Role Models for Problem Drinking?

I was going through some old photographs yesterday and I found this one of Lauren, Faye and my goddaughter Phoebe. They are obviously mimicking their mothers’ fondness for plonk. I actually remember where we were  – a churrascaria we loved near our villa in Portugal one summer. The food was great, the owner genial and as is clear from the photo, our children were welcome at the bar…

I feel like Lauren’s expression in ironic… Of course this photograph made me feel guilty. My buddy Val and I did drink a lot on our family vacations. It made me think about whether a parent serves as a “role model” in their children’s drinking patterns. I know the statistics. I’ve written about the fact that the children of alcoholics are 4 times more likely than the general population to have drinking problems.

BUT, I have some important data right here. These are the children of mothers who drunkenly used birthday party hats as Gaultier bras.

Mommies Dearest at a children’s birthday party…

And they are all in their twenties now, so in effect I have done fifteen years worth of scientific research right? The three girls are the products of heavily drinking mother’s (one a bona fide alchy). And I’m bad at math, but according to the stats, shouldn’t at least one of them be an alcoholic?

So here’s the deal. All three girls are hard working, successful, reasonable drinkers, but none of them are problem drinkers. They all like to party, they may even get drunk, but I cannot imagine any of them taking a fake hair piece out of their ponytail and putting it into the crotch of their bathing suit as a tipsy joke, the way Val did that same summer…

Alcoholics. We have enough to worry about. I am going to put aside the drunken antics my children witnessed in their formative years and worry about the role model I am right now. Today. They’ll probably say I’ve gotten a bit boring in my old age…