Yup. Rape has nothing to do with drinking and all about what boys are taught about sex and women while young.
I think teaching kids to drink is a fine idea. My parents were quite liberal, but not enough to do that, and I had a few rocky episodes in college while trying to figure it out. Luckily no rapists, only fine upstanding men, were around when those regrettable episodes occurred.
Responsible behavior toward women (and men for that matter) should be a lesson that all parents teach.
Personal choice, but ya, if your kid is going to experiment with booze at college, might be better to have at least a little experience at home.
My big brother got me drunk one night when I was in middle school. It was great. The next night I drank the same amount, was falling down drunk, and then woke up puking. Now, I don’t recommend that per say, BUT it was a great lesson to learn that drinking too much can be a very fine line, especially if not experienced and/or with hard alcohol.
Dunno if I want to go down that path with my almost 16 year old daughter, at the same time I do want to prepare her as much as possible for (what can be) the big bad world.
Yeah, when people say ‘like they do in Europe’, they generally mean ‘like a subset of mostly-sensible people do, in parts of Europe’
Of course what they mean is: demystifying alcohol by allowing children to taste and experience it in safe moderation, in safe, sociable contexts, as they grow up - so as to diminish the boundary effect that can occur when young people come of age, and suddenly everything that was previously forbidden, is now permitted.
Yeah, nobody got me plastered as a kid, and by the time I got into alcohol-fueled parties I regularly got blotto. I don’t any more, but that’s only because I go to sleep sooner now :). Judging by my experiences with college-age kids these past few years (I’m 35 and back at uni, which is cool but weird), most don’t know how to stop either.
That said I’m impressed by the responsible attitudes some of my fellow students have regarding drunk friends - I’m in Paris so there’s no question of driving home drunk because there’s no question of driving period ; but they’ll take good care of blitzed friends, take them home, know what to do when one goes into a coma (which is to put them on their sides and call the EMTs), watch over too-drunk girls etc…
But “responsible attitudes” re:alcohol and drugs aside ; the overwhelming majority of the girls I know well enough to talk about that stuff did get raped at one point or other in their lives, for what it’s worth.
Yeah, yeah, I’m the common denominator, I know :D.
[QUOTE=RobDog]
Of which European model do you speak? The one in this corner of Europe is “go to the town centre, drink as many two-for-one beers as you can, throw up, pick a fight”.
This is not hyperbole.
[/QUOTE]
Ireland ? 
Robdog’s based in London.
Plus, gotta point out that your link is to a song which is an original composition by an American band.
Having said that, yes, we do have a problem with youth and binge-drinking in Ireland. Though, FWIW, my own experience as a youth in Ireland and the US was that American youth were much, much more irresponsible drinkers than Irish youth. They had no clue at all about how to drink and survive, basically.
But that was in the eighties; things may have changed since.
But that’s not really how it works is it?
I mean 100% great that you’re teaching them that, but in the high school atmosphere that doesn’t really mean much. They’re wise words and all but they wont see it that way. Being part of the crowd in school is a really big deal to people.
I don’t think anyone is really advocating teaching kids to take shots of vodka or things. More like teach them responsible use of alcohol, a glass of wine at grandmas birthday dinner, champagne on new years eve and so on. Maybe even let the kid have a taste of whiskey on his birthday.
Responsibly teaching alcohol kids is much better than keeping it completely away from them, since they are 100% going to be in a situation where alcohol is available, and it’s better for them to know how it works then.
I kind of feel like the people in this thread need “getting drunk in college” demystified.
The problem isn’t “oh shit I did too many Jaeger bombs and now I’m totally fucked up raping people (or getting raped)”. The problem is that drinking culture in college is more often than not about getting as drunk as possible off of widely available cheep alcohol served out of red Solo cups. Unless things have changed radically in the past 20 years, most of the time college students aren’t going to the bar to hold an Algonquin round table over a pint of lager or host wine and cheese parties. They are sitting in their dorm room pre-gaming with a few games of Asshole or Three-man before doing a fraternity house crawl (Alpha through Zeta) finally ending up at the one local college bar with a Beirut table where they can hammer shots between games.
Kids at that age learn their limits pretty quickly. Then they go and push them each weekend.
You’re right but still don’t you think it would be better for the kids to know how alcohol affects them? I mean there is a point that you don’t really want to cross when you’re getting drunk.
Kids the rape monsters fueled by alcohol.
It’s true though that it’s mainly getting really drunk and not having a pleasant evening.
“No, no, Jimmy. Do the shot in one quick motion, mostly wrist, then chug the beer. How many times do I gotta tell ya?”
Sooner or later they are going to find out alcohol makes you feel awesome, and wonder what other bad information you told them.
This is the problem with trying to teach kids not to drink and do drugs. Parents tell kids drugs and alcohol are bad, but never tell them the truth about why people take them in the first place. They make you feel better than anything you can do sober. For a while.
I’d want to research more if there was actually causation or just correlation here. If binge drinking is a big part of the culture, then people are going to have more fun doing it, and feel part of the crowd when they are, especially if they are at a party where everyone is drinking hard, and even if they just doing it with their smaller friend group at their dorm.
But regardless, adults trying to teach kids and young adults to not care about popularity and being cool sounds like a foolhardy mission. Parents can mitigate it, and teach good self esteem so kids don’t base their entire worth on popularity, but you’ll never get rid of wanting to fit in and be popular.
What I would like is to lower the drinking age to 19, and maybe lower penalties for drinking younger. I think part of the reason for binge drinking is that since underage kids can’t go buy alcohol themselves, if they have access to it at a party, they don’t know when the next time they’ll be able to get some, so they drink like they’re camels in the desert who don’t know when they’ll drink again. And if a 17 year old does drink too much, I want them to be able to get help for getting home or getting away from danger without worrying about getting a huge ticket or getting arrested.
I do think there is some value for people to find out what kind of drunk they are, so if they’re a happy and dancy and mostly aware drunk then they don’t need to worry about what they’ll do or danger they’ll get in as much as if they are an angry or gropey or quickly-pass-out drunk. But many college kids think they are invincible, so even if they get to a point and feel terrible and don’t want to cross that point again, they’ll forget about it, or think it will be different the next time, or want to party with their friends and not care.
And maybe the rape monster is fueled by alcohol, but it doesn’t come out of nowhere. If someone respects women and values and wants consent, then you can get them however drunk, on whatever type of alcohol, in whatever situation, around lots of scantily clad drunk women, and they won’t turn into a rapist.
Texts from Broks phone show he has been drinking and doing :eek:DRUGS:eek: since at least 2014.
I was just kidding with the rape monster thing since some people were a bit… I don’t know how to say but yea. That part was sarcasm by me.
Ok, it can be hard to detect sarcasm sometimes in threads like this since people do say some off things seriously.
My mom taught me a young person should learn their limits.
Unfortunately, she also taught me to test and expand my limits.
Apart from the relatively few tragedies that make the national news, binge drinking in college seems to be one of those rites of passage. I haven’t seen many studies, but I don’t think that binge drinking in college leads to alcoholism or dangerous behaviors once the young person matures.
It seems like a larger percentage of young people age 18-22 binge drink that 28-32 year olds. It is just that most of those 18-22 year olds mature and start drinking in a socially responsible manner. Those that continue to binge drink later in life are those that have a problem with alcohol.
I’m not sure that any amount of parental introduction to alcohol would change this. On one hand, a parent does want to teach their kids to be responsible, choose good friends, make sure you don’t drive after drinking, have a way home, etc., but on the other hand, you don’t want to make the kid think that he or she must drink in college or else is strange.
Guys like Biden and Trump are absolutely right. Maybe they could handle alcohol responsibly, but why take the chance? They have both had successful careers and (seemingly) happy lives without it. I mean, maybe I could enjoy cocaine recreationally without problems, but why in the hell would I want to take that chance?
I’m going to take a wild guess that I wasn’t the only 18-to-22-year-old for whom drinking was merely a means to an end, namely sex. Not in an attack-the-passed-out-person way, more in the we-can-both-now-ignore-social-mores way. So on some level, I think enhancing responsible drinking may be helped by being more open about sexuality.