What's your opinion on parents who drink and do drugs along with their children?

Depends on how it’s done. If it is done to teach moderation and safe consumption of mind altering substances, it’s one thing. If it’s just to pass on addictions, that’s another. I think parents are all trying not to be hypocrites, so if they do drugs or drink too much, then how can they tell their kids not to?

People are idiots. Who knows what their rationale might be. Maybe they think that if they do it with their children, it will be safer. Or they are trying to be “cool” in their child’s eyes. Whatever the reasoning is, it ends up just coming down to the simple fact that people (in general) are stupid.

Puff, puff, pass…darn it Mom just pass it!!

You really need to define what age of parent you’re talking about. Are the kids adults? If so, there’s no problems with such activity. But when parents are being role models, when the kid is still a kid, I do believe that they should strive to be the best role model, and this includes responsible drug use.

The logic behind it could be in part that drug prohibition laws are complete rubbish and nonsense, not only do they make no sense but they support discrimination of minorities, so why would any logical thinking parent simply harp back the same brainless “drugs are bad” line?

Smoking a joint with your teenage child is more realistic than teaching them that joints will kill you and make you go insane.

At the same time, this does change the dynamic of the relationship. Whether the parent and child can handle this is a totally different question.

What’s a parent’s logic for indoctrinating their child with their religion?

I wish my parents would smoke with me lol. I think itd be a really good bonding experience.

I dont think its that big of a deal if the son/daughter came to the choice to use whichever substance on their own and then did it with their parents as apposed to being influenced into doing it by them.

Trash. And not good parents. Honestly I am sure I’m a minority when I say this. But I can’t believe people are that trashy. You would think each generation could learn from the previous’ mistakes but all they do is repeat. I do feel sorry for the kids that are told it’s an okay way of life. It’s like there parents want them to screw up.

@dynamicduo So the parent who thinks traffic laws are rubbish should teach his kid to jaywalk or drive as fast as he wants? After all Mom and Dad have been doing it and they haven’t died. I question their sanity, though.

People say that my friend [A] smokes pot with her parents or one of her parents. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I can see it being true. Personally, I think it is a little weird and obviously does not set any kind of good example and I would never do it. But I don’t necessarily understand how it works with people who do do that. And [A] is not a screw-up nor does she get in trouble with the law. She’s going to a UC next year. But I like I said, I really don’t know if that’s true or not.

And then you have Robert Downey, Jr who got high with his dad. It’s a toss of the dice but are you supposed to gamble with your kids’ lives?

I think it is irresponsible to set an example of engaging in illegal activity. Just because you think a law is stupid, doesn’t mean it actually is or that it should be broken. There are absolutely questionable laws like illegal oral sex. Kids can form their own opinions on those, based in part on the opinions their parents express.

Teaching them that is ok to sometimes break the law can lead to them feeling the laws in general aren’t set in stone. That can land them in trouble easier than one might think.

Of course, common sense does play a part. Having a beer with your 20 y/o son is different than smoking a joint with your 15 y/o. A 20 y/o has a more realistic view of the way life works and when it is ok to bend the rules a little bit.

Then there are the truly ridiculous laws on the books that are no longer enforced (many examples in a recent thread) that aren’t really relevant.

Are the children little kids or full-grown adults? I see nothing wrong with a 50-year-old woman having a drink with her 75-year-old mother.

Fuck! I wish my parents would join me…

Addiction makes people behave strangely.
There are cocaine addicts who will do the drug with their teenaged children.
Children are taken away for this.

they’re extremely dumb people who just want to be “cool” in their kids eyes. they want to be more of their friend than their parent b/c they dont want their kids to hate them. they figure if they do those things w/ their kids, their kids wont have anything to hide from them. but in the end…they’re dumb, stupid, and pathetic.

@galileogirl Your analogy is not correct here. I never said the parent would teach anything. There are far worse parents whose sanity I would question than these types of people.

By “children” I meant 21 and under

If under 21, I think it stinks big time. Poor parenting, in my opinion. But since our daughters are in their 30’s, we enjoy partying with them. Just liquor & beer. Now when it comes to drugs, that’s a whole other ball game. VERY poor judgment there, I don’t care how old you are.

This is something that I can’t fathom doing. I can see my husband having a beer with our boys when they’re 20, or a glass of wine now and then, but nothing more than that.

I do know someone very well whose parents drank and smoked pot with him—my husband. He had the parents who hosted keg parties. Once my husband was arrested, as a teen, for providing alcohol to a minor. Someone had gotten busted after the party at his house and named him as the source of the alcohol. He didn’t even know there was a warrant for his arrest until he was pulled over and cuffed. He’s still annoyed about it to this day because he didn’t even want to have that party. My in-laws felt that hosting the party gave them the ability to monitor what the kids were doing and make sure they were safe. They have that, “Well, they’re going to do it anyway so we might as well let them do it where we can keep an eye on them” attitude.

As for the pot, that’s another story they all laugh about. It is funny the way they tell it, but again—NOT something I would ever do. My in-laws suspected my husband (I think he was 16 or 17 at the time) was smoking pot and they confronted him about it. He said, “Yeah, I’ve been smoking.” He then asked them if they ever smoked, and somehow got them laughing about some past memories. Then he said, “Hey, I have some upstairs. Want me to go get it?” The three of them ended up getting stoned together. My husband’s sister walked in with her new boyfriend and was horrified. She then got even more pissed when the boyfriend joined in the party. I don’t know what they were thinking.

As for the effects of it, that’s hard to say. My husband went through a time period where all he did was party. He went to college for about two weeks, dropped out, and proceeded to do nothing but drink and get high for a few years. If that period of his life had been a TV movie, he would have died at the end. He tried every kind of drug you can try, I guess, except things that are injected. He mixed pills and drank a lot. He was living far from home, and one day got arrested again. He had to spend the night in jail, and that experience made him look at his life and decide he didn’t want to be on that path anymore. He finished out his probation, went home, got a full-time job, went back to school, and then lucky bastard met me. He hasn’t done drugs since, and only drinks in moderation. He has a successful business and works harder than anyone I know. A lot of his friends from that time in his life are also now clean, sober, and successful. As far as I know, none of them had parents who drank or did drugs with them, and yet they all ended up doing the same things.

His parents are still wackos though. Lovable wackos, but I can tell you right now that when we wrote a will we did not name them as guardians of our children.

I think it is bizarre. Especially the drug part which is illegal so you’re teaching your kid to be a criminal according to the law of the land.

I wonder if this question were, what do you think of parents who share a pack of Winstons with their children, would the reaction be one of acceptance or would they be appalled because smoking is bad for your health and why teach a child a bad habit.

Just looked at the seatbelt question, everyone says use your seatbelts, they keep you safe. Seems like the only way it is socially acceptable to kill yourself these days is slowly and painfully with booze. I still can’t quite decide on the drug part, it depends on what kind of drug I guess.

I know parents who’ve said if their kids (under 18) are going to get high or drink then they might as well do at home where it’s safe but personally, I wouldn’t be able to be that kind of parent. My opinion is kids and their friends would take advantage of the situation, probably the friends would throw it in their own parents’ faces and someone would be in a world of hurt with child protective services.

Most likely that parents who do this are alcoholics and drug addicts. They may not admit it to themselves, though. But let them try not to drink or smoke for a couple of months.—or weeks—or days.

I know lots of parents who do this. None of them are alcoholics or drug addicts, just casual drinkers/smokers. Their reasoning is that the kids are going to do it whether the parents allow it or not, and if they allow them to do it at home, they can teach them moderation and monitor the behavior so the kids won’t get hurt.

@uberbatman I think it would be sooo awkward smoking with my parents. Just weird.

I know my parents smoke pot very occasionally. They pretty much allowed my brother and I to smoke pot. They believe it’s okay in moderation, and yes they do think my brother smokes excessively. They just wanted us to be safe, so it’s better staying home and smoking then going out and killing someone while DUI

When I was a teenager, my mother advised me thus: if you are going to drink, learn to drink at home so you can find out how you react, how much you can handle, etc., and there is somebody to take care of you and keep you out of trouble.

I realize now that she must have read an article in some women’s magazine and thought she knew what she was talking about. But it was so completely bizarre and off the wall that it blew me away. Let me go back and stick one more cliche in there just to underscore the effect: But it came out of left field and was so completely bizarre and off the wall that it blew me away.
– No one drank in our family. It was against our religion and our belief. It was a sin.
– There was never any alcohol of any kind in our house.
– I never even saw a real person drink a real beer until I was 16 years old, and it was far from home. I couldn’t quit staring.
– My parents knew nothing about how to drink or how to advise someone.
– It was against the law because I was underage, and they were scrupulously law-abiding.
– I never would have had the nerve to tell them that I wanted to try alcohol.
– I didn’t want to try alcohol.

And then when I did, at 18, I ignored all their advice anyway.

So for her to even bring it up, I think it must have been part of the wisdom of the time or the generation to teach kids responsible drinking at home, even though my parents weren’t qualified to do it. It may have been considered good parenting in those less enlightened days. And some of the children whose parents followed this advice may have passed it on.

My mother very rarely partied, whether with pot or alcohol. However:

I smoked my first joint with my mom. I was 8.
As a (very underage) teenager, I had many parties at my house, with alcohol provided by my mother, while she stayed in her bedroom.

Conclusion: What the fuck was she thinking?!? I would never do that with my kids!

@augustlan If you had to provide an answer, what do you think she was thinking?

@daloon Well, she has Borderline Personality Disorder, and one of the manifestations of that is a very weak (or nonexistent) sense of self. You define yourself by others. As a result she is very easily swayed by outside influence. She was also a single mother most of the time, so no alternate view on parenting was around to counteract that fact.

In the first instance, she was getting high with a friend who convinced her it’d be alright to let me smoke with them when I asked.

By the time I was a teenager, I was in charge of our household. I didn’t bully her or anything like that, she just went along with everything I thought. Heck, she gave up the master bedroom in our condo to me! It made perfect sense to me at the time, since I had more furniture than she did… but now I see that, and many other instances, as completely inappropriate.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t diagnosed with BPD until I was in my 30s. By that time, a lot of damage had been done. To both of us.

they are effin idiots and should be reported

It all depends on the attitude. Teaching kids to drink alcohol responsibly, in moderation, is a good thing, like serving beer or wine with dinner. Part of the reason we have so much binge drinking is that that is the only way teenagers are introduced to alcohol. Binge drinking is defined as drinking with the intent of getting drunk. I’ve known parents who did drugs or got drunk with their kids, or were ok with it… all those kids ended up majorly messed up.