Is it illegal for a parent to give their own child a drink at home in California?

Yes. Business and Professions Code section 25658(a) makes it a misdemeanor for any person, not only a store or a bar, to furnish or give an alcoholic beverage to someone under 21, and its text has no exception for a parent, a guardian, or a private home. The penalty is a $1,000 fine that cannot be suspended, plus at least 24 hours of community service.

The rule does not carve out parents or your own home

The statute reaches every person who sells or furnishes, gives, or causes to be sold, furnished, or given away any alcoholic beverage to any person under 21 years of age(a). A parent pouring a glass of wine at dinner, or handing a teenager a beer at a family barbecue, fits that language. The only exception written into subdivision (a) points to subdivision (c), a separate and more serious offense when the minor’s drinking leads to great bodily injury or death; it is not a defense. Nothing in the text turns on the relationship, the amount, the occasion, or whether the child stayed home.

To convict, the prosecution must prove two things: that you sold, furnished, or gave away an alcoholic beverage to the person (or caused that to happen), and that the person was under 21 at the time (CALCRIM No. 2962).

What counts as furnishing

Furnishing takes an affirmative act. The commentary to CALCRIM No. 2962 quotes Sagadin v. Ripper (1985) 175 Cal.App.3d 1141, a civil case in which the Court of Appeal said that helping with food and decorations, or providing the room for a party even knowing minors would drink, was not furnishing, but that a father who tacitly authorized his son to provide the father’s beer to others had furnished it. In the court’s words, the offender “need not pour the drink”; it is enough to have control of the alcohol and take “some affirmative step to supply it to the drinker.” Handing your child a drink is that kind of step, and so is arranging for someone else to supply it, since subdivision (a) also covers causing alcohol to be furnished or given.

That line concerns only this furnishing offense. A separate statute, Business and Professions Code section 25658.2, applies to a parent or legal guardian who knowingly lets a child under 18 drink at home when further conditions follow, including a traffic collision.

What the penalty actually is

A violation of subdivision (a) by furnishing alcohol to a minor is punished by a fine of one thousand dollars ($1,000), no part of which shall be suspended(e)(2), and the person must also perform at least 24 hours of community service during hours when they are not working or in school. Both apply: the community service is not offered in place of the fine. A harsher penalty applies instead when the case falls under subdivision (c).

Is your child also breaking the law by drinking at home

Not under this statute, from that fact alone. The minor’s own offense, in subdivision (b), reaches a person under 21 who purchases alcohol, or who consumes any alcoholic beverage in any on-sale premises(b), such as a bar or restaurant licensed to serve drinks there. A minor who only drinks what a parent handed them at home, without buying it and without being on licensed premises, is not violating subdivision (b) by doing so.

If you are facing this charge

Because the offense turns on those two elements, the details matter: who supplied the drink, what was in it, the person’s age, and how police learned about it. The Law Offices of David S. Chesley can go over the facts of a furnishing charge with you and explain your options. Call (800) 755-5174 to discuss what happened.