What about staying sober?

In his moment of grief—a moment that will grow to fill his remaining years—a father asks, “Why didn’t she just stay there?” His daughter, now dead, had walked off down the highway alone instead of staying with her friend. Both girls, 18 years old, were drunk—too drunk to make good choices, too drunk to think straight. Now, one of them is dead, a murder victim.

The New York Times, quoting Andrew Karmen, a Professor of Sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, reports that “half of all murders involve somebody who is drinking.” The article goes on to say that the drug most implicated with violence is alcohol.

The father may one day think to ask, “Why were they drunk?” But maybe not. Maybe it’s not even a question. It’s an assumption we make without reflection, mostly, that our children will stumble into adulthood on the train without a conductor—the party or club that serves alcohol to minors.

Our whole culture celebrates this drug of choice. I am no prohibitionist myself. My own family is supported by the legal sale of alcohol. My husband’s bar on Manhattan’s Lower East Side set the drinking age to 21, years before a state law made it mandatory. It was good for business.

The local community board has never cited his bar as a trouble spot. The local police precinct appreciates the lack of “frat boy” violence, and neighborhood professionals know where to go for a quiet drink after work. And many 21 year-olds celebrate with a night of legal drinking at this neighborhood watering hole, recently hailed as one of the “best bars in America” by Esquire Magazine.

It’s a quandary for me, though. What to say, in deed and word, to my teenage children about the culture of alcohol?

A friend took her teenage son with her on a business trip to Bulgaria recently. There, they found a society that served beer to minors as readily as water. He had his first taste of the brew we associate with adulthood. His new fondness for beer is a kind of badge he wears now, even on his publicly available MySpace profile. He is 17.

My son, 18, has been drunk at least once. I do not know the source of his drink, but I know it was not legal.

By the time I was 18, I had been drinking for a few years, and never had trouble purchasing liquor or beer. On my 18th birthday I was carded for beer at a local deli, and surprised myself when I realized I possessed a legal ID. I had never even needed a fake one. But now, every teen who drinks alcohol seems to have one. In an age when North Korea can print “superbills” of American currency and every high school has a laser printer, how can we be surprised?

I come from a family of alcoholics. The legacy probably goes back many generations, but I can trace it with certainty to my maternal grandmother and my father. Recent research says it takes three generations to erase the patterns of behavior from a family stricken with the disease of alcoholism. Even without drinking, parents like me pass on a tendency to their children. And children of alcoholics tend to find each other. My husband’s mother died from the disease before she was old enough to see grandchildren.

When I spend a weekend in the city—a rarity these days—I am often struck by the number of young, probably legal, attractive, and otherwise well-heeled people on the street who are clearly inebriated.

When I watch television—another rarity—I am similarly assaulted by the culture of alcohol. Even with the growing awareness of alcoholism and its tragic consequences for families, the liberal use of alcohol is celebrated in TV shows and advertising.

My daughter was eight years old when she was recruited for a television commercial for Johnny Walker Red scotch. The spot was not allowed to be shown in the U.S. but was aired liberally around the world. In it, her red hair was one of the symbols the brand was identified by. An eight-year-old girl in a commercial for alcohol? What were they thinking?

So maybe it’s not surprising that the father of Jennifer Moore, the 18-year-old girl who was murdered after a night of underage drinking in a city nightclub, did not ask why his daughter was drunk. How do we keep our children sober in a world that encourages them to defy the odds every Saturday night?