If it’s true that we are the product of our parents, much of our youth is bound for failure. Imagine this scene: you walk into the Sports Bar with your friends on a typical Saturday night, ready to forget the midterms you may have scarcely passed. Your eyes immediately gravitate to the dance floor where, much to your dismay, someone’s parents are getting down to the DJ’s hot mix of ‘Shout’ and the ‘Electric Slide.’

The amusement of this awkward and bizarre sight begins to wear off as you glance toward the bar to witness an obviously underage student and her parents taking shots and chugging a pitcher of basement-priced beer. It might be Family Weekend, but bonding with your parents usually doesn’t occur on State Street.

I grew up in a conservative family; I never had a drink until my freshman year of college. I was expected home at a relatively reasonable time and my parents inquired what my plans were and where I would be going. As hassling as this was, and as many fights as it begot, I appreciate now the care and concern they showed for me. I have finally realized at the ripe old age of 20 that their anxiety in my rearing was simply good parenting. Everyone is exposed to different experiences, but parents promoting underage drinking is an obvious problem.

Studies now say that the earlier the onset of chronic drug use or drinking, the greater the prognosis is for long-term problems. If teenagers are given loose rules about drinking and are not informed about the dangers that accompany it, their parents are setting them up for a whole life of problems that could too easily be avoided. With all of the pressure for kids to conform to societal norms, especially in college, it’s hard to abstain without help from a major support system at home.

Once you are of the legal age to consume alcohol, it is completely acceptable to sit at the bar with your parents for a social drink or to have a glass of wine with dinner. In my opinion, heavy drinking and partying with your parents, including taking shots and doing keg stands, is simply classless. This may seem harsh, but parents aren’t supposed to be our friends. In all honesty, I’m glad my parents don’t approve of me drinking occasionally on the weekends, even though they aren’t oblivious to the fact that I do.

There is no shortage of very famous people who have been extremely successful at nothing save landing themselves in rehab. Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears are two prime examples, both childhood stars turned sour, enabled by their parents and family, something publicist Michael Levine has credited to ‘society becom[ing] ‘radically more permissive.’

With mothers present at Hollywood night clubs, it’s no wonder why Britney Spears is losing her kids and refusing to wear underwear. Lindsay Lohan is now infamous for not only being an alcoholic, but now a newly discovered drug addict. I’m sure her mother didn’t push cocaine on her, which she was recently found to have in her pants pocket, but her mother’s unfaltering party schedule has killed her daughter’s chances of ever living a normal life.

Next year for Family Weekend I’d recommend staying in for the night, and if your parents feel like getting trashed with you, at least have the decency to bring them to a bar with toilet paper and running water in the bathrooms.