Message in the Bottle : Some O.C. Parents Believe It’s ‘Safe’ to Let Teens Drink Alcohol at Home--but Experts Say No Way

It was a Saturday night party in South Orange County. The music was blaring, teen-age hormones were raging and good old mom was mixing cocktails for the kids.

It was an event that Danielle Dragotta, then 15, will never forget.

“We thought she (the mom) was so cool,” Dragotta recalls. “She was making strawberry margaritas and screwdrivers and drinking right along with us.”

For Dragotta, the casual drinking evolved into all-night parties and shots of tequila; eventually she had to seek help. Now 19 and a counselor for teens with alcohol problems, Dragotta has changed her opinion of the woman.

“It was very irresponsible,” she now says. “She was a young mother who I think wanted to keep her daughter happy.”

The thought of your teen-ager engaged in a night of drinking and debauchery this holiday season may be your worst nightmare. But what if it’s another parent serving him or her the alcohol?

Parents who openly condone teen-age drinking or simply look the other way are coming under increasing fire around the country from other parents, educators and police, who believe these adults are sending the wrong message to teens about drinking.

“We’ve been seeing that it is quite common to hear parents say I would rather let my children drink at home” than out on the streets, says Bill Cullinane, executive director of Students Against Driving Drunk.

“But what they are doing is teaching youngsters to break the law and setting a precedent for them to drink when the parents aren’t around,” he says.

In fact, recent studies--including one conducted earlier this year in Orange County--indicate that children whose parents have a lenient attitude toward teen drinking are at a higher risk for alcohol abuse than children whose parents take a firm stand against underage drinking.

Another study debunks some parents’ belief that permitting children to drink at home makes them more responsible and lessens the chances of drinking and driving.

“Those kids are actually more likely to be in a vehicle driven by someone who has been drinking or to drive when they themselves have been drinking,” says David Wilmes, of the Johnson Institute, a training and research center that focuses on issues involving alcohol and chemical abuse.

Wilmes says his research also shows that parental permissiveness is a stronger factor than peer pressure in leading kids to develop problems with alcohol as well as drug use.

“It’s a misconception that peers are more powerful than parents,” Wilmes says. “It has led parents to feel defeated and feel they have to give in when they hear their teen-agers say that other kids get to drink wine coolers at home.”

For such parents as Claudia Colton of Laguna Hills, it’s frustrating to see other parents allow underage drinking.

Although most parents don’t host alcohol parties for their teens, Colton and others worry about the influence that those parents who do may have on their children when they casually open their homes as “safe” places for kids to drink.

“I had a friend who would provide the teen-agers with alcohol, take their car keys away, make them stay the night and turn it into a slumber party,” says Colton, who has an 18-year-old daughter at Laguna Hills High School.

“We argued about it constantly. My friend figured that since they were probably going to drink anyway, she was making it safer by not letting them drive.”

Police in Huntington Beach say they confront parents who serve alcohol to kids at special celebrations, such as graduation parties. The grown-ups figure that it will make the kids happy and that since the teen-agers are going to drink anyway, why not keep the party at home, according to Lt. Charles Poe.

“We see a ton of those (parties),” Poe says. “They are still illegal. But some parents just have their heads in the sand.”

Colton’s daughter, Amy, says she knows of teen-age drinking parties that went on while the parents were home.

“The parents knew about it,” she says. “They stayed upstairs.”

But, opposed to drinking, the teen-ager says she leaves if kids bring out the alcohol.

Dragotta, who began drinking at age 12, says friends would invite her to their homes and boast, “My dad drinks and smokes pot. He’ll let us do it, too.”

Stephanie Zambukos, a senior at Mission Viejo High School, recalls a Halloween party at which the parents were home and well aware that kids were drinking illegally.

“They didn’t approve of it,” she says. “But they didn’t stop it.”

Many parents, says Zambukos, figure “kids are going to drink anyway and know how easy it is to get fake ID or get someone older to buy alcohol.”

Generally, when the parents are at home, “the (kids) try to restrain themselves. They don’t go around fighting or hitting people. But I’ve heard of parties getting out of control,” says Amy Colton, who is active in Students Against Driving Drunk on campus.

Some parents who permit drinking by teens may have good intentions, but they “are misdirected and misguided,” says Beckie Brown, national executive director of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

Says John Rushton, executive director of the Orange County chapter of MADD: “They think, ‘I’ll be a good parent. I’ll let them drink at home. I’m protecting them.’ They don’t realize they are setting out to ultimately hurt their kids.”

Across the country, schools and communities are taking aggressive steps to curb teen-age drinking and persuade parents not to contribute to the problem.

Some steps involve seeking alcohol-free prom nights and promises from parents not to serve alcohol at parties at their homes.

For example, at Laguna Hills High School, parents who sign contracts pledging not to serve alcohol to kids get their names published in a school bulletin.

“I know if my child goes to Mrs. Smith’s house for a party, she won’t allow alcohol. It makes you feel good,” says Myrna Tripp, a Laguna Hills High School parent.

However, a few parents were upset about the pledges. They thought it was a violation of rights and that it was nobody’s business what they do in their homes, says Elaine Carter of the Saddleback Valley Unified School District, which oversees the school.

In Huntington Beach, parents can be fined up to $1,000 if they or their youngsters fail to heed a warning to shut down a party where illegal drinking may be occurring.

In the Washington, D.C., area, underage drinking at parties has become such a problem that police have formed special units to deal with it. In one Maryland suburb, police broke up a teen-age party at which the parents had chartered buses to chauffeur the kids home after a night of drinking. Although the parents insisted they didn’t know the kids would be drinking, the teen-agers who hosted the party were charged with providing alcohol to minors.

Thirteen states have adopted “keg party” laws in an effort to prevent parents and other adults from purchasing kegs of beer for teen parties. California does not have such laws, according to the national MADD office.

And some law enforcement agencies aren’t hesitating to charge parents with providing alcohol and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, if they are caught.

Why do parents allow their kids to drink?

Some parents may condone drinking because they figure alcohol is certainly a “lesser evil” than other temptations, such as drugs, observed Rushton.

For parents who grew up with drugs in the ‘60s and ‘70s, drinking beer may seem harmless when compared to tripping on LSD.

“We’ve got a lot of parents who are absolutely terrified of illicit drugs. So they bargain with their kids,” said Wilmes, of the Johnson Institute in Minneapolis.

“So if the kid promises not use crack cocaine, the parents will allow him to drink alcohol,” Wilmes says.

Earlier this year, the Johnson Institute released results of a survey that involved 15,000 students from schools nationwide. The study found that two out of three parents of 10th-graders had allowed their kids to drink alcohol at some time.

Some parents cave in to kids’ desire to drink because they believe they are powerless when it comes to combatting peer pressure. But that’s wrong, according to Betsy Arnow of the Orange County Department of Education.

Although parents of adolescents often feel they’ve lost their ability to control their teen-agers, Arnow, advises them not to give up.

“Parents are influential and can give a powerful message to their teen-agers about not using alcohol,” Arnow says.

A study released this year by the county education department and UCI found that children who believe their parents have a permissive attitude about student use of alcohol or drugs are at a higher risk for using them.

The research project, conducted from 1990 to 1993, surveyed nearly 20,000 students in Orange County. Of the 6,381 eighth-graders questioned, 15.2% of the boys and 13.6% of the girls say they had had one or more drinks in the week before the survey.

Of the 6,663 11th-graders questioned, 47% of the boys and 43.7% of the girls reported that they had had one or more drinks during the week before the survey.

Parents who leave teen-agers unsupervised for long periods of time are also being criticized for inviting trouble when they are gone.

Many times when parents leave for the weekend, their home becomes a party house, and sometimes those festivities can get out of control, according to police.

Parents should realize that by leaving their kids, they may be leaving the door open for them to drink unsupervised, which may lead to tragedy. Even U.S. Surgeon General Antonia C. Novello was quoted as saying that unsupervised parties “are like a plague.”

Teen-agers may start off by inviting a handful of kids. But word spreads that their parents won’t be home, and before they know it, things get out of hand and there are 300 kids in their house and spilling out into the yard, says Orange County sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Dan Martini.

Events can really get out of control when kids have “flyer parties” and distribute notices about the party. That’s when outsiders crash the party and violence sometimes erupts, Martini says.

Parents need to be firm with their kids, Martini advises.

“They need to watch that line of discipline,” he says. “The message should be no drinking, period.”