Neither drunk, nor disorderly
According to the Government’s Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson, I have a middle-class obsession. Actually I am a mother attempting to have a middle-class obsession. My attempted obsession? Feeding my child alcohol. Now before you run off and report me to social services as an unfit parent, I should point out that this only goes as far as offering my 13 year old daughter a small amount of wine or beer with a meal and the occasional glass of Bucks Fizz or similar. And in that task, I have mostly failed.
Harriet doesn’t like wine or beer. She thinks spirits smell ‘disgusting’. She does like a sparkling wine plus fruit juice and is rather partial to a sip of Bacardi Breezer (other fizzy sugar-laden fruit flavoured drinks are available). She has also found out that having a second glass at New Year makes you giggly, then sleepy and rather slow to wake up in the morning.
So at the age when the Daily Mail tells us that most children are in the park or round their mates throwing cheap vodka and super-strength cider down their throats, the only drug that I have seen her under the influence of is sugar after visiting the pick ‘n’ mix at the local cinema. That, and pure youthful exuberance.
Sir Liam appears to want young people to watch adults drinking, but not be allowed to join in. Surely a total ban on alcohol until the age of 18 risks increasing drink’s allure as forbidden fruit? If the Chief Medical Officer wants adults to show responsible drinking in a ‘positive setting’, such as a family meal, then he has to trust parents to share with their children in a responsible manner. We don’t sit down to a huge roast dinner more than a couple of times a month, but when we do, we share the cholesterol-laden roast potatoes and Yorkshire pudding, together with a pudding. If we can talk about why it would not be a good idea to have that sort of meal very often, why can we not also explain how to drink healthily as well as eat healthily?
Our daughter has never seen anyone in her family smoke or get drunk. Her experience of alcohol has been of seeing moderate amounts consumed with meals or in the evening. It’s hard to believe a glass of diluted alcohol on a special occasion will lead to a lifetime of alcohol abuse. I am not usually a user of the term ‘Nanny state’ but in this case it is sadly deserved.
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