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“Normal” is a loaded, slippery word that signifies different standards for different groups. Eli, for his part, told me he didn’t “distinguish between normality and conformity.” An important observation of normality comes from psychologist David Anderegg: “When you try to identify people who are psychologically normal, the one reliable thing that seems to distinguish them, above all else, is that they define themselves as normal. They squeeze out any and all weirdness, because they don’t want it. To these aggressive mental centrists, nerds and geeks are not normal.”

Parents who rely on their children’s peers to dictate normality are venturing into particularly perilous territory, even apart from the idea that defining normality by teenage trends produces standards that are arbitrary and ultimately meaningless. When parents equate normality with popularity, they encourage behavior that is of much more concern than unpopularity.

Students reported that their parents’ preoccupation with their social status can go beyond the bounds of trying to disguise or smother their quirks. A New Jersey junior didn’t drink alcohol frequently, but happened to tell her mother that most students at her school did. Seemingly disappointed, her mom fretted, “Oh . . . well if everyone’s drinking, does that mean you aren’t cool?” In condoning alcohol use, parents may be hoping to be “the cool parent” among their children’s friends, expecting to boost their children’s popularity. Yet studies show that students perceive parents who have negative attitudes about alcohol and drugs to be more caring.

Parents’ attitudes toward drinking can be more dangerous than they realize, whether they throw parties with alcohol for teenagers, or allow them to drink alcohol in their homes while they look the other way. “The permissiveness of parents who want their kids to be popular can lead to tragic consequences,” according to Joseph Califano Jr., former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. The permissive parent debate runs hot and fierce. Some parents insist that because teenagers are going to drink anyway, they might as well drink at home. “High school kids drink. . . . It’s going to happen,” the Cato Institute’s Radley Balko wrote in the Washington Post. “Surely there are more pressing concerns for the Washington area criminal justice system to address than parents who throw supervised parties for high school kids. These parents . . . know that underage drinking goes on and take steps to prevent that reality from becoming harmful. We ought to be encouraging that kind of thing, not arresting people for it.”

Actually underage drinking is harmful to begin with. Health risks aside, numerous studies show that children whose parents allow them to drink at home are at a higher risk for developing alcohol problems. By contrast, teenagers who don’t drink at home are less likely to drink anywhere. Balko’s view is shockingly common. In a long-term study, Connecticut high school students told researchers that their parents were much more tolerant of substance abuse than they were of rudeness, academic failure, and stealing. It is unclear, however, whether Balko bothered to research his op-ed before pontificating in a major newspaper, given his erroneous claim that kids are going to drink anyway and his suggestion that if they drink at home, they won’t drink elsewhere. In fact, teenagers whose parents provide alcohol for parties are three times more likely to binge drink. Penn State’s Prevention Research and Methodology Center found that “the greater number of drinks that a parent had set as a limit for the teens, the more often they drank and got drunk in college.” Conversely students whose parents strongly disapprove of underage drinking are less likely to drink heavily in college. Experts say college drinking can cause far worse problems than alcoholism. One wonders what, for Balko, could possibly be a “more pressing concern” than the health and safety of children?

While encouraging substance abuse is extreme, parental pressure to conform to other social