“Sober Message to Parents”: Representations of Parents in Australian News Media on Youth Drinking

Abstract

Traditional news media can both reflect and shape public perceptions, including expectations relating to alcohol and parenting. This paper examines representations of parents in Australian news media reporting on youth drinking to understand how parental standards related to alcohol are constructed and articulated. 150 news articles were sampled from a larger study of youth drinking, in which we identified four representations of parents—parents as to blame, good parents, parents as lost and parents as victims. These four representations of parents reflect dominant neoliberal ways of governing, which promote parental education, best practice standards and responsibility as solutions to concerns around youth drinking. We examine the way politicians, research findings and legal directives (most commonly secondary supply laws) were deployed to attribute parental responsibility and standards of care. While parents as “to blame” or as irresponsible was concretely established in the articles, good parents were far more elusive and strategically individualized in ways that abdicated responsibility from the state, industry and structural burdens. As such, while media representations were able to define and moralize bad parents and parenting practices when it came to youth drinking, what it meant to be a “good parent” was often an ambiguous ideal. We suggest these media representations contribute to intensive parenting standards by providing another platform in which parental behaviors can be publicly scrutinized and moralized.

Keywords

news media parents representation young people alcohol drinking

Introduction

Broad social shifts in the 21st century have seen a greater emphasis on, and intensification of, the role of parents (Geinger et al., 2014; Tisdall, 2006). Parenting has been constructed as the solution to a range of social problems as “children, their development and the prevention of risks become priorities since children are considered ‘the future citizens of tomorrow’” (Geinger et al., 2014, p. 489; Gillies, 2005; valentine et al., 2019). Taking on the responsibility for the social, emotional and cognitive development of children, parents are expected to raise well-adjusted children who can contribute productively to society (Craig et al., 2014; Geinger et al., 2014). One way that these expectations are deployed is through mainstream media depictions of “good” and “bad” parenting (Assarsson & Aarsand, 2011). Included here are expectations and standards relating to alcohol, both in terms of parenting practices and parental and youth consumption (Rossow et al., 2016; Ryan et al., 2010). Given that public discourse may both reflect and produce parenting standards around alcohol, this paper examines representations of parents in Australian news media reporting on youth drinking to understand how parental standards related to alcohol are constructed and articulated.

Parents and Alcohol

Epidemiological research, which tends to emphasize discourses of “health” and “risk” (Moore, 2008), has long been a central feature of research on youth drinking. In epidemiological research on young people’s alcohol consumption, there is significant focus on parents and the protective or harmful role they may play (Eadie et al., 2010; Rossow et al., 2016; Ryan et al., 2010). Research has concluded that parents are important models of drinking behavior (Smit et al., 2019) and monitors for managing young people’s consumption (Ryan et al., 2010). Parents are also identified as regular suppliers of alcohol during adolescence (Gilligan et al., 2012). This, arguably, reflects the complex advice on how parents should introduce alcohol and set standards around drinking. For example, parents are encouraged to engage in oft-times contradictory parenting behaviors such as, facilitating open communication about alcohol (Yap et al., 2017), displaying disapproval of use (Lam et al., 2017), and engaging in alcohol-related monitoring and rule setting (Schwinn & Schinke, 2014).

Arguably, research emphasizing the significant role of parents has been instrumental in making parenting a focal point in government controls relating to alcohol. This includes (most notably in recent decades in Australia) secondary supply laws, which make it illegal for anyone other than a child’s parent or legal guardian to supply alcohol to someone under 18, without parental or guardian consent (Australian Drug Foundation [ADF], 2021; Vashishtha et al., 2021). Despite these legal directives, parents often cite confusion about the best approach to alcohol-related monitoring, modeling and education. For example, whether to encourage young people to delay drinking alcohol, or adopt the “European family model” of introducing alcohol to young people earlier in the family home (Graham et al., 2006; Jones et al., 2015). This confusion likely stem from information from a range of sources, including mainstream media. This information and the way it is uncritically presented as evidence, can powerfully shape public perception, including expectations and ideals relating to alcohol and parenting (as it does for other health-related behaviors) (Briggs & Hallin, 2016).

The News Media

Despite the growth of online media outlets and social media platforms, traditional print news media was still accessed by 13.5 million Australians in 2021 (approximately 70% of Australians aged 15+; Roy Morgan, 2022). The news media remains a key site in which various aspects of parenting and parenting behaviors prominently feature (Assarsson & Aarsand, 2011; Fraser & Llewellyn, 2015). As such examining media reporting is useful for exploring “how shared cultural values […] are articulated and constructed” (Patterson et al., 2016, p. 2), including reporting on parenting and associated strategies or expectations. For example, Assarsson and Aarsand (2011) concluded that media representations of “good”/“bad” parents arguably reflected broader socio-political and neoliberal ways of governing parents, and that “in these media practices, parenting is categorised, evaluated and corrected” (p. 79). News media has also been shown to frame parents, often mothers, as responsible for a range of issues, from exposure to environmental chemicals (Mello & Tan, 2016), to childhood obesity (De Brun et al., 2013; Maher et al., 2010), and juvenile crime (White, 2010). Work by Maher and colleagues (2010) examined the role of mothers in media discussions of childhood obesity, finding coverage reinforced maternal responsibilities for the bodies of children and placing blame on mothers.

Previous research has shown mainstream media reporting on different dimensions of alcohol to be prolific, and increasingly problematized (i.e., being constructed, over time, as more of a “problem”). This research has provided a critical lens to understanding how media constructs and conveys problems related to alcohol. This includes general alcohol-related issues (Azar et al., 2014), women’s drinking (Day et al., 2004), the reinforcement of binary constructions of gender norms in reporting on alcohol (Bogren, 2011), alcohol-related violence (Lancaster et al., 2012), alcohol-related news stories (Nicholls, 2011), adolescents and alcohol (Pennay et al., 2022), and drinking during pregnancy (Cook et al., 2020). Two Australian analyses found an increase in newspaper articles that were disapproving of alcohol consumption between 2000 and 2011 (Azar et al., 2014; Pennay et al., 2022). Nicholls (2011) similarly highlighted an increase over time in public health perspectives and health framings of news stories on alcohol in the UK. Nicholls’ analysis concluded that while public health experts have successfully entrenched themselves in the media narrative, there appeared to be little consensus on the “right” policy approaches. An Australian news media analyses of a newly implemented “alcopop’s tax” showed how mainstream media evidence is often selective, foregrounding individual anecdotes and evidence-free statements (Fogarty & Chapman, 2011).

In looking to examine changes over time in the content and slant of news articles on young people and alcohol, particularly in the context of recent declining drinking trends, Pennay and colleagues (2022) found that reporting on policy or prevention initiatives which targeted parents was common, with parents also being a common source in media reporting on this topic. Building on this previous content analysis, the present study critically interrogates the representation of parents in Australian news media reporting on youth drinking. Our aim is to understand how parenting standards are constructed and articulated in news reports on youth drinking.

Method

The data for this analysis comes from a larger study looking at media representations of young people’s (under 18 years) drinking in Australia over a 20-year period (published between January 1, 2000, and December 31, 2019) from Australia’s 15 major national and state print-based newspapers (Pennay et al., 2022). In the original search, Factiva was used to identify articles using the search terms (alcohol or grog or booz^∗) AND (youth or young or adolescen^∗ or teen^∗) (following the broader study aims to investigate the portrayal of youth drinking over time). After several search iterations, and to contain the number of articles while also capturing the widest Australia readership, the final search examined the “headline and leading paragraph” of Australian major newspapers (a category in Factiva) for the included search terms. This resulted in a total sample of 2,415 articles from two national and 13 state based papers. The major newspapers included The Australian, the Australian Financial Review (the two national papers), The Sunday Tasmanian, The Sunday Telegraph, The Sunday Times, The Mercury, The Sunday Mail, The Canberra Times, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Courier Mail, The Daily Telegraph, The Advertiser, The West Australian and The Herald Sun. For the current analysis we extracted all articles that mentioned parents or were relevant to parents and proportionally randomly sampled articles from each year to retain the same curve found in the original sample (e.g., over-sampled in years where there were more articles overall). Given the present analysis was informed by critical discourse analysis which involved critically analyzing the discourse for each article, a process which took significant time and often correspondence between the lead author and the broader team, the sample was contained to enable in-depth and comprehensive analysis. Articles were included if there was a substantial reference to parents (two papers—the Financial Review and the Sunday Tasmanian—had no articles which met this criteria). However, if, for example, only the word “parent” was mentioned, but nothing in the article related to parents, it was excluded from our analysis. After reviewing previous newspaper media discourse analysis (e.g., Bogren, 2011) and the entire sample of parent relevant articles, the team decided a proportionally representative sample of 150 articles would be both feasible and sufficient for understanding how parenting standards are constructed and articulated. As a result, we capped the number of articles at 150 (out of the 310 relevant parent-relevant articles from the larger sample).

Analysis

Our approach was informed by critical discourse analysis [CDA], where discourse is understood as a form of social practice (Fairclough, 1995, 2013). We considered texts (articles), as both reflecting and producing social realities, in terms of their wider social and political significance and the reproduction of power relations (Fairclough, 1995, 2013). In Fairclough’s view, one of the main purposes of using CDA is to reveal the assumptions, prevailing orthodoxies and selective language which underpin and sustain particular realities and possibilities, but which often go unnoticed by the general public (Fairclough, 2013; Poole, 2010). Furthermore, such an approach makes explicit power relations that emerge and are sustained through discourse and accepted knowledge. Discourse analysis has been productively adopted in studies to examine news media representations of alcohol and other drugs (Bogren, 2011; Day et al., 2004). Here CDA was used as a framework to draw our attention to the representation (or construction) of parents in relation to youth drinking, as well as the broader socio-political contexts of the material (e.g., relevant policy changes). CDA was the framework through which the analysis of the articles (using Neale’s iterative categorization) occurred.

To analyze the articles, we engaged in a reciprocal process of reading, collating and synthesizing the data following the steps outlined in Neale’s iterative categorization, which provides a systematic and transparent technique for analyzing qualitative data (Neale, 2016, 2020). Through a first reading of the sample of the articles, the lead author (in consultation with the team) located the central discourses which were used to structure the thematic analysis. Our analysis (i.e., coding) then began under broad themes of interest following these discourses and the research focus—to understand the representation of parents—which then deepened into considerations and interpretations of meaning mediated by the data alongside the broader social and political environment. That is, we first engaged in reading the data, then collating and organizing the data by coding the articles under themes of interest and finally we synthesized the findings through critical interpretation of meaning. Through this process we identified four representations of parents in Australian news media reporting on youth drinking, each of which framed parents as responsible, in some capacity, for young people and youth drinking. These representations fluctuated over time in response to policy foci and shifts, dissemination of new research findings, newsworthy incidents, and seasonality (see also Pennay et al., 2022), and we present these in turn below.

Findings

Parental Responsibility for Youth Drinking—Parents as to Blame

Where the drinking of minors was reported, parents were frequently couched as to “blame” for their children’s alcohol consumption and the subsequent harm that the child experienced, or the harm to others they allegedly perpetrated. Sources in positions of power, for example, Australian labor politician Anna Bligh (Giles, 2008), often referred to parents as “irresponsible” or as acting “recklessly.” Parents were blamed for a range of things; for creating situations in which young people felt unsafe (e.g., family conflicts; “Alcohol,” 2011, p. 4), for modeling drinking behaviors which put children at risk of problematic use later in life (e.g., Lunn, 2008, p. 3), or for supplying young people with alcohol (e.g., Burke & Murray, 2007). For example:

OF ALL the modern parenting trends to have taken hold in recent years, the desire to be friends with your child must be the most foolhardy. […] It is that type of harebrained folly that sees parents refuse to discipline their entitled offspring and acquiesce to the most outrageous demands, including buying alcohol and cigarettes for underage youth. No wonder so many kids seem destined for delinquency and a lifetime of arrogance untempered by ability or charisma. (Panahi, 2013, editorial)

As the extract above shows, the alcohol-related choices parents make in relation to raising children are unquestionably argued to have implications (in this case negative implications) for the type of individual the child grows up to be, both in terms of alcohol and moral character. In articles where parents were represented as to blame, individualized solutions were often proposed by emphasizing parental responsibility, for example:

Mr Bleijie (Australian politician) is worried by the lack of consequences in households where anti-social behaviour goes unpunished. […] “Maybe it will be a wake-up call to some of the parents, that rather than the government trying to fix all the problems with my son or daughter, maybe I should take some responsibility.” (Panahi, 2013, editorial)

The representation of parents as solely responsible for children’s behaviors (rather than the state, as argued by Mr Bleijie) evidences neoliberal preoccupations that future productive citizens (i.e., children) are “made” by responsible parents, which subsequently renders parental actions open to public analysis and debate.

During the period of analysis, several policy changes were implemented across Australia, including the implementation of secondary supply laws (ADF, 2021; Vashishtha et al., 2021). Peaks in reporting often reflected the policy changes at state level. For example, a spike in articles reporting on secondary supply in 2009 in the lead up to legislative changes in Tasmania and Queensland and in 2017 when South Australia’s legislation changed (Vashishtha et al., 2021). Additionally, editorials, such as that by Panahi, a right-wing opinion columnist, which arguably operate as indicators of the “opinion climate” (Törrönen, 2004, p. 62), were deployed three times in 2013 amid the federal election. During such periods, media attention on these policy topics was sustained (see also, Pennay et al., 2022). As such, the media attached a legal responsibility onto parents, which facilitated a narrative of blame where parents failed to adhere to the legal standards of care being established (e.g., Emerson, 2013, p. 14). The idea of parents giving underage young people alcohol was represented as a failure of the inherent “duty of care” attached to the role or status of being a parent (e.g., Lang, 2014, p. 24). Many articles were quick to report that secondary supply measures were aimed at “irresponsible supply” and that “parents who allow their children to drink moderately at home will not be singled out” (Burke & Murray, 2007). This “responsibility” caveat of secondary supply laws was reported to be determined by a complex mix of factors, such as whether the adult was drunk, the age of the child, the amount they had consumed and how the child was supervised (see, e.g., O’Connell, 2018, p. 11).

In addition to privileging the voices of “authoritative” sources, metaphors and emotive imagery were used to emphasize the dichotomy between good and bad parenting, operating to blame “bad” parents:

I would also like to talk about parents, and make something very clear. You are less fit to be a parent than Miley Cyrus if you believe that it is acceptable to knowingly host or supervise a party where minors are consuming alcohol. (Wolfe, 2013, p. 23, opinion article)

Here a pop-culture reference was used as an illustrative and evocative hyperbolic device by a Year 10 (high school) student to draw a parallel between supplying alcohol to young people with what was considered at the time the epitome of irresponsibility.¹ Across the 20 years of articles, the provision of alcohol to underage young people became equated with, and representative of, irresponsibility. This, within broader framings of parents as to blame, became synonymous with risk, immorality and a threat to social order; and was another instance in which parental behaviors were opened up for public debate.

The representation of parents as “to blame” peaked at two time points (2004 and 2007) and manifested itself in several, often contradictory, ways. For example, parents were sometimes described as overprotective (i.e., “Overzealous parents doing more harm than good”; Tognini, 2019, p. 20, editorial), or not involved enough and needing to take more responsibility for their children’s behavior (e.g., Panahi, 2013). The alcohol industry also played a notable role in the representation of parents as to blame. This tactic arguably served to both divert attention and accountability away from the industry, while allowing them to demonstrate corporate social responsibility (Yoon & Lam, 2013). For example, “BWS and Dan Murphy’s national liquor licensing manager Shane Tremble said the company’s ‘Don’t Buy it For Them’ message was to remind parents to be responsible” (Viellaris, 2012, p. 4, news article). Researchers or research findings were also commonly drawn upon to implicate parental blame, often in relation to parental supply. For example, “Families are under fire from leading health authorities following the release of the data which shows amid drinking teenagers, parents were the most common source of alcohol with 37 per cent of 12- to 17-years-olds indicating their parents gave them their last drink” (Masters, 2007, p. 16, news article). In these cases, no agency was prescribed to young people; instead, neoliberal responsibilization was deferred onto parents.

Considerations of other broader structural, cultural or individual factors, including young people’s agency and decision making or the role of the industry alongside the role of parents, while rare, was evident in several longer articles (e.g., Murray, 2008, p. 18; Stark, 2008, p. 3). More limited references to these other factors at play were scattered throughout the sample although rarely discussed in-depth. For example, “Opposition Leader Mark McGowan said he broadly supported secondary supply laws but he thought it was ‘at the edges’ of a wider societal issue” (Emerson, 2013, p. 14, news article). While these articles avoided adopting a singular perspective, they did not entirely absolve parents of responsibility, instead challenging simplistic applications of parental blame. Here, expert narratives also engaged in subtle operations of power. For example, Professor Roche (researcher and then director of the National Centre for Education on Training and Addiction) suggested that while “parents had a vital role in setting boundaries for alcohol use […] they should not be made scapegoats” (Stark, 2008, p. 3, news article). By providing a disclaimer against scapegoating, such expert narratives distinguished themselves as more balanced and measured, while still reinforcing parental responsibility (i.e., “parents had a vital role”).

Good Parents and Establishing Standards of Care

Good/bad and responsible/irresponsible binaries were reinforced throughout articles, functioning as a part of broader discourses of care and responsibility. Operating in comparison to the common representation of parents as to blame, was the depiction of “good parents”—those who could navigate and establish boundaries, adhere to legal directives, and achieve the elusive balance around “appropriate” consumption (for young people) while negating and avoiding any harms (e.g., Booker, 2017, p. 2). Often premised in the representation of good parents was the need for balance (although what this looked like and how it could be achieved was often ambiguous), for example, “It’s tricky for parents—they need to let their adolescents have space and independence but too much independence too early can be dangerous,” Dr. Hayes [clinical psychologist and academic] said (Horin, 2004, p. 3, news article). Through the representation of the “good parent” it became evident how the representations worked together with “bad parents,” operating as a part of the overall narrative of parents’ involvement in youth drinking.

The parental supply debate and associated research findings on this topic were also deployed to establish standards of care or best parenting practices in relation to “good parenting.” For example, the discussion of parental supply enabled the opportunity for politicians, police, researchers and health experts to dispel “myths” that parental supply is the best way to introduce children to alcohol (i.e., the European family model) and offer better alternatives (i.e., delaying consumption for as long as possible). One article focusing on secondary supply laws explicitly suggested that such policies were about setting and achieving certain collective “standards” in parenting behavior which were to the benefit of all—“They [secondary supply laws] would give parents the confidence to insist that others meet certain standards, knowing the law was on their side” (“Alcohol laws should give parents support,” 2014, p. 16, editorial). As such, secondary supply laws also became a focus for debate and consideration about what it means to be a good parent and more broadly, a responsible adult to others’ children.

Good, responsible parents were constructed as those who adhered to alcohol-related policy and legal obligations, but the label extended beyond this to encompass general parenting strategies explicated by experts, other parents, community members and the industry. Articles reported on ways for parents to better support young people in general, as well as suggesting better parenting strategies around alcohol, in many cases framed as “how to” articles—that is, “How do you approach a teenager who wants to drink alcohol?” (Booker, 2017, p. 2, news article). The parenting strategies of “good parents” referenced across the articles commonly included talking to children, setting boundaries and rules, challenging beliefs and misconceptions, and leading by example to ensure young people developed an appropriate relationship with alcohol (e.g., “Alcohol laws should give parents support,” 2017, p. 16; McKay, 2009, p. 7). Several general parenting practices such as building self-esteem, being aware of what young people were doing and being available when needed were also raised (e.g., Lang, 2000, p. 16). For example, an article from the Daily Telegraph in 2017 quoted adolescent psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg, who advised a range of parenting practices, including encouraging parents to delay adolescent alcohol use, to talk to children about alcohol, have multiple chats, to model responsible consumption, to set rules and to establish clear consequences which are consistently enforced (Maguire, 2017, p. 10). Somewhat problematically for parents (arguably the primary intended audience), an appropriate relationship with alcohol was not explicated in any sufficient detail in the articles; it was something to be achieved, but there was no evidence provided of anyone achieving it. In setting such ambiguous standards, those in positions of power (i.e., the media, psychologists, etc.) could attribute endless responsibility onto parents. Additionally, these best practices were often followed up by idiomatic statements which, arguably, isolated parents from any support in following or enacting these strategies and reinforced parental responsibility—for example, “It’s up to parents” (Maguire, 2017, p. 10, feature article). As such, while parents as to blame or as irresponsible was concretely established in the articles, good parents were far more elusive, only appearing as a vague ideal.

Parents as Lost

In contrast to the representations of parents as responsible or irresponsible, were depictions of parents as vulnerable or confused. For example, there were references to parents being or feeling “stressed,” “worried,” and “powerless,” most often made by those in varying positions of power (i.e., policy directors, politicians, etc.). For example, Australian Drug Foundation director of policy Geoff Munro was quoted as saying, “Many parents feel powerless to stop their school-aged children from drinking” (Martin, 2011, p. 1, news article). The general public, including parents themselves, were the most commonly referenced sources in articles representing parents as lost or in need of help. Such articles gave parents a voice, in comparison to representations of parents as to blame, where parents themselves were largely scrutinized without the opportunity for reply. For example:

“One of my biggest issues is that there’s a lot of myths and different family norms out there about what’s good and what’s wrong in terms of kids drinking,” she said. “So from my perspective to get some clarity around what is the science and the evidence to inform, I think is good. […] I’m conscious that my girls see us using it as a socialising tool. It is a dilemma what do you tell them, what sort of behaviors do you teach them through your role modelling?” (Rudra, 2009, p. 4, news article)

The Rudra article focused on the launch of a new national DrinkWise campaign which aims “to help parents delay the age their teens start drinking” (Rudra, 2009, p. 4, news article). However, in focusing on a new DrinkWise campaign, this article discursively constructs the industry as a legitimate source of information for parents who are lost and need of guidance on youth drinking. Presented as an “alcohol safety group” DrinkWise’s industry ties are entirely obscured.

In articles representing parents as lost, parents were often represented as lacking the strategic tools, knowledge or support needed to help young people around alcohol, for example:

What’s the best way to educate your children about alcohol? There are few issues so perplexing and confusing for parents than how to introduce the notion of alcohol to young people. Many report that they are under pressure from their son or daughter to let them drink before the legal drinking age. (Grose, 2010, p. 30, feature article)

Such articles often simultaneously positioned parents as responsible and needing to be informed, with their uncertainty suggested to lead to harm—“If parents are struggling with finding that balance about alcohol, is it any surprise young people are also unclear?” (Murray, 2008, p. 18, opinion article).

Parents as Victims of Circumstance

In articles reporting on parents’ experiences of a tragic circumstance (often parents whose children were victims of alcohol-related harms and violence), blame was rarely, if it all, invoked. In these circumstances, parents were sympathized with through their heartbreak or grief, for example:

There is nothing more tragic than a young life stolen—snatched away by a stupid flirtation with drugs and alcohol. Feel then for the parents of 16-year-old Townsville girl Melanie Boyd who have had to come to terms with their daughter’s death after she took a cocktail of prescription and illegal drugs and alcohol. (“Sad lesson in lost life,” 2006, p. 54, editorial).

Although parents were depicted as responsible for fuelling bad behavior in some articles, where the circumstance was fatal or near fatal (i.e., to blame), there was also a group of articles where the discussion around or attribution of parental responsibility either disappeared or shifted to vulnerability (e.g., Healy, 2000, p. 8; Oakes, 2008, p. 7). Often this was in circumstances where the child had died. In these cases, there was frequently a shift from a focus on the individual and their parenting, to “parents” as a collective. The language and quotation choices used to report on grieving parents were emotionally evocative, operating in support of parents’ grief and aimed to elicit sympathy, for example, “The distraught parents,” “fighting back tears,” “begged [his] friends to help” (Speranza, 2011, p. 37, news article). In some of these cases parents were represented as heroes, sharing their stories in the hope of achieving something—for example, advocating for national policy changes (e.g., Moulton, 2014, p. 7). In this way, parents were often able to reclaim some agency to act in ways that rejected the responsibility attributed to them. As such, parents were framed as protectors of others’ children, and heroic for resolving to push for change from their tragic circumstance.

Discussion

In examining the representation of parents in Australian news media reporting on youth drinking, we identified four dominant representations of parents. Parents were most commonly attributed a form of causal responsibility, either for the harms young people experienced or perpetrated, or for failing to parent in a manner consistent with the broader ideals of the society at large. Reflecting a dominant perspective in much epidemiological research, parents were often portrayed as a risk factor for young people’s harms from consumption (Gilligan & Kypri, 2012; Mynttinen et al., 2020; Rossow et al., 2016). This representation operated to simplify complex relationships, values and norms around alcohol to a “problem” of parental responsibility. Through this representation, a singular view of the problem was constructed, one in which the burden was placed solely on parents to follow the (often complicated) research evidence; for example, communicate openly with their children, set rules, model consumption, and so on (Lam et al., 2017; Schwinn & Schinke, 2014; Yap et al., 2017).

The 20-year span captured in the sample reflects a period of significant change relating to secondary supply laws across Australia. These laws prohibit the provision of alcohol to those under 18 years without parental consent and were introduced to different states at different times (Vashishtha et al., 2021). Similar to previous media research, reporting on policy or prevention initiatives which targeted parents was common (Pennay et al., 2022), with much attention given to parental supply and the negative implications this can have. There were also peaks in the representation of parents as to blame which coincided with Australian federal elections in 2004 and 2007. While the media purports to be neutral in reflecting public sentiment, as an institution it simultaneously facilitates and constrains social action, for example, by providing a frame for action (Fairclough, 2013). In employing certain representations at certain times (e.g., during the lead up to an election) it can also serve to obscure and shift the responsibility of these issues—in this case, away from industry and state and on to parents. Here, we saw how parental responsibility for youth drinking is debated and moralized. This moralization in many ways operated without critical consideration of the implications for parents and young people’s lives, or acknowledgment of the ways it might contribute to intense parenting standards and young people’s overall health and wellbeing (i.e., Yerkes et al., 2021).

Similar to the representation of parents to blame, representing parents as lost or grieving was also buoyed by the inclusion of experts and opinions of others in the narrative. The intercession of experts often signaled and was regarded as the result of a failure, in this case, to parent (Fraser & Llewellyn, 2015). In many cases, expert opinions were often positioned in opposition to parents, with experts constructing and acting as commentators to public examples of parental failure (e.g., supplying alcohol to children on schoolies; Purdon, 2009, p. 28). The presentation of expert advice often implied a correct performance of parenthood and a singular conception of the “good parent,” despite this advice often being vague and at times contradictory. Yet, what it meant to be a good parent was often strategically individualized (Geinger et al., 2014), reflecting broader socio-political and neoliberal ways of governing parents (Assarsson & Aarsand, 2011). In doing so, these representations abdicated responsibility from other sources such as the state or the alcohol industry, or from structural burdens and the capacities and opportunities afforded (Clarke, 2005). In this way, parents that did not or could not restrict their children’s drinking did not fit these socially prescribed roles of parenthood.

In most articles mothers and fathers were rarely considered separately. Instead, media reporting focused on “parents” or “parenting” as a verb rather than an ontological category or collective (with the exception of reporting of tragic circumstances) and any other gendered distinctions in the reporting on parents’ practices were notably absent (De Benedictis, 2012). We did not find a similar focus on maternal responsibilities to that of previous studies on parental responsibilities in news media (see, e.g., Maher et al., 2010; Mello & Tan, 2016). However, as has been argued previously (De Benedictis, 2012; Gillies, 2005), using neutral language such as “parents” to attribute blame in neoliberal discourses of responsibility is one way in which to mask the gendered dimensions of parenting, whereby women and mothers take on the bulk of caring duties (Craig & Bittman, 2008). While articles acknowledged parenting as a highly valued skill subject to multiple pressures on the one hand, on the other, parenting was represented as dangerous if performed incorrectly or irresponsibly (most notably evident in the representation of parents as to blame) and positioned those who did so as a failing to demonstrate parental competency.

Consideration of the positive potentials of alcohol for parents, including facilitating relaxation and sociality (see, e.g., Baker, 2017; Emslie et al., 2015) were notably absent, such that discussions of parents and alcohol were only considered in terms of the risks and harms to future generations. However, we acknowledge the strong “wine mum culture,” a counter perspective on parents (though specifically mothers) consumption, which arguably normalizes and highlights the pleasures of consumption, is also proliferated through the media (Seaver, 2019). Although potentially a limitation of the scope of the study or of media reporting, the absence of parental pleasures in our sample meant that a “good parent,” in terms of alcohol, was often an ambiguous ideal which failed to reflect the realities of parents’ lives and their relationships with alcohol. Moreover, for parents, this type of media reporting and the representations presented arguably contributed to the intensive parenting standards parents already faced (Geinger et al., 2014; Gillies, 2005; valentine et al., 2019) without addressing parents’ misconceptions (i.e., that introducing alcohol to young people earlier in the family home is beneficial) or countering the confusion many parents report experiencing (Graham et al., 2006; Jones et al., 2015).

There are several limitations to be kept in mind when interpreting our findings. First, the sample was limited to print media from Australian major news media publications and as such, did not capture articles printed only online or from regional publications. Future research may wish to include or even focus on how online media contributes to discourse on parents and young people’s alcohol use. Additionally, the analysis was informed by the researchers’ disciplinary and theoretical backgrounds as sociologists and public health researchers, and these have influenced the analysis and conclusions presented in this article. Although we have been critical of the lack of complexity in the reporting, this may be the result of reporting burdens including the limited space for stories and shorter word counts in the newspaper articles themselves. Finally, we wish to acknowledge that parents are not passive receivers of media discourses. Parents actively interpret these messages and engage in performances of parenting that are influenced by many factors including, but not limited to, the media and broader discourses (Geinger et al., 2014). In future, further critical engagement with the idea of what a “responsible parent” is, how this ideal transcends public discourse, and the implications for how parents’ manage relationships with their children and alcohol is needed.

Conclusion

By exploring the representation of parents in Australian news media on young people’s alcohol consumption, our work contributes to previous studies on news media reporting of alcohol. These show reporting to be prolific and, through devoting it significant attention, suggest alcohol to be of critical concern (Azar et al., 2014; Cook et al., 2020; Day et al., 2004; Fogarty & Chapman, 2011; Lancaster et al., 2012; Nicholls, 2011; Pennay et al., 2022). The four representations of parents identified reflect dominant neoliberal ways of governing, which promoted parental education of best practice standards and responsibility as solutions to concerns around youth drinking. While media representations were able to define and moralize bad parents and parenting practices when it came to youth drinking, what it meant to be a “good parent” was often nothing more than an ambiguous ideal. We suggest this reinforces intensive parenting standards by providing another platform in which parental behaviors can be publicly scrutinized and moralized.

Footnotes

Authors’ Note

An earlier version of this article was presented at the Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol & other Drugs (APSAD) Conference in 2021.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Amy Pennay is supported by Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Awards (DE190101074).

ORCID iD

Megan Cook

Note

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