Thanks to @apple23 and @merc81 for pointing out that I wrote binge drinkers tend to study less than four hours a week. I should have said four hours per day. I misunderstood a table entry called “hours studying are less than 4” to mean per week.
It can be really interesting to have one good parent and one get real parent in a household. I agree that kids do to some extent model the drinking habits of their parents but binge drinking seems to be far beyond what either type of parent is prepared to handle.
Do the seniors on campus also binge drink? I wasn’t able to find any info breakdown on this. But if not being able to go legally to bars and legally buy alcohol is causing kids to do this, then why would they once they are 21?
Good question. I personally think heavy drinking and binge drinking is an under 21 thing and kids slow down as they age and can go to the bar.
I agree with several of you that it’s not stress nor culture. It’s adolescence. They think getting pissed drunk makes them seem more adult and cool. Although I do agree that in big schools or schools in big cities, there are more options outside of alcohol that one can do to prove one’s “adultness” and “coolness”.
Maybe culture a touch…but definitely “not stress”. Seems to be the favorite excuse for all kinds of behavior. I have one son who gets stressy and I always ask him if he’s getting to the gym regularly and he says “No, I’m so stressed out I’ve been in the library all the time” and I say, well take an hour break and go work out you’ll feel alot better. Generally he’ll call me in a few days and say ‘you were right.’ I feel alot better. Kids that say they binge drink because they have stress have bigger issues than “stress.”
Go to the home town of any large, residential, non-selective state university and walk around on a FR or SA night. Even if the school is urban/suburban and with good weather, you will see plenty of kids staggering around. And it isn’t because all those kids are so stressed out about maintaining perfect GPAs in order to access a job at Goldman Sachs.
College kids drink primarily because it is fun!! It is how you party.
The trick is to keep them safe enough until they eventually learn (most of them) how to party in a way that is safe and which doesn’t mess up your non-party life.
Agree, and i’ve seen things i never saw before in my life now that I have one in a Big 10 school. I never had a problem until colleges started saying girls that drink aren’t responsible for what they do and boys that drink are responsible for the hook-up outcomes even if they are also drinking. That’s where I drew the line and said back the train up! If kids can’t handle their alcohol, and colleges allow them to drink under-age without repercussions (unless you are unfortunate to be a male) then we have a societal problem that needs fixing. I’m moved to be in favor of beer and wine for under 21, get them away from the house parties and back at campus social functions with kegs and supervision or into the bars where at least a bartender can cut them off if they are piss ass drunk.
@momofthreeboys Agree completely! From what I have seen at college, girls are often quite forward and they can get just as drunk as the boys. Sex is a two-way street unless there is violence involved, but somehow the drunk boy usually gets blamed by the drunk girl if there is an issue of regret later. (No, nothing bad happened to my son, but several of his friends did get in trouble with campus and town police for drinking at various colleges. Despite my warnings to him, I knew my older son was drinking with his fraternity, and I worried about him for three years of college, until he turned 21.)
My boys can be drafted for war, vote, be held responsible for student loans and credit card bills, and be prosecuted for crimes as adults at age 18, but they can’t have a beer without worrying about being kicked out of college and/or arrested.
I am highly in favor of strong DUI penalties, but I am also in favor of treating 18-year-olds as adults in all areas of the law, not just some. The drinking age was 18 when I was in college, and my friends and I all survived just fine.
Yup, yup and triple yup. Throw the book at them if they drink and drive, but for pity sake let’s get this drinking thing back under control legally. Most of us drank in college, but believe me I bet very, very, very few of us drank like some of the women and men 18-20 these days. We were legal at 18 and drank at house parties, but generally we wandered out to bars where we could see people without being smashed into house hallways and where we could dance. But even that has become highly sexualized…I know when my last one was in high school they issued an ultimatum that all the dances would be canceled if kids continued to grind while dancing and they ended up doing body searches to keep the alcohol out of the dances. You have to have your head in the sand not to know what goes on in high schools or at least in some municipalities like ours that is upper middle class and predominately white and somewhat rural.
Bottom line we have two formidable things that we either accept as part of this generation or we need to find solutions. One, the undercover pre-party vodka drinking and general underage drinking and two, the highly sexualized atmosphere that both boys and girls participate in AND that is exacerbated by alcohol. As I said lower the drinking age for beer and wine and my opinion is don’t regulate kids sex lives…if it’s criminal we have a system for that and direct the kids there. It seems like a very fuddy-duddy repressed attitude in DC to try and regulate sex, but turn the cheek to breaking drinking laws. And I’m firmly, firmly of the opinion that the two are related.
I’m super happy that all three of my boys/men are over the age of 21 now.
Ironically, my second son, now a college freshman, is shy and most likely has never had a beer. Even though he is at the same college I attended, where I was definitely enjoying parties and drinking by this point. He is risk-averse, unlike his older brother who immediately joined a fraternity and got a fake ID card in Sept of freshman year. Ugg. How does one family produce such different children?
Really? Congratulations. There were at least 3 people whom I knew personally who were dead in drunk driving accidents by the time I was 21. We didn’t all survive just fine. It’s kind of an offensive statement.
I am a total hard-ass when it comes to drinking and driving. With uber and the totally acceptability of a DD, at least the kids seem to have gotten that into their heads… even I get nervous if I have a couple glasses of wine and then drive even though I know I’d never be over the BAL. I just don’t feel comfortable.
“How Thursday Became the New Friday” This is an article from 2005…is it still valid??
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/us/education/how-thursday-became-the-new-friday.html
@granny2 Yes, from what I have seen in my small sample of just a few colleges, Thursday is often the beginning of the weekend, unless a kid has an exam on Friday. Some kids try hard to create schedules with no classes on Fridays.
@sylvan8798 I am sorry for your friends, of course. Were the kids who died drinking and driving when they should not have been, or were they victims of a drunk driver over the age of 21? Did you read my comment that I am totally in favor of harsh DUI penalties? I also LOVE Uber and told my children I would always pay for Uber or a taxi if they did not have a safe, sober way to get home. Of course, my first advice to my kids was to not drink at all until age 21, because it is against the law. But, that is/was hard for me to enforce from thousands of miles away. I got both safely through HS, but then they became “adult” college students.
I did not have a car before I was 21 and neither have/will my children. So, if someone drinks (under or over age 21) but doesn’t drive, is that offensive to you? The kids and adults I know seem vigilant about having a designated driver or taking Uber when drinking.
I do worry a lot about drunk drivers. Maybe so much that my husband and I often choose to walk out to a less appealing restaurant rather than get on the roads to downtown on a weekend night.
So, I guess I am “offended” by your comment. I care a lot about drunk driving. I try hard to prevent anyone I know from driving under the influence.
Kudos to you if you do not drink at all.
Why “definitely ‘not stress’?” I drank too much at college because (in retrospect) I was an introvert with a very extroverted boyfriend (now H). It was legal, so I drank beer. I can imagine that I might have “pre-gamed” (you would laugh if you knew me) a bit if I had to be so social with no legal alcohol at the events. Kids these days do seem to have a higher level of stress generally than we did eons ago. I don’t think all binge drinking is due to that, but I wouldn’t write it off like you do.
@PNWedwonk I think kids drink more due to social anxiety and a desire to relax and seem fun/cool in a crowd at a party. I don’t believe it’s academic stress for most of the kids, even at competitive schools. I know that the first thing I do at an adult party where I know no one is to hit the bar for a glass of wine. Not sure why, but maybe I just want something to hold so I don’t fidget nervously.
I think this article is absolutely spot-on, especially with regard to high school parents:
So many people keep believing that if their kids just learn to drink “responsibly” at home, or that if the drinking age was lowered, that the binge drinking problem would be solved. The author of this article explains very clearly why this simply isn’t true. She also demolishes the fantasy that somehow the enlightened Europeans don’t have these problems.
You went to university in a very different Europe from the one I lived in.
“The top students wouldn’t want to spend the entire next day hung over.”
Cute that you think that. I find – like the author did – that top students are among the worst alcohol offenders. They often have the most they’d like to forget, like the 5 exams they had in a single week, on top of internships, and a work study, and research, and homework every day. I know people like this.
“Were the kids who died drinking and driving when they should not have been”
Yes, or passengers in the same car. There are data showing that the 21 drinking age has had a strong impact, particularly on drinking under the age of 18 (since HS seniors can’t buy for their friends). There are plenty of good arguments for a lower or varied drinking age, but there is compelling evidence that the higher age reduced accidental deaths for young people.