Why do Danish teenagers drink so much?

Transcription

1 Why do Danish teenagers drink so much? Gundelach, P. & Järvinen, M. (eds.) Unge, fester og alkohol, Akademisk Forlag, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2006, 200 p. Empirical focus, themes, and structure A substantial body of quantitative studies from the early 90s and up to the present seem to indicate that, on average, Danish youth drink more alcohol, start drinking earlier, and binge drink more than their counterparts in the rest of Europe. Why might this be, and to what degree do different demographic, cultural, and social factors influence the drinking habits of Danish teenagers? In the recently published "Youth, Parties, and Alcohol" (my translation), Gundelach & Järvinen 1 attempt to answer these questions by re-analysing and comparing relevant previous studies with their own recent research, which includes a survey sent by post to a random selection of 2000 Danish teenagers mostly within an age range of 13 16, a second survey sent by post to the parents of these teenagers, and two rounds of group interviews conducted among the teenage participants with about a year s interval between the two. The authors combine correspondence analysis of the statistical data with a symbolic interactionist interpretation of their interview material, and use concepts such as identity and gender performance, ritual scripts, symbolic capital, risk cultures, and governmentality 2 to explore how demographic variables, specific teenage lifestyles and settings, group hierarchies, parents attitudes, and general attitudes to alcohol in Denmark influence the teenagers perceptions, experiences, and habits. Following the introductory chapter, each chapter in the book explores a specific part of the research material and/or aspect of the teenagers' alcohol consumption. The concluding chapter sums up the themes and results of the study and suggests some potential implications for future research in the field and for harm reduction strategies aimed at Danish teenagers. A three-part appendix provides a more detailed description and explanation of the methods used in the surveys, statistical analyses, and group interviews. Gundelach et al. set forth the following main themes and conclusions: 1. Drinking is grounded in a specifically scripted setting: the teenage party 2. Drinking is a route to social prestige and a performance of gender identity, and, for teenagers, the risks of not drinking may be experienced as more real and negative than the risks of drinking 3. The drinking habits of Danish teenagers can only be meaningfully understood within the broader context of general Danish drinking habits and attitudes to alcohol 4. Danish teenagers are subjected to considerable pressure to drink. This pressure comes both from their peers and from the broader Danish drinking culture. Drinking in a specific setting According to Gundelach et al., Danish teenagers view drinking as a social activity, and their alcohol consumption is grounded in a particular teenage life style of partying and binge drinking. Factors such as social and familial background, economic resources, and geographical location seem to be less influential than access to alcohol and parent-free settings. The private party is the most important of these settings, and it is a central arena for building and reinforcing friendships and social networks. Participating in, planning, and recounting parties is an important and integrated part of the teenagers' lives. Partying and getting drunk thus become synonymous and important strategies to achieve social inclusion, status, and prestige, and the self-described "party freaks" are among the most popular teenagers. A typical party is a fairly large group composed of both girls and boys, gathered in a private home from which the parents are NORDIC STUDIES ON ALCOHOL AND DRUGS V O L

2 away. Though there are various kinds of parties, there seems to be a shared script involving an expectation of specific activities and phases. The script of a party involves zoning turning an event and the space in which it takes place from being just a nice evening into being a party. Alcohol and drunkenness are essential to the party script, as a symbolic marker of difference from everyday life. Without alcohol there would be no party, and drinking is often timed and organised through drinking games, as the aim is to attain the same level of drunkenness together. Other markers that help turn a gathering of teenagers into a party include music, dancing, and flirting with the opposite sex. The researchers analyse the teenage party as a type of ritual, one structured by teenagers themselves to create a free space in lives otherwise heavily regulated and structured by school and parents. They describe an ideal party as structured to create anti-structure a shared experience of "time out" from school, parental boundaries, and social awkwardness. It seems one could also describe it as structured to create "time in" in the sense of experiences of intimacy, social belonging, and popularity. In this context, even experiences such as getting ill and throwing up are described in retrospect as positive. They represent an extreme break from the spheres of school and family, and demonstrate that you dare to fully participate in and share the party experience. Interestingly, though parties are scripted to create a break from everyday spheres and structures, partying in the socially prescribed manner seems to reinforce and reproduce existing social hierarchies and gender relations rather than challenging or altering them. An underlying premise for this book is that, in order to explain why Danish teenagers drink as much as they do and which factors exert more or less influence on their drinking practices, we need to investigate more closely how, when, and where they drink. When the most important settings for drinking seem to be parties that are defined in a large part by their separation from parental and adult control, how can researchers gain access to the interaction that takes place in them? As they could not participate in the spaces where drinking actually took place, Gundelach et al. used the group interviews about drinking and partying to generate, observe, and analyse interaction between the teenagers. Both the composition of the groups that were interviewed and the interview locations varied, and the researchers worked in teams, with one person asking questions and the other observing and recording the structure of the discussion, the group dynamics, the interaction patterns and the relational positioning among the teenagers, as much as the content of their statements. They found that the teenagers who claimed to drink and party the most also tended to dominate the interviews and seemed to be the most admired and popular among their peers. Though analysing group interviews as a source of relational data seems a potentially fruitful strategy, it also seems imperative that such analysis be combined and compared with other available sources. Any group interview carries the risk of the interviewer overly encouraging participants to confirm preconceived ideas and assumptions that he/she brings to the table, and by focusing on topics that certain participants have more experience with than others, the interviewer may actually generate a specific hierarchy within the group. Gundelach et al. themselves point out that part of the explanation for the apparently strong connection between partying and drinking habits and social status could be that the interviews focused on a topic where the self declared "party freaks" were the most experienced. In this light, passivity or reticence on the part of an interview participant might be interpreted as a form of protest, a demonstration of a lack of interest in the topic or unwillingness to support the collective truths or realities promoted by the most active participants. Of course, even if passivity on the part of a "quiet girl" is meant as a form of protest, this is not necessarily an interpretation that is supported or ac- 222 NORDIC STUDIES ON ALCOHOL AND DRUGS VOL

3 cepted by the other teenagers participating in the interview, as indeed Gundelach et al. conclude on the basis of their survey material and their comparisons between different interview sequences. All the group interviews were also videotaped. This is a valuable strategy in that it allows the researchers to re-visit and compare different interviews, sequences, and interactions between participants, and to retrospectively analyse their own interaction with the group. At the same time, the participants' awareness that they are "on camera" may influence their interactions and selfpresentations in specific ways, adding to the researcher's need to be able to observe them in other contexts and settings. It might have been a valuable addition to the study to have conducted a set of group interviews with the same teenagers on other topics, in order to be able to compare these to the ones focused on drinking and partying practices. Other sources of relevant interactional data could have included participant observation in different contexts and settings where teenagers interact but that also typically include the presence of a few adults, such as the classroom, school outings, youth clubs, sports activities and other group activities outside of school if there are any in the local area. Online contexts such as chat rooms, game communities, networking sites such as and/or local equivalents could also be relevant research sites and sources of information about social interactions, networks, and hierarchies. Drinking as gender performance and a route to social prestige Gundelach et al. describe drinking as performed at teenage parties as a strategy to achieve social prestige. To abstain from drinking is to risk social ostracism and scorn. Experienced and prolific drinkers are admired by their peers and are considered mature and highly social, while abstainers are perceived as being childish and boring. In fact, the researchers found that abstainers were typically scorned more than those of the heaviest drinkers who were also known to use illegal substances. Furthermore, while they found little significant difference in the amount that girls and boys drank, the researchers found distinct differences in how girls and boys tended to drink. Both drinking practices and experiences of risks attached to drinking seem markedly heterosexually gendered. Teenagers who do not drink, or do not drink in the contextually prescribed manner, risk not only social ostracism but also having their gender identity and sexuality questioned and viewed as "suspect" by their peers. This leads the researchers to describe alcohol and drunkenness as a "social necessity" among Danish teenagers. An interesting aspect of the gender risks entailed by drinking or not drinking that I think could have merited a more explicit discussion and exploration in the study, is that they seem to mark the teenagers' drinking and partying scripts as not only heterosexual, but as strongly heteronormative. According to Gundelach et al., girls present drinking as a means of generating and enhancing specific social activities that take place at parties, particularly dancing, flirting, and making out with older boys. They use drinking as a means to encourage social interaction with boys that produces and affirms a normative feminine gender identity. At the same time, they fear loss of control more than the boys, and also report more experiences of "having made out with someone and regretted it later". Boys on the other hand, tended to view drinking as an acceptable social activity in itself, and would also drink together as a group outside of the parties with girls. In addition to drinking with a view to flirting and "scoring" with girls, boys also use drunkenness and acting out as a way to express and confirm their masculinity to each other. As far as perceived and experienced risks of drinking are concerned, boys are both more afraid of and more likely to experience getting into fights than girls are. For boys, the main risk attached to not drinking or acting out enough seems to be that it marks them as sexually immature NORDIC STUDIES ON ALCOHOL AND DRUGS V O L

4 and/or potentially homosexual. For girls on the other hand, abstaining does not seem to generate a suspicion of lesbianism. Instead, the risks seem to involve drinking too little and being seen as sexually immature and therefore uninteresting, or getting too drunk and too available to boys, and being branded a slut. It would seem that drinking at teenage parties thereby both affirms normative heterosexual gender relations and gender identities, and reproduces an understanding and ideal of male and female sexuality as active and passive, one that renders lesbianism inconceivable and invisible. A further exploration of the gendered and heteronormative aspect of the drinking practices described in this study could offer interesting possibilities for comparison with recent studies of teenage drinking within other, specific contexts, studies of teenagers uses of other types of legal and illegal substances, and studies of young people s perceptions, experiences and performances of gender and sexuality. The broader context of Danish teenagers drinking habits Gundelach et al. describe Danish alcohol culture as "wet". The legal age limit for buying and consuming alcohol is lower than in many other European countries, and teenagers who are too young to buy alcohol themselves can often convince a parent or, barring that, an older relative or friend to buy it for them. There is little stigma attached to drinking or drunkenness, as long as the drinker is generally perceived to be in control of his or her consumption and not an addict. In terms of perceived risks, the majority of both teenagers and parents who were surveyed contrasted drinking alcohol favourably with using other intoxicants such as cannabis. With reference to the strongly gendered drinking practices and risk cultures Gundelach et al. describe, it would be interesting to see a further investigation and analysis of both perceptions of addiction and the perceived qualities, effects, and risks of other intoxicants are these equally and similarly gendered? Among Danish parents, the researchers found a strong ideal of teaching your children self-control and focusing on mutual trust, rather than policing them according to a set of fixed rules. Many parents expressed a conviction that trying to control teenagers drinking with parentally imposed rules is at best a waste of time and at worst counter-productive. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the teenagers themselves stress that a relation of trust is a better and more sophisticated alternative to rules. In contrast to these perceptions, both previous research in the field and the researchers' own material shows that parents who set and enforce rules on when and how much their children can drink and how much access they have to parties, do influence their childrens' debut drinking age and consumption level, and that teenagers with more restrictive parents in fact tend to debut later and drink less. Furthermore, parental and teenage understandings of "trust" in this context seem to merit further analysis, as many teenagers who spoke proudly of their relationship with their parents being built on trust rather than rules, also said they lied to their parents about their drinking practices. The pressure to drink and the insistence on control With reference to the three previous themes and conclusions, Gundelach et al. point out that Danish teenagers are subject to considerable social pressure to drink, and to drink heavily. This pressure comes both from their peers and a teenage culture forming extremely strong connections between drinking and socializing, popularity, and social status, and from the broader Danish context and wet drinking culture. When a high level of alcohol consumption in social settings is seen as natural and harmless, it becomes "unnatural" for teenagers to elect not to drink. However, though many teenagers will cite peer pressure as a reason for "why teenagers drink so much" and the negative consequences drinking can entail, most of the participants in the study vehemently deny experiencing such pressure themselves. Since an import- 224 NORDIC STUDIES ON ALCOHOL AND DRUGS VOL

5 ant part of how they present their drinking habits to each other, their parents, and themselves hinges on maturity as evidenced by self-control, they can't simultaneously admit that their decisions and behaviour might be influenced by outside pressure. Implications and conclusions Gundelach et al. propose that the factors that have the most significant influence on the drinking habits of Danish teenagers are: a structure of possibilities, where alcohol is easy to obtain and relatively cheap; Danish culture, in particular the "wet" drinking culture and general perception of alcohol as having high social value and carrying relatively low risks; access to and participation in teenage parties and the existence or lack of parental rules that restrict such access and access to alcohol. Like many of the previous studies they cite, they also find that teenagers who start drinking early tend to drink more and are more likely to experience negative consequences than their peers who debut later. In line with their insistence on the need to treat teenagers' drinking habits as situated within the broader Danish context, Gundelach et al. dismiss raising age limits or prices as unrealistic suggestions, given the "wetness" of Danish drinking culture and widely positive attitudes to alcohol. Instead they call for more coordinated and concentrated efforts to raise general awareness about teenage alcohol consumption and what factors influence it, specifically efforts aimed at parents, as they have the potential to exert a much stronger influence than they think. An important goal for any harm reduction strategy should be to encourage teenagers to postpone their alcohol debut, and Gundelach et al. stress the need for more research into such strategies. They also suggest that harm reduction efforts aimed at teenagers should ideally start early and actively involve and engage the teenagers themselves, in line with national ideals and teenage expectations of democratic negotiation and self-government. As a collaborative writing effort, "Youth, parties and alcohol" works well. The authors combine their different writing styles and approaches to create a multifaceted yet well integrated and cohesive whole. While it does not present any startling surprises, it adds to and nuances our knowledge of young people s substance uses, and further strengthens the case for the need to understand these habits in context, and as social practices that can't be reduced to a single or simple set of factors. Including parents as participants through a separate survey and adding a temporal perspective on the teenagers' drinking practices by conducting two rounds of group interviews with a year s interval are strengths, as is the fact that the researchers combine their quantitative and qualitative focus and methods. Furthermore, Gundelach et al. articulate a well-developed awareness of the potential limitations of these methods. While always fruitful, this type of methodological sophistication seems especially important in fields that are highly morally and politically charged, and where access to potentially important research arenas is limited in one way or another. Due to both its subject matter and its largely empirical focus, the book definitely has a potential audience beyond other researchers in the field of youth and alcohol studies, not least policy makers, anyone working with harm reduction efforts aimed at teenagers substance uses, parents, and to a certain extent, teenagers themselves. Whether one sees the book's largely empirical focus as purely a blessing or also as a fault is likely to be dependent on one's individual research focus. I find it refreshing and inspiring to read a text that is clear and confident and doesn t suffer from the author's need to dress her/ his focus and findings up in layers of qualifications and the latest fashion in theoretical concepts. At the same time, I think that a further investigation and analysis of parts of the interview material and the themes that emerge from it could potentially refine and expand relevant theoretical concepts as well as our understanding of, for instance, how NORDIC STUDIES ON ALCOHOL AND DRUGS V O L

6 different substances and settings are used to produce, perform, and negotiate experiences and perceptions of gender, sexuality, and power. The data and analyses presented by Gundelach et al. should provide a useful source of comparison with studies of other scenes and settings for teenage drinking and other substance uses among teenagers. Hopefully, they will also inspire further empirical investigation and analysis of how different groups and generations use and experience specific substances in specific settings, and how these uses and settings relate to both individual experiences and broader social and cultural contexts. Ellen O. Millar, social anthropologist, Advisor, University of Oslo, Office of the University Director Postbox 1072 Blindern, 0316 Oslo Norway ellen.millar@gmail.com Notes 1) Peter Gundelach (ed): Professor of Sociology at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Research interests include values, social development, collective actors and national identities. Margaretha Järvinen (ed): Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Copenhagen and the Danish National Institute of Social Research. Research interests include alcohol, marginalization and marginalized groups, substance abuse and treatment strategies. Jakob Demant (contributing author): PhD Scholar in Sociology at the University of Copenhagen and Research Assistant at the Center for Drug and Alcohol Research, the University of Århus, Denmark. Research interests include alcohol, gender and identity issues, music scenes and lifestyles, and qualitative research methods. Jeanette Østergaard (contributing author): PhD Scholar in Sociology at the University of Copenhagen and Research Assistant at the Center for Drug and Alcohol Research, the University of Århus. Research interests include youth and alcohol, youth and work, perceptions and communication of risk, and quantitative research methods. 2) The concept of governmentality was originally proposed by Michel Focault, but has been further explored and elaborated on by others. See for instance Wikipedia for a useful introduction and overview: org/wiki/governmentality. In the context of teenage drinking governmentality and related concepts can be used to explore both teenagers expectations of, and strategies for self-government and parents, schools and the states s attempts (or lack of attempts) to govern Outlining gender and substance abuse Bogren, Alexandra Female Licentiousness versus Male Escape. Essays on Intoxicating Substance Use, Sexuality and Gender. Acta Universitatis Stocholmiensis. Stockholm Studies in Sociology. New Series 26, Stockholm, 2006, 168 p. T raditionally the analytic space given to gender and sexuality has been quite limited in the social research on intoxication. Either the research has been focusing on men or gender (meaning sex) has been used as a background variable. Both are problematic. The self-evident focusing on men forms a theoretical agenda that ignores the experiences and the different realities that women who use alcohol and/or drugs face. On the other hand, the use of gender as a category based on biological differences creates a situation where gender is important only when the research results show some statistically relevant differences. It ignores the way gender is linked with other differences and how the sameness between men and women can also be of importance and needs an analytical explanation. This context was why we started to read Alexandra Bogren s book with great expectations. A book that promises to speak directly about intoxication and gender! Great, but what does it have to offer 226 NORDIC STUDIES ON ALCOHOL AND DRUGS VOL