I don't know if going back to the second century will help but I will indulge myself. In the second century a freelance Christian prophetic and preacher named Hermas produced a work named "The Instructor" . In it he wrote that adolescent boys and girls should be kept from "the hottest of all liquids---wine" least it kindle "wild impulses and burning lusts and fiery habits...inflamed from within...beasts and organs of generation, inflamed with wine, expand and swell in a shameful way...inciting the man of correct behavior to transgression; and hence the voluptuousness of youth overpass the bounds of modesty." Plato said that; "Boys should abstain from all use of wine until their eighteenth year." So it is that the desire to protect adolescents from the dangers of alcohol abuse is not a modern phenomena... John ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ann Tlusty" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2001 9:25 AM Subject: Re: youth and alcoholic beverages As an expansion of Rod's comments on alcohol and youth before the 19th century, here are some observations from the 16th-17th centuries... It's certainly true that throughout this period, most official advice was based on physical beliefs about the heat in alcohol and the youthful body (those over 40, as long as they were men, were advised to be quite liberal in their drinking habits...!). But there were social considerations in pre-modern European society regarding age as well as gender - while virtually everyone, including small children, was given some alcohol to drink (a little wine mixed with water functioned as Kool-Aid for early modern Germans), the right to drink socially and publically, or generally engage in drinking bouts, was a right of adult men only. I don't doubt that young boys did it from time to time, and there are occasional reports of a group of "boys" drinking (a term which in modern German could be either Knappe or Knabe), but without specific ages - this implies that they were apprentices, which normally would be quite young, but in some cases, weavers for example, they could easily be over 20. But where age is mentioned, I can honestly say that in all of the hundreds of cases I've read of people being drunk or being involved in tavern drinking bouts in early modern Germany, I've never seen anyone report their age as less than 16. Granted, they weren't always very precise about their age ("says he's about 16 or 17"). But there does seem to have been some sort of generally accepted social restraint at work. So where "age" as a specific chronological boundary may not have been important, there were definite boundaries between age-related identities (apprentice vs. journeymen, boy vs. man). Whether this can be defined as a moral issue, or whether is was related to physical notions, or whether it is simply a status issue (boys didn't have enough money to buy their own drinks), I'm not sure. This is also just an impression and not something I've been able to do targeted research on - but I'll keep looking! cheers Ann Tlusty At 04:04 PM 4/30/01 -0400, you wrote: >You raise a lot of central questions here, David, and I hope you've set >off a very interesting thread. > >One of the key questions is the way cultures construct ages and >generations. It's a commonplace, I suppose, that the chronological age of >most individuals was not terribly important until quite recently. Until >minimum ages for drinking, driving, voting, retirement, and so on were >regulated, who cared how old anyone was? True, there might be significant >ages related minority and majority and the legal capacity to marry >without parental consent or to inherit property. But they probably >affected relatively few people in western societies until the >eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. > >One survey I did years ago of people in late eighteenth-century France >compared the ages they gave and their ages as determined by birth >records. Only 68% got their age right. A higher degree of accuracy in >knowing ages is surely a necessary underpinning for any age-based >restriction on drinking. > >Of course, for millennia there has been advice on the relationship of age >and alcohol. (I give some in my history of wine.) Much of it was based on >characterizations of the youthful body as hot and thereful vulnerable to >combustion if "hot" beverages like alcohol were consumed). > >What's notable about the 19th and 20th centuries, when age restrictions >began to appear consistently in all jurisdictions, is that it was based >more clearly on moral rather than physical arguments: that children were >innocent, vulnerable, and that alcohol was inappropriate for them. Of >course, this also coincided with the rise of temperance arguments and >of the wider availability of alternative beverages. > >Shifts in concepts of childhood and youth are clearly central to the >history of alcohol regulation, but it's difficult to separate them (even >for analytical purposes) from other social, econimic and cultural changes. > >I'll follow this thread with interest. I'm currently completing a history >of alcohol (for the University of North Carolina Press) and I'm sure to >learn something that will help me on this. > >Rod Phillips > > >David Fahey writes: >> >> The more I study alcohol history the more that I begin to realize the >> extent of my ignorance. Perhaps ATHG subscribers can help me in regards >> youth and alcoholic beverages. I assume that a large part of the problem >> is how a society defines childhood. For instance, in recent years in the >> USA, childhood has been both enlarged chronologically (university students >> are not expected to be as responsible for their actions as had people of >> the same age a hundred years previously) and also narrowed (adult rights in >> voting and sexuality for teenagers). I assume too that the varying role of >> formal law in different societies is relevant, as is the kind of alcoholic >> beverages (for instance, wine or whiskey, low-alcohol beer or regular beer, >> etc.). And, of course, minimum legal ages for drinking seldom coincide >> with practice. There are all sorts of other considerations, as for >> example, religion (notably, Islam) and the role alcohol plays in social >> rituals, etc. Any suggestions? >> >> David M. Fahey Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, USA <[log in to unmask]> >> > > > >Roderick Phillips >Editor, Journal of Family History/ >Professor, Department of History >---------------------------------------------------------------------- >Carleton University >1125 Colonel By Drive >Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1S 5B6 >Tel: (613) 520-2600 ext 2824; fax: (613) 520-2819 >Email address: [log in to unmask] >---------------------------------------------------------------------- >