Cool Parents

So the other day, I'm standing on a dock holding my dad's boat in place while he went to get the trailer and there's another boat docked on the other side.  In this boat were a bunch of teenagers, a mother, and a 8-10year old girl.  The boat was a wakeboarding boat, and initially they were talking about wakeboarding, but then they start talking about getting high.  Pretty soon the conversation started including the mother who was sitting there, all in the midst of this young girl.  I thought, "What a lame mother!"  What's with parents thinking its cool to let your kids be stoners, drunks, and sluts.  My wife overheard a mother at school brag to another mother about how they give their one son, who is about 14, beer and let him get drunk, while their daughter has a bar fridge in her room for beer.  Unfortunately it is also becoming quite common for some parents to let their teenagers have sleep-overs at their house, and its not the ones with ghost stories and smores.  Of course this is a greatly debated topic this time of the year, grad time, where grad classes are divided between those who's parents let them openly drink and want to party with them at grad, and those whose parents still think their children should wait till they are of age to decide to drink.  But why do parents think giving into a teens pressure will make them cool?  As someone who has worked with teens for 15 years, I understand how appealing teens are and how a person wants to "be cool" in their eyes.  But as an adult, who has a place in their life, my role is not to be cool, but to equip them for life.  If you look at it in a purely secular, scientific point of view: parents, elders etc. are to equip the younger of the species for survival and success; animals in the wild train their young to survive and thrive.  So why would we as adults, not only protect youth from things that hurt adults, but rather encourage and enable them to participate in them, and hinder their learning of the skills they need for life?  To me, it not only makes someone an "uncool" parent, but makes them a negligent parent, a harmful parent. I know I am not a parent, and you don't know what you'll do until you get there, and I might have felt different if I had different parents, but the truth is I have eyes and see the results of this cool parenting.  I see youth without essential skills, who need love and who are suffering in this fallen world.