it. They would offer me wine more often than I asked for it. If I stayed with them for a week, I probably got wine three to five times. They made their own wine, so I think they were proud and wanted to share. I miss that wine now that they’re gone.
My parents were/are not drinkers for the most part. In general, my dad was the sort who would buy a six-pack in September, and it would last him through football season, and one bottle might end up getting so old in the fridge that the bottle cap would start rusting. He usually had one bottle of vodka or tequila in the cabinet, and it would last him years- I think he’d just have a drink every now and then. My mother came from a pretty socially conservative Baptist family that didn’t drink much either, so there was always a sort of low hum of disapproval of drinking going on outside of special occasions like having a glass of champagne on New Year’s Eve, or maybe after a graduation or something.
So there wasn’t much in the way of social drinking in my immediate family. My paternal grandparents were more relaxed- my grandfather had a beer with dinner pretty much every night, and my maternal aunt and uncle were more bon vivants than anyone else in the family, so they usually had wine and beer around, as well as a full bar, but you could tell that my grandmother and mom didn’t much approve, even if they didn’t say anything.
So when I hit high school, I just kept it under wraps- if I planned to go drinking, I’d just spend the night at a friend’s house whose parents were cool with it. Maybe once or twice I showed up a little bit drunk- Dad didn’t give me a hard time- he mostly just laughed at me. Mom was already asleep, so it never came up with her.
My parents hardly ever drank, but they had a full liquor cabinet. My dad was in construction and liquor was a popular gift. Dad might have a beer after mowing the yard (until the kids were old enough to mow, then he didn’t have that excuse), my mother rarely (a few times a year) would have wine with a meal or an after-dinner liqueur. We could ask for sips of whatever, but it all tasted so bad I never got the habit. My sisters don’t drink (one might have wine or a beer with a meal, but that’s it). My brother drank, and probably to excess in his military days. We were raised in a Catholic household. Catholicism doesn’t have any prohibition against drinking, although drinking to excess is considered a vice.
When I was growing up, we had a literal bar in our house. My dad built it. It had a counter, a sink, a mirrored backing with a ship on it, etc., along with a whole line of full bottles of various kinds of liquor lined up along the back. I never thought it was weird until later when I realized I’d never seen another one like it at any friends’ houses.
Even weirder, they didn’t drink much. I actually can’t remember ever seeing them drink, or drunk. They were in the Masons/Eastern Star so they entertained in the house a fair bit, but that was it.
When I expressed interest in trying liquor, my mom let me. I eventually tried a sip of pretty much everything they had, and didn’t like any of it except Drambuie and Bailey’s. I was a pretty well-behaved kid, and I never once was tempted to try any of it when the 'rents weren’t around. It just held no allure or forbidden fascination for me.
To this day, many years later, I don’t really care much for alcohol.
My father was an alcoholic. My mother drank rarely. We could drink if we wanted to. That included having mixed drinks at restaurants if we chose. I rarely chose. Still not much of a drinker.
This could be me, youngest of four, my oldest sibling is 12years older than me. I had a job when I was 16 and a car. When I was 18 growing up in the VA suburbs of DC, the drinking age for beer and wine in DC was 18 (21 in Virginia), so most weekends we went to the city bars.
My parents took me to Germany in the summer after my 7th grade. Germany doesn’t have the same laws or attitudes about underage drinking and my parents invited me and my 11 year old sister to sample wines and beers.
German white wine: kinda nice stuff, OK
Helles bier: took some getting used to, didn’t like at first
Dunkles bier: OMFG, gimme that. What IS this stuff? I’m in love!
My mother was/is a devout Mormon. Alcohol was strictly forbidden in the household. I was kicked out at 18 and on non-speaking terms with my parents so any of my parents rules didn’t apply after that. I had my first drink multiple months after my 21st birthday. I occasionally drink now, maybe once every few months.
My mother came from a line of feminists, and was named after her great aunt, Frances Willard, founder of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Also, she was a doctor.
My dad was extremely sensitive to the stuff, and hated it. Traits medically associated with alcoholism, which has a strong hereditary linkage – and there were some alcoholics in his family.
So no, they didn’t drink. Mother would have been terribly worried and disappointed if we were drinking, Dad would have been unimpressed.
I don’t know how strict they would have been about it if push came to shove. They basically were not strict people. Still they might have thrown me out of the house rather than have to deal with it. We’ll never know.
Wow…this thread is really insightful. It seems that ‘taking away the taboo’ keeps people from overboozing.
Can someone offer an explanation of why parents like my friends would be SO strict when it comes to alcohol if it had the opposite effect? Why not just introduce them slowly and remove the allure?
Age of consent where I grew up was 18yrs old, I think. And the reason I don’t remember is because I don’t drink, so it’s never been something that mattered.
I had a few stray sips as a child, but they were always in the presence and permission of adults, at special events. I remember doing it at a wedding, for example. But it was literally single sips.
I have sensitive tastebuds and don’t like bitter things, so alcohol never really appealed to me on that level, and doing forbidden naughty things never extended to wanting to get drunk, or smoke, or do any drugs. It’s just never interested me. So in the end, though I found other ways to disappoint my family, I never tested the boundaries with drinking.
Some families have very dysfunctional relationships with alcohol. What a lot of the people talking about gradual introduction followed by moderate consumption in adulthood have in common were family adults that were capable of modeling moderate behavior themselves. Families where the typical use of alcohol nearly always ended in falling down/vomiting drunkenness are not families where “gradual introduction” is going to work.
There is also a matter of individuals being different. There are people who simply never like the taste of alcohol so they don’t drink regardless. There are people who grow up in families full of alcoholics who have a healthy relationship with alcohol. There are people from teetotalling families who grow up to be raging alcoholics.
So… while it can work it doesn’t always. We have a lot of anecdotes in this thread about people coming from backgrounds with moderate or not alcohol consumption, but ask that question in another place you’ll get a different result.
The age of majority (WRT Alcohol) does not apply to consumption at home in the UK - only public consumption and purchase.
My parents used to give me a very small glass of sherry at parties around Christmas/New Year - I was allowed half a glass of wine (usually mixed with water or lemonade) with Sunday lunch, and maybe the occasional small glass of lager shandy if we were cooking/eating outdoors on a hot day - I guess that started at around the age of 7 or 8
A strict fundamentalist who sees booze as “demon alcohol” won’t want their kids to ever touch it.
For any who don’t know, there is no prohibition on consuming alcoholic beverages in Scripture, only on drunkenness.