Parents 'to blame' for drink problem in the UK

Dec 17 2009 The Journal

PARENTS who have a “laissez-faire” attitude to their children’s drinking are putting them at risk, the chief medical officer warned today.

Sir Liam Donaldson, who is also chancellor at Newcastle University, said people who allow teenagers to drink alcohol with their friends could be storing up problems while middle-class families who dilute their children’s wine may also be misguided.

Parents should avoid exposing youngsters to “alcohol-fuelled environments” or family events where drinking is the central activity, he went on.

Yet parents could show their children that – if alcohol is drunk at home – it is consumed in a “positive” setting such as a family meal.

Sir Liam, who this week announced his intention to step down as chief medical officer for England, said one of the risk factors for children drinking was parents having a “laissez-faire approach to a child drinking or getting drunk”.

The idea that if you “somehow wean children on to alcohol at an early age they won’t have any problems in later life, they will be sensible, is not supported by evidence,” he added.

In fact, studies have shown the opposite – that those who begin drinking early are more likely to binge drink in their teenage years and develop alcohol-related problems later in life.

“The more they get a taste for it, the more likely they are to be heavy drinking adults or binge drinkers later in childhood,” Sir Liam said.

“It’s a bit of a middle-class obsession – the idea of taking out the wine bottle and diluting it. There’s not a great problem to that as such but to extrapolate from that sort of situation that alcohol in general is a good thing just does not work. It’s not supported by evidence.”

Sir Liam was speaking as he published a report which suggests parents support the idea that under-15s should have an “alcohol free” childhood.