Caring for Children and Adolescents - Assignment Example

? Caring for children and adolescents, and ensuring that they develop into healthy, happy citizens is one of the most important goals for any society, because they do not always have the ability to care for themselves and will one day have to take up the burden of running everything. In Western society, one of the greatest threat to this mission of ensuring the safety and happiness is without a doubt teen drinking. Drinking, especially in large quantities, can be incredibly harmful to teenagers in a wide variety of ways. Firstly, it is physically harmful, especially to younger teenagers who may still be physically and mentally developing, and can stop them from developing fully (Warder, 47). Furthermore, the activities associated with drinking, especially in large quantities, are extremely harmful – these include drunk driving, which is a prominent cause of death amongst teenagers, along with other things like teens putting themselves in dangerous situations or having unprotected sex. The age at which a person starts drinking has also been highly correlated with the prevalence of alcoholism, indicating that teens who drink at younger age are much more likely to grow into alcoholics as they aid, harming them for the rest of their life (49). There are two different methods that are often suggested to help reduce the harms associated with teen drinking. The first is methods associated with enforcement, this includes enacting tighter legislation regarding behaviors associated with teen drinking, such as setting a legal curfew, having harsher punishments for teens who drink, harsher punishments for people who provide alcohol to underage people and so on. The second is to reduce the harm through active dialogue, and thus reduce the dangerous behavior associated with drinking by making it less taboo, communicating the dangers of drinking to minors better, and adjusting the culture around drinking to make it less taboo and desirable. The idea that one of the best ways to combat the dangers associated with teen drinking is to step up enforcement is certainly a tempting one. Firstly, it comes from and invokes great deal of time honored tradition – the idea of using punishments for prescribed acts has been a fundamental part not just of many of the most important legal traditions in the world, but is also still heavily used in parenting of children of a wide variety of ages. It simply makes sense that if the consequences for being caught drinking are significant, they will out-weigh Furthermore, there is a legitimate argument for the idea that having no or minimal enforcement for a law or policy, such as forbidding teen drinking, implicitly condones such actions, and that to demonstrate seriousness about fighting teen drinking, we must make the consequences of doing so severe. These arguments are especially valid when discussing one of the root enablers of underage drinking: adults willing to sell or provide alcohol to minors. As drinking under the legal limit is (obviously) illegal, every time a teenager drinks there is always an adult who was willing to sell liquor to them or give it to them despite their young age, or who failed to do due diligence by guaranteeing identification was true and accurate. The adults who do this have been trusted by society because they are considered mature enough to understand the consequences of their actions, so if they are mature enough to by alcohol they should be mature enough to ensure it does not reach the hands of under-age drinkers; if they fail to do so then they should be prepared to face the consequences of their actions, even if they are serious. Finally, putting constraints on associated activities, like establishing a curfew, can give law enforcement justification for interrupting dangerous behavior and getting teenagers home safe. There are many reasons to consider enforcement improvements could reduce the harm from teenage drinking. The enforcement arguments certainly has many valid points, but in many cases active dialogue can address concerns in many ways that enforcement cannot. The central idea behind active dialogue is that if you communicate with teenagers about drinking from a relatively early age, and teach them healthy and safe drinking behavior, they will keep themselves out of harm. One of the major methods for a more active dialogue is allowing teenagers to drink in small quantities and/or very low alcohol beverages under parental supervision before they begin drinking themselves. This can help de-mystify the alcohol experience, make it less taboo, and thus less desirable, and can aid in the dialogue about healthy drinking habits. This kind of activity is much more common in Europe, where there is a more lenient attitude towards drinking at younger ages, which means that people do not tend to over-consume once they get the opportunity to do so (Kantrowitz, 36), rather, they already understand alcohol as a part of life and do not have a desire to use it in quantities that would be harmful to them. Making alcohol something that is exclusively associated with full adulthood, and denied to people before that age, often make teens use alcohol as a way to assert their independence, often to harmful effects (Foley, 55). This can be especially true when teens get ready access to alcohol for the first time, for instance when a parent leaves them in charge of the house or when they go off to college; de-mystifying drinking through open dialogue prior to that will help stop those dangerous activities. The main benefit of an active dialogue approach is that it works when there is no where around to supervise, and can give teens the tools for dealing with alcohol themselves. Obviously there is on one simple solution to dealing with teen drinking. In cases where supervision can be close and enforcement prevalent, such as bars or on college campuses, there is certainly a great deal of merit to an enforcement-based approach. Teens often drink far away from the people who could prevent them, obviously, and sometimes severe consequences may not be enough to deter the harmful behavior; if teens had a good idea of the consequences of mass consumption of alcohol, they would not do it regardless of the law! In these cases, an open dialogue about drinking can de-mystify the practice and lead to healthier teens Works Cited Foley, Kristie. “Alcoholism; Parental Involvement Can Help Prevent Underage Drinking” Obesity, Fitness & Wellness Week (2004): 55 Kantrowitz, Barbara. “The Teen Drinking Dilemma” Newsweek 149.6 (2007). 36-37. .Warder, James. “Age and Alcoholism” The British Journal of Addiction to Alcohol and Other Drugs 66.1 (1975). 45-49. Read More