Maya began drinking young – she was binge drinking by the age of 15 at weekend house parties in Walnut Creek. I was a young, naive, overstretched single mom with no concept of the party culture in the wealthy suburbs of Contra Costa County where we lived in the late 1980s.

She was adept at hiding, deflecting, and outright lying. The Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh brought it back in stark relief. Judge Kavanaugh’s high school calendar gave me flashbacks of several of Maya’s boyfriends. Anyone who continues to believe that Kavanaugh’s calendar is all innocent fun is mainlining psychoactive denial.

Powerful politicians seemed to send a message that the teenage years don’t matter – that it’s all fun and games even when the only thing coming between you and your drunken assailant is a bathing suit. Ask any parent of a teenage daughter, “Boys will be boys” is a destructive mantra.

Photo credit: UT Moody College of Communication on Visual Hunt / CC BY-SA

As parents, we are up against the power of peer culture, social media (back in the day, it was MTV), and your teen’s belief in immortality. Intoxication – whether from alcohol or drugs – is a constant temptation. As a parent of a teen I was as tied down as when she was a toddler – but Maya had car keys and was taller and more ingenious than me.

Party culture in the 1980s was corrosive. Upper middle class kids had too much money, freedom, and time on their hands. Some suburban parents were so grateful their kids weren’t doing hard drugs, they opened their liquor cabinets and looked the other way.

What I remember: Maya coming in one Saturday after a night of partying. Her eye makeup was smeared, she reeked of alcohol, her shirt was ripped. It was ten in the morning and she was clearly still drunk, surly, slurring her words. I felt as if every step I took, every word I spoke, dragged me deeper into quicksand.

As we witnessed during the Kavanaugh hearings, the side effects of party culture are far more consequential for girls. Watching Christine Blasey Ford testify before Congress was like opening a time capsule. I was transported back in time to my own narrow escapes and to my daughter’s – it was gut wrenching.

I wish I could have done more to protect Maya from the ways she tried to drown her pain. Letting kids experience the consequences of their actions while encouraging them to stay safe is an almost impossible balancing act. In Swimming with Maya I write about the ways I tried to navigate and the tough lessons I learned about setting limits. Party culture was a factor in Maya’s death – she was not legally intoxicated, but she had been drinking at the time of her fall.

Teaching girls to protect themselves and make smart choices about alcohol are as important as teaching boys to respect “no” and not use alcohol as a “crotch key,” as one of my high school boyfriends put it in 1966. How little times have changed!

Showing young people that self-respect and mutual respect can go hand in hand has never been more important. If they come away from the Supreme Court confirmation debacle believing that righteous indignation equals innocence or that what you do in your teens gets a pass in adulthood, they are taking away a dangerous message.

As I celebrate what would have been my daughter’s 46th birthday, I wish for all teenagers the love, support, and protection of a caring village – even good parenting is not enough. We all have to step up and show them how to navigate our culture and cherish their fragile, beautiful lives.

Let’s hope we can counterbalance the chilling message the U.S. Senate conveyed when it confirmed Judge Kavanaugh. The teenage years do matter. Choices young people make then can shape their lives for decades to come. Let’s be sure we help them make smart ones that respect the rights of women and girls, and teach boys and men to accept limits and listen with respect.

Photo credit: <a href=”https://visualhunt.com/author/57d4a2″>UT Moody College of Communication</a> on <a href=”https://visualhunt.com/re/c5ca3f”>Visual Hunt</a> / <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/”> CC BY-SA</a>