The article is good for a few laughs. I thought about posting a response to some of the points that this “expert” makes, but they pretty much refute themselves. Essentially, this guy is using the male equivalent of his mommy instinct to trump science, reason, and conventional wisdom — all at the same time. Here are some of the better quotes taken from the article:

Q: What if you find your kid watching porn?

A: Pull up a chair and say, “Let’s watch together.” Most kids would rather die than watch porn with their mother, which gives you an opportunity to say, “If there’s nothing wrong with porn, there should be no problem with us watching it together.” Then actually watch it. A lot of porn today has a very bizarre element, a lot of violence toward women and even animals, it’s not the soft-core stuff that was around when we grew up. It provides a great opening to talk to kids about their values, what they think about what they’re seeing. You can even have them do a little research on what porn actors’ lives are like, whether they’re actually enjoying what they’re doing, whether in real life, girls and women want to be treated that way.

Because if there’s nothing wrong with it, then obviously children wouldn’t mind doing it with their parents, right? It’s not like the porn he used to watch in the good old days.

Q: But most kids seem to drink. How much is too much?

A: This is where I lose most of the audience: any at all. The problem is one of tactics. If you tell your kid, “A couple of beers is okay,” then why not four? Why not 16? Once you cross that threshold of acceptability you’ve got a big problem. The message has to be zero tolerance. You keep saying to your kid, “I just don’t think it’s okay, I can’t approve it.” We’ve lost more kids to the effects of alcohol than all of the other drugs combined.

Teens are so crazy, they can’t understand the difference between 2 and 16. After all, they’re practically the same numbers, right? It’s not like zero tolerance has ever failed before, either. I hear that abstinence-only education is doing wonders for STD rates in the US.

Q: And then how do you respond when the kid inevitably comes home drunk?

A: You first say, “We’ll talk tomorrow, because you’re drunk tonight.” And by the way, if your kid is staggering or can’t talk, take him to the hospital. It’s an overdose. If he overdosed on heroin would you roll him in the corner to sleep, and hope he woke up? Of course not. The next morning, take him out to the coffee shop and ask, “What did you learn?” He might say, “Dad, it was insane, we were in the park, it was freezing, a kid was puking, Johnny jumped on Susie and tried to rape her and she’s screaming, we had to pull him off.” Well, why would you punish your kid then? Just say, “I think you learned something. How can we keep this from happening the next time?” When the kid says, “Oh, I won’t drink again,” you say, “Well what happens if you do? Are you telling me you’re not ready for the level of freedom to be out in the park on Friday nights?” Put the consequence in place for the next time. But your goal is teaching. If the kid saw that alcohol makes kids crazy—and by the way, it’s associated with STDs and unintentional pregnancies—then he’s less likely to see booze as romantic. If you go crazy, yell, scream, hit the kid and ground him, he’s just going to climb out the window and get back to the booze as soon as he can.

That’s almost a word-for-word description of every party I’ve ever been to involving alcohol. How does the man do it?

Q: Do kids today drink differently than their parents did?

A: Yes, more binge drinking: as much as they can, as fast as they can. A lot of kids hate the taste of alcohol, so they make vodka jello cubes and find ways to ingest lethal amounts without the bad taste. The second thing is that they drink at younger and younger ages.

Ah, the good old days. When men were men, women belonged in the kitchen, and nobody ever drank excessively. I hear that prohibition had something to do with that. Also, Jello cubes?

I don’t know what’s worse: that a nationally distributed magazine decided to write a multi-page article featuring this man’s opinion, or that millions of Canadians will read this article and believe it. This is a sad day for Canadians.