Mother’s ruin? The relational alcohol consumption practices and experiences of mothers and their teenage and young adult children

This paper explores the relational alcohol consumption practices and experiences of mothers aged 38–59 and their teenage and young adult children aged 15–24, living in Chorlton and Wythenshawe, Greater Manchester, UK. Through 10 semi-structured in-depth interviews with mothers, this paper explores the ways in which mothers facilitate the alcohol consumption practices and experiences of their children, and the spaces of their drinking, through the provision of ‘dens’. This paper is original in arguing that surveillance of drinking practices and experiences is not a one-way process; teenage and young adult children transmit their knowledge and opinions surrounding alcohol consumption in ways that shape and curtail the alcohol consumption practices and experiences of their mothers in, and beyond, the home. Through doing so, this paper highlights the need to recognise the role of negotiated interdependence in the alcohol consumption practices of both young people and their mothers. A key contribution of this paper to understanding children’s geographies is methodological. Whilst not undermining the important work that seeks to elicit and showcase the voices of young people themselves, this paper demonstrates that there is real value in harnessing parents’ perspectives, for offering alternative viewpoints into relational drinking geographies.