Abstract
Pre-teen children’s knowledge and experience of alcohol has been the subject of relatively little research despite the fact that this is a critical time given that the average age for the onset of drinking in Europe is now 12. Indeed, children are commonly only addressed in national alcohol strategies as the responsibility of parents/families, rather than as an audience for such messages in their own right. Yet, it is important to take a cross-generational perspective by exploring pre-teen children’s understandings of alcohol, as well as that of their parents, because adults and children may experience familial socialisation practices around alcohol differently. Too often adults’ views about what is in the best interests of children are read through the lens of age-appropriate behaviours which are predicated on deterministic theories of child development in which pre-teens are presumed to be too emotionally or physically immature to express their opinions, rather than on children’s own experiences of their life-worlds. This article draws on empirical research from a study of the role of alcohol in UK family life. It comprised a telephone survey of a nationally representative sample of 2089 parents with at least one child aged 5–12, and multi-stage case study research (including child-centred research) with 10 families who were purposively sampled from the survey. The findings presented in this article are primarily drawn from the child-centred element of the research supplemented by some data from the survey and interviews with parents. The article explores children’s knowledge of alcohol, their understanding of the health risks and social harms associated with drinking and the implications for national alcohol strategies. The conclusion highlights the significance of children’s experiential learning about alcohol through a proximity effect which occurs within the affective space of the familial home.
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