Between zero tolerance and damage control: Policy and parental strategies concerning teenagers and alcohol

Abstract

This article focuses on the distribution of responsibility between teenagers and parents in relation to teenagers’ alcohol consumption. It does so by contrasting the way in which responsibility is ascribed to parents in public guidelines on underage drinking with parents’ posts made to an online discussion board. In Swedish alcohol policy on underage drinking, to a large extent the replacement of state control over the accessibility of alcohol with individual responsibility translates into parental responsibility. Further, in national information campaigns, parents have been urged to stand their ground and maintain a zero-tolerance stance in order to minimise underage drinking. Like policymakers, parents who engaged in online discussions on teenagers and alcohol were concerned about the effects of underage drinking. But in addition to the national alcohol policy goals of postponing the alcohol debut and minimising underage drinking, parents were also concerned about the effects of their drinking rules on their relationship with their teenagers, and about the long-term effects of their parenting strategies on their children’s later drinking habits as adults. And in contrast to public policy and national information campaigns, not all parents ascribed to themselves the power to influence their teenage children’s drinking.