I just got home from the bar and probably shouldn’t even be posting right now. However, something happened tonight that really, really bothered me. There is a man that I have met two or three times now. He is apparently a daytime regular, as he has tabs on the wall and the staff knows him, but I’ve only seen him come in at night two or three times. One of those times, he was in the bar until sunrise and had to be asked to leave (bars in Florida close at 4 AM on weekends; I am very good friends with the bartender, so oftentimes I stay while she closes up and we keep drinking and sometimes we party til as late as we want).
Tonight, he was in the bar and it was about closing time (2 AM on a weeknight). The only people left in the bar were the bartender and her boyfriend and a bunch of her regulars/very good friends that were obviously more than welcome to stay as late as she felt like staying. However, she was being very strict about trying to get everyone to leave. I looked over and saw the “regular” sitting at one of the video games and I realized she was probably trying to give him the hint. Fine.
As she is clearing the glasses and napkins off the bar, she says, “Doesn’t [Regular's] son have school tomorrow? Shouldn’t he leave?” When I hear this, I think that Regular has to drive his son to school early and should go home so he can get up and do that. And then I look up. And there is someone sitting in the bar at 2:30 AM on a Wednesday night/Thursday morning that looks very young. It turns out that this man had brought his 15-year-old son to a bar. And let him hang out. UNTIL 2:30 AM ON A WEEKNIGHT.
I immediately got uncomfortable. WHAT. THE. FUCK. Dude was not getting the subtle hints to leave, so I discreetly said to the bartender, “You know, technically, it’s against to law for someone under the age of 21 to be in a bar after 11 PM, regardless of whether he is with a parent or not.” And so that’s how she got him to leave. But the event stuck with me all night. Why the fuck would you bring your 15-year-old kid to a bar with you until 2:30 AM on a school night? Hoping that because he can’t drink he can drive your drunk ass home when you inevitably get kicked out?
It’s sending such the wrong message to your children. When I was dating Bartender, he had a 13-year-old daughter. He worked a lot and their hours tended to miss each other; when he was home, she was in school and when he was at work, she was home. Sometimes she would have her ride home from school drop her off at Bartender’s work so that she could at least spend some time with her dad. She was in 8th grade, and from a lot of what she told me, was walking that fine line where she was either going to go one way and be a great kid, or she was going to go the other way and get involved with sex and drugs and alcohol.
I didn’t have a problem with her going to visit her dad at work when she got out of school. From 3:30-6:00 PM the bar was pretty dead, anyway, so she could sit at the end and work on her homework and talk to her dad during his downtime. But then I found out that she was staying there until 10 or 11 at night. I told Bartender that that wasn’t an acceptable environment for a 13-year-old to be in; she didn’t need to be hanging out in a bar until 11 at night. He assured me that he was there and it was no big deal.
One night, I got out of class at 10 PM and stopped by the bar to visit him. His daughter was still there, and she was sitting at the end of the bar drinking something pink out of a martini glass. I pulled him aside and asked him what the fuck he was doing. He told me not to worry, and let me know that she was drinking Sprite and cranberry juice in a martini glass, so that she looked like she fit in with the clientele. I tried to explain to him that even though he wasn’t serving her alcohol, he was sending the message that she looked “cool” and “fit in” by appearing to be drinking. And what that said to her is that if I drink, I’ll fit in and look cool. It glorified drinking to an adolescent that was at the age that you needed to be warning her of the dangers of imbibing and not glorifying it. Not only that, she didn’t look 13. She looked older than me. And she even told me that people in the bar had hit on her. So give a girl that looks 18 (but isn’t) a beverage that looks alcoholic (but isn’t) while she sits and at bar at 10 at night and gets hit on by men 20 years older than her. That’s fucking healthy.
Ultimately, it was his daughter and his decision and he disagreed with me. However, I can’t imagine that parents like Regular or Bartender do anything to discourage their child from drinking. By bringing their adolescent to a bar to hang out, especially late night, they are glorifying drinking and insinuating that it’s a cool thing to do. It’s one thing to be realistic about the fact that adolescents will be around alcohol and will probably try alcohol, at the very least. Shielding your teenager from it is not realistic, either. But it’s totally a different thing to send the message that drinking is cool and okay by letting your young teenaged child hang out with you in a bar. Whether you are the server or the patron doesn’t really make a difference. Whether you think you are or not, you are glorifying drinking to a child that is in a very vulnerable time in their life.
DO NOT BRING YOUR ADOLESCENT CHILD TO A BAR. You would have thought that was common sense, but apparently it isn’t.
I'm Britni, a snarky bitch and generally awesome person. I write about sex, love, and bullshit. If sex-positivity, discussions about BDSM and kink, queer issues, and topics that are completely inappropriate by society's standards make you uncomfortable, then this blog is not for you.
Good Vibes 
9 Comments
Bottom line, people who do this to their children are selfish. They constantly put their needs before their child's, and always will…and their kids will spend a good portion of their adulthood seeking approval and getting involved in situations that do not serve them because they were taught that their needs weren't important.
Blarg.
That is sooooooo wrong….
Some people are idiots, I swear!
There's so much damage in parenting like that. The regret will surely follow.
I wish those kiddos the best.
When my parents came to visit me at the end of London Semester in 1999, we went to a pub in Scotland. Mom was shocked when in walks a family with their toddler! I just shrugged it off. But here's the rub–the Brits don't go to the pub to get smashed and forget their children. Pubs are meeting places, places to enjoy a quick drink with friends and family.
That said, I agree with you–American bars, especially your favorite, are not the place to bring your adolescent for a night out. It is, indeed, a parenting fail.
Funny thing is…I posted about irresponsible parenting (as part of Mad Monday series) 2 weeks ago. Yeah. Sighs.
I apparently know way too many people with alcoholic parents. This was a common theme, and sadly I've yet to met a person that came out unscathed from their parents pulling off shit like this.
I agree that this sort of parenting is bad all around, but I think we should keep in mind that we don’t know these people’s stories or their personal lives so we shouldn’t be so quick to judge (the situation with the Bartender is obviously different since you knew the details). We have no idea what goes on at home and there are more options then being a good kid vs. a kid that experiments with drugs and alcohol.
Now I know you know all this, but it just rubs me the wrong way how quick we are to throw these parents under the bus. And as a person who started smoking weed and drinking when I was 13, I know that this is a difficult multi-faceted situation.
Maybe that 15 year old is as grown up as I was at 15 and is a good kid just looking for any way to connect with his father. I’m not making excuses for bad behavior; I’m just reserving judgment for when I know more details about the situation.
It does seem pretty selfish either way though.
i was at a bar one time that has this enormous wooden staircase going from the restaurant downstairs to the bar upstairs. at around 11:00 my friend and i turn around to see a toddler in footie pajamas dragging a blankie down the stairs. she was obviously new to the whole walking thing period, and was trying to maneuver these stairs that even i've fallen down. my friend and i spent the next half hour babysitting her while her parents got hammered upstairs. they hadn't even noticed she was gone.
Some people should never have kids. I'm gonna use my really good vocabulary right now…scumbags.