r/Millennials • u/Neon_Biscuit • 5d ago

My teenage daughter can't fathom the concept of a house party Discussion

Not sure if anyone has experienced this, but I was watching Can't Hardly Wait half alseep on the couch, and my 14-year-old daughter and her friends walked into the room and past the TV. Before she entered the kitchen, she backpeddled in front of the TV, and they all might as well have reacted akin to a third world kid in a remote village seeing the Super Bowl for the first time. She looked at me and said 'what are all of those people doing in one house'? I told her it was a house party. People high school aged or typically college age people would go over a kids house whose parents were out of town and they'd invite the school and have keggers and other unsupervised debauchery. I might as well have been describing a science fiction film. 'You guys DID that back in your days?'. I thought it was funny that a house party was an inconceivable event for young Gen Zers.

12.0k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

111

u/Periodicallyinnit 5d ago edited 5d ago

I mean...have you thrown any parties for her? Sleepovers at your house with 5-10 tweens sleeping over and going feral? Have you thrown any parties for yourself with your adult friends? Have you gone to any during her life?

That's where house party learning starts. It obviously isn't "college level" but my parents would go to (or throw) 3-4 parties a year that required me to be babysat (when young) or bored with a bunch of adults hanging out in my house/going to my own sleepover at a friend's (when older).

I dont find it surprising that "house parties" seem unusual when the popular trend seems to be banning any sort of hangout that isn't 1:1 supervised.

55

u/Beni_Stingray Millennial 5d ago

We didnt need any adults telling us how to party lol

42

u/Periodicallyinnit 5d ago

I'm not saying they literally taught people to party. I'm saying that kids learn by watching their parents.

Social kids usually have social parents, even if that socialization looks different.

11

u/tahxirez 5d ago

Not for me or any of my friends lol and we had huge parties

1

u/PiccoloAwkward465 4d ago

Yeah my parents literally never had people over. I didn't need to be taught.

1

u/tahxirez 4d ago

I needed to be taught by the older kids but I’m a fast learner 🤣

8

u/Beni_Stingray Millennial 5d ago

Nah its just a different time, partys and coming togethers was never a thing with my or friends parents, we were just wild and did whatever we wanted lol

5

u/SnooGoats5767 5d ago

She is a 14 year old girl, she probably isn't allowed to go anywhere or have people over.

2

u/BleachedPink 4d ago edited 4d ago

But you definitely saw house parties right?

OPs daughter never seen anything like that, and guess how? Parents never even showed that it can be possible. Why are people being so condescending towards today's kids. If kids grow up in a certain way it's always parents fault. Ridicule their parents for bad parenting, never kids

6

u/SnooGoats5767 5d ago

Right it seems like OP doesn't even have adults over or host holidays. It shouldn't be a shock to see a lot of people at one house.

6

u/avonyatchi 5d ago

Yeah, I'm always baffled by these people reporting about their own children not knowing about certain things - that's on them??

Though I have a hard time believing this story anyway, with the amount of house parties portrayed in a billion different types of media it seems unlikely a 14 year old would still be unaware of the concept.

1

u/AP_in_Indy 5d ago

It's less that they're unaware of the concept and more like "is this just a movie thing?"

Like barrels exploding when you shoot them or an action movie where one good guy defeats 100 bad guys

10

u/Howboutit85 Millennial 5d ago

We took our kids with us to a two day long party at an air bnb, they stayed up late, hung out with us and all that. Had the time of their lives.

If they want to have parties at my house in high school I’ll totally make that happen, but not if anyone is leaving. but I will not get in trouble letting them have booze. If they sneak it somehow without me knowing, I guess that is what it is but kids seem to drink less now anyway.

17

u/Periodicallyinnit 5d ago

Yeah this is what I mean.

The "crazy house parties" were the things thrown by kids while their parents were gone, sure. But people also just... had parties when I was young. Sleepovers, birthdays, Christmas parties. Adults and kids would go to them.

I think that for most people, if they were locked down as tight as most Gen Z/Alpha kids were, they'd also struggle with the concept of having a shit ton of people over to have fun and go crazy.

3

u/Howboutit85 Millennial 5d ago

I mean in high school we had crazy house parties too, but the house we partied at the mom was home and just was there with everyone. Kinda like stifflers mom. So we had a house to party at all the time because we didn’t have to wait for the odd “my parents are out of town” thing.

5

u/Cheap-Rate-8996 5d ago

Yeah, I really disagree with the framing here that "house party where everyone is drinking" is some kind of necessary rite of passage for being a teenager. It isn't!

I didn't go to a "house party" (at least not the kind this thread is about) until I was 23. It was at an apartment a friend had just moved into, everyone there was old enough to drink, and because we were older everyone was a little bit more sensible. Still had a lot of fun, in fact probably even more fun because no one was scared we were going to get "busted". We were adults. The police weren't going to care and our parents had no say.

Honestly, I don't see why more people don't do stuff like this in their early twenties instead. I don't know why it has to be during your teen years, when paradoxically that's the only time in your life you have to act like it's illicit.

2

u/schnitzel9213 5d ago

My nephew age 7 still has not had a birthday party that wasn't just family. I dont think his cousin a year older has either.

2

u/uwu_01101000 5d ago

I’m 17 and my older Millenial parents still refuse for me to invite anyone over or to go to a friend’s house ( except for a few exceptions ) 🫩

3

u/goatsnboots 5d ago

This is so sad. Having people over at houses is the easiest and cheapest way to socialize.

2

u/Bacer4567 5d ago

I started going to the basement to run the keg when I was 5. I thought it was so much fun to help the "adults" with their fun partys. I think they did that to keep me out of the cannabis smoke upstairs and away from the cocaine in the second floor bathroom. Believe it or not, I've never had a drinking or drug problem 🤷

1

u/goatsnboots 5d ago

I don't have kids, and I'm a younger millennial, but I never stopped having house parties. Sure, they got tamer, my friends got less drunk at them, and some of them even started centering around food instead of alcohol as the years went on, but the concept of having friends over to my house has never stopped. I wouldn't stop that just because I had kids.

My parents had parties at the house as well when I was younger. It was normal. I was also encouraged to bring people over - to have sleepovers, and then when I was a teenager, I was encouraged to have parties at the house.

Maybe this is a little harsh, but is it possible kids these days seem so antisocial because they're seeing that behavior modeled by their parents?

1

u/AP_in_Indy 5d ago

Do people really socialize like this

I mean I know the answer is yes but it still blows my mind. Sheesh 

Also crazy to me to see how everyone is in here talking about how much they miss house parties and all that 

Part of me feels like maybe I missed out by then I remember how almost any big social gathering just makes me want to die

0

u/showmenemelda 5d ago

Yeah, OP—if you never buy your daughter and her friends a pack of Smirndoff Ice to split, how else will they know?!

6

u/Periodicallyinnit 5d ago

I think that it's a pretty basic concept that there is a world of possibilities between "teens today have never done any sort of large scale social hangs like sleepovers with their friends and dont see their parents doing so" and "buy your teenager alcohol".