Alcohol is marketed as being part of being a "fun mum". Photo / 123rf
Alcohol is marketed as being part of being a "fun mum". Photo / 123rf
In news unlikely to trouble most readers, UK pub company Wetherspoons has decided to enforce a "two drinks per parent" rule for any customers out with their children. What might be of more interest is that it's enforceable under a little-known clause in the Licensing Act 1902, that makes it illegal to be drunk while in charge of a child under the age of seven.
Illegal, you say? Surely it's the only way to survive the early years! I jest, but it's no joke that alcohol has become an essential part of parenthood. Or should that be motherhood, because it's women who are now targeted with the message that drinking is a prerequisite to being a "fun mum". It's made me uneasy at times. It's also made me feel the need to up my intake, just so I could be part of the crowd – and then justify myself when I decided to cut it out altogether.
Rewind a couple of years and I'm standing in a suburban kitchen. It's Saturday night, and the sound of prosecco bottles being uncorked fills the air, between bouts of riotous laughter. There are kids dashing about – it's past their bedtime and they're full of adrenaline after eating their body weight in Haribo. There's nineties indie music playing.
A few parents have crept into the garden to smoke. The kitchen counter is covered in empties. Someone is pouring a bright green concoction (an alcoholic cactus extract, apparently) into shot glasses. I'm on my fifth drink. For an hour or so, the relentlessness of mothering, and the fact I haven't slept properly in months (scratch that ... years) has all been erased and I feel carefree.
In this moment, I've forgotten I'm a parent altogether. I'm not sure how much later, I'm still sort-of merry, but it's dark and the prospect of another early start (young children rarely wake up late, even if they've stayed up the night before) suddenly looms. Fellow parents are staggering around gathering kids/bags/buggies/coats, cracking jokes about "making it home in one piece," and how much they'll "regret this tomorrow!" as a wave of sobriety washes over me.
We need to get home, get the kids into bed. Once everyone is tucked up safely, I'm glugging water and clambering under the covers myself, when the thundering heartbeat of post-alcohol fear kicks in. Not just the regular variety – What did I say? Why did nobody laugh at that joke? – but a more brain-melting anxiety: What if I'd fallen over whilst carrying our daughter? What if we'd had to go to A&E? What if?
Then comes the hangover the following morning. My partner takes over whilst I tentatively sip on Coca Cola, besieged by guilt and hoping the blinding headache and nausea will pass. This was when I decided to give up booze for good. Mostly because I wanted to have another baby, and drinking and fertility are not comfy bedfellows, but also because if I wasn't enjoying being a pissed parent, I certainly wasn't enjoying being a hungover one.
For many parents, alcohol is essential to surviving the early years. Photo / 123rf
My drink of choice had always been prosecco. On Friday nights in particular, social media feeds fill up with images of mums gleefully smiling, glass in hand. If you search "prosecco mum" you'll come up with scores of accounts celebrating the restorative power of cheap bubbles to take away the pain of parenting.
Gift shops are full of mugs, books and fridge magnets covered with cheery quips about how motherhood necessitates a semi-permanent state of inebriation. Bags, emblazoned with the words: "Should contain nutritious food for my children but probably just contains prosecco for me". Cards, reading "Mum You are Proseccoed to None."
I've never seen anyone selling a "Daddy Needs Wine" sign to hang off the back of the kitchen door, but it wasn't until I became a mother myself that I realised that many mum tropes were truisms. There were the ones that always wore slings – even as their babies became massively unwieldy – the ones that exclusively breastfed, and the ones who did controlled crying. Of all the groups, the boozy mums were the most fun, the least uptight and smug.
For many, alcohol isn't just an acceptable part of the early-years survival kit, it's an essential – making you the laissez-faire kind of mum (even if you're the helicopter sort when you're sober) that treats the pub as a creche; allowing your kids to jump off chairs and race round tables wearing napkins on their head, so you can get another bottle with the NCT group.
Once I became sober, they looked at me with horror. I often felt I had to explain myself at dinner parties - telling the story of the monumental hangover, how I felt like I wasn't able to handle it, basically anything that made it feel like my sobriety was a personal failing, not a judgement on their own habits. I sometimes went home early. I no longer had the stamina to stand up and talk for hours about the PSA or baby-led weaning or loft extensions. I suspected I wasn't invited to parties because I was no longer much "fun".
But I also saw evidence of mums who were struggling. Parents often have a limited time frame within which to "have fun" and remember who they were once, before babies came along. This means drinking is accelerated. It was like the pre-loading you did back in your student days, except now everyone had a life-bearing responsibilities on top.
Emma Svanberg, a clinical psychologist who specializes in mental health during pregnancy, birth and the early years, explains that while alcohol can act as a stress-relief valve, it can end up sabotaging your mental health in the long run:
"It's important to recognize that there might be some short-term benefit (just as zoning out on social media, playing Candy Crush or any other dissociative strategy), but alcohol can make us less inhibited, so more prone to lose our tempers or say something we wouldn't usually," she says. "And then as it wears off we're hit with physical withdrawal and often increased anxiety."
A few months after the birth of my second daughter I dipped my toe into drinking again. Just the odd glass. It felt good to be part of the club again, and no longer have to justify myself to other mums. Until I realized that parenting two young children was hard enough, without adding alcohol into the equation.
As 2020 dawned I stopped and now intend to stay sober for good. I need to find other ways to access that carefree me. Ideally those that don't give me heart palpitations or massive guilt (there is enough of that when you're a mum anyway).
