Oh how we love to tell a pregnant woman what to do. And as I’ve said once before: of all the risks facing a baby we seem to give special precedence to any that can possibly involve further controlling the lives of women. The public health message on pregnancy and alcohol is a prime example, it is unnecessarily heavy-handed and simplistic. And what happens when a health policy is like that? People ignore it.
The results reveal that 90 per cent of respondents think alcohol should be avoided while pregnant, however a third of all women surveyed admitted to consuming at least one drink while pregnant or breastfeeding.
Of the third of mothers who consumed alcohol during pregnancy or breastfeeding were the majority of them drinking a lot, occasionally or only ever the one single drink? They’re all lumped in together here so you can’t deduce anything of real meaning but what we are supposed to conclude from this figure is that women are ‘naughty’ – they are going against the Australian alcohol guidelines. How does the public health discussion respond to such results? In a heavy-handed and simplistic fashion, of course.
Alcohol Education and Rehabilitation Foundation deputy chair, Scott Wilson, says the fact that about 30 per cent of people surveyed had drunk during this time shows that there is a need for greater public education…
“But clearly when it comes to foetal alcohol [syndrome] and a range of other problems there isn’t enough of a focus on that.”
Foetal alcohol syndrome is a real problem but not one which is associated with light drinking during pregnancy, all the same it is liberally used as the big stick in public health policy to keep women in line. But to continually trot out ‘foetal alcohol syndrome’ as soon as there is the mere mention of a woman drinking a single glass of alcohol in an entire nine month pregnancy (or over the months, or even years, she may spend breastfeeding that child) isn’t educating, it’s silencing.
So, given that we don’t trust women with information you won’t see the unpacking of these research results any time soon in the media:
Conclusions: Children born to mothers who drank up to 1–2 drinks per week or per occasion during pregnancy were not at increased risk of clinically relevant behavioural difficulties or cognitive deficits compared with children of abstinent mothers. Heavy drinking during pregnancy appears to be associated with behavioural problems and cognitive deficits in offspring at age 3 years whereas light drinking does not.
(Thanks to Lauredhel and Kris for some of the links).
P.S. And something similar regularly goes down in the US, as mentioned a while back over at Feministe.
Sit down, kids, because I have some terrifying news: Sometimes, women drink. And smoke. Sometimes they even smoke marijuana. To top it all off, some of those women are mothers.
Yes, this is the news that USA Today brings us, in an article about post-pregnancy “substance abuse” — a term apparently so loosely-defined that it includes any alcohol use at all.
yeah, that news report yesterday pissed me off for all the same reasons. thanks for putting my voice out there!
It keeps getting recycled over and over, and its not like there’s any more science behind it now than there has been all the times before.
“No safe level” is a conclusion reached on the basis of an absence of data, not on anything convincing.
Sorry, preaching to the choir, but this gets up my nose so much I even waded into the comments on the ABC news article (which, not surprisingly, I don’t recommend).
Ariane: to further preach to the choir, the “no safe level” being reached on the absence of data is because (and I am not sure of Australian law here, so I can only speak to the US) it’s illegal to conduct clinical trials on pregnant women. Like, gee, I wonder why.
I thought I saw an article recently following up on some of the kids in the US who were the first diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome (20 some odd years ago) and the conclusion was — not much was different about them.
Sigh. But let’s keep on making me feel shitty for taking a sip of a beer because otherwise, I might feel like I am as important as this baby I’m growing.
Amen–the issue of control is a serious problem and I’m glad you brought it up. Alcohol is one example, and perhaps one of the more difficult ones even, because as far as the general public goes, “no alcohol during pregnancy” is one of the no-brainer rules, whether it should be or not. Other examples abound, though; my goodness, the fingers shaken in pregnant ladies’ faces these days about caffeine during pregnancy are getting as numerous, and there’s even less research or documented proof to back that one up. Not to mention, of course, the myriad other rules the woman is suddenly subjected to by her doctors, family (sometimes including significant other), and anyone else on the street who notices a pregnant belly attached to her: very little sugar or salt, some exercise but not TOO much, mixed messages about work, no cats, no gardening, no chemicals, etc. etc. Currently pregnant, my latest frustration is not being able to use ANYthing on my lawn to kill weeds…even the organic stuff, one kind gentleman was honest enough to admit, is bad stuff and really shouldn’t be sold in his store at all.
Since women are taking on the responsibility and pain and whatnot of continuing our species, couldn’t someone else pick up a little of the slack and responsibility involved? Instead of yelling rules at women, couldn’t they yell rules at fertilizer companies? Bars? Etc…sorry to get on a high horse; it just ticks me off.
Not to go against the grain here, but it CAN be the case that one drink can affect your unborn child. It isn’t the case every time, but it would be a gamble to test it. I do think that things get out of hand as far as telling soon-to-be mothers how to live their lives, but it’s always good to remember that your baby chemically feels what you feel, sometimes moreso. Now, the people who say you can’t EXERCISE while you’re pregnant? That’s bull.
Based on what evidence, Kate? In the very early weeks, pretty much that time many women don’t know they are pregnant, alcohol can be devastating, but generally in a miscarriage kind of way. From my understanding if you drink heavily (unaware of pregnancy) in the first couple of weeks, and you’re still pregnant, damage hasn’t been done.
After that, there’s just no evidence that one drink CAN affect the foetus, nor is there really any mechanism for that to be the case.
Incidentally, exercise really can damage the foetus – if your heart rate goes too high, it can restrict blood flow to the foetus and if you get too hot (internal body temp, not just being hot and sweaty), that can have a dramatic effect. You can do as much exercise as you like as long as you stay within a sensible heart rate and don’t allow your body temp to rise. Which frankly, in my case, I had absolutely no difficulty whatsoever in complying with. 🙂
Re: exercising, yes I agree with you there. However, generally the women concerned about being able to exercise during pregnancy are those who already do so, and have at least somewhat conditioned their body for it. I’m not saying it’s not possible for the things you mentioned to happen, but they will take more strenuous work to achieve, and most likely will not come about from a woman’s regular exercise routine.
Now, as far as the alcohol. Whether studies have been done or not, it should still be obvious that alcohol will affect the baby. To go back to biology, an unborn baby receives the same nutrients the mother does, via the placenta. So, if you’re ingesting alcohol, so is your baby. While the amount you’re ingesting may be no where near enough to affect you, it could absolutely affect the baby. In a baby’s system, alcohol is broken down much more slowly than in an adult’s system. This results in the level of alcohol in it’s bloodstream being higher and remaining that way longer. As you may already know, alcohol affects your blood’s ability to carry oxygen, because it is absorbed into the bloodstream and therefore allows less blood to be transported at once. This may end up having a negative effect, it may not. It’s a game of roulette. There’s no way to spin this and say it’s just society trying to control mothers. It’s biology and it’s fact. As far as not doing damage after the first few weeks, that’s not the case either. Alcohol can contribute to premature birth, stillbirth, mental retardation, physical defects in the child’s face, heart or other organs, and many other things. Would you give your child alcohol as an infant? If that’s a no, then why would you give it to him or her as a fetus?
“Whether studies have been done or not, it should still be obvious that alcohol will affect the baby.”
Studies have been done. The effects of light/moderate drinking are undetectable. Your attempts at asserting that “commonsense trumps science” don’t change that. If the tiniest amounts of ethanol “affect the baby”, do you also eschew bread and fresh fruits and juices in pregnancy?
“As you may already know, alcohol affects your blood’s ability to carry oxygen, because it is absorbed into the bloodstream and therefore allows less blood to be transported at once.”
I’m not making sense of this. Do you have a scientific reference? Remember that we’re talking light drinking here, in amounts unlikely to lead to a peak blood ethanol of more than 0.02%.
oh, this really gets my goat. I remember a couple of years ago when the official advice in the UK was changed to “no alcohol in pregnancy”, and news stories were reporting it (i assume because of what they were getting from the official agencies) as “because the old advice was too confusing”. Yes, because women with their stupid women brains, especially *pregnant* women brains, don’t understand 1-2 units a couple of times a week (or whatever the exact previous advice was). You know, I am currently 4 months pregnant, and I still seem to understand simple sentences, and can act accordingly–I must be a genius! (or a man?)
It would be lovely if the researchers and media had bothered to unpack some of the issues going on.
Some of the points that strike me:
* Breastfeeding is a very different physical state to pregnancy, which was the focus of the reported question about drinking. But the same social state: ie motherhood and thus subject to control. I remember there was a kerfuffle in the U.S. a while ago about mothers drinking in the presence of their young children while at playdates – presumably the no alcohol rule can be extended indefinitely.
* What do women mean when they respond to ‘should alcohol be avoided?’ Is the should a moral imperative, a risk analysis, an acknowledgement of the possibilities of social shame, a belief in ‘medical’ or ‘scientific’ data?
*Rules is a very useful word in this context. The question isn’t one of medical data, it’s one of medical decree. To me, it harks back to ‘NO TOUCHING NO TOUCHING’ at school dances – control and morality rather than health and safety.
* Given the high level of awareness/ agreement with the no alcohol rule, one wonders what’s the use of ‘greater public education’, and what form it would take. I can see it translating only into scare campaigns or greater acceptance of others telling women what to do.
In short, it’s bullshit.
I was going to post on this yesterday, but I felt too exhausted by it all and just tweeted angrily instead… Oddly enough last weekend I had two separate conversations with several other pregnant women about this exact issue and all of us agreed that it what just these kinds of dogmatic attitudes that actually make us want to drink.
The comments to the article are fantastic in that they so clearly reveal the underlying agenda of controlling women’s bodies – especially if those women are mothers. It’s such a pervasive agenda in that it underlies much of the abortion debate, the work vs stay-at-home debate, breastfeeding discussions, etc. Until these attitudes are improved no conversation on any of these issues will be remotely sensible.
Of course, if the social controllers were really concerned with foetal safety, they would be looking hard at noxious industries, especially in mining towns, but that might affect the dudes’ ability to make money, wouldn’t it?
Could help myself. I had to post after-all.
Helen’s comments reminded me of what I was thinking about yesterday – the parallels between this and the abortion debate and the fact that pro-lifers don’t put their energy into other more clear-cut causes to save lives (like the anti-nuclear campaign).
This gets me so much, not because of the perceived risk necessarily, but because of the way its used to shame women, to tell them they’re bad people, bad mothers, reckless etc etc.
The world loves to police women’s behaviour. Whether it’s healthy or unhealthy behaviour and by whose standards is irrelevant, no-one needs to tell women what to do with their bodies, even while they are carrying a foetus. I can’t believe it’s that hard for people to grasp.
(Off topic, but I’m suffering through a fairly obnoxious right-to-life debate elsewhere atm, so the whole bodily autonomy, trust-women argument is running through my head like an out-of-control locomotive.)
The drinking and smoking pregnant women is one of the (many) highlights in the show Madmen. I watch and wish for a time when we were not overloaded with so much information. Ahh the good old days.
During my first pregnancy I craved southern comfort and dry in the first trimester – I still remember the desire and then when I succumbed that divine taste of the first sip.
During my pregnancies I continued to enjoy a glass of wine. As my belly grew I became a little more self-conscious but there were also times that I felt that I was thumbing my nose at the “wowsers” with a take that – I will make my own informed decisions. To anybody that questioned my decision I reasoned that any “potential loss of brain cells for my child” would be counteracted by the fact that the baby has parents who are bright, was being born into a finically secure home & would have access to diverse educational opportunities and good health care if the need arose. Nobody ever argued with me. Cheers to that.
It reached another level back in NZ a few years back, when all women of child bearing age were told that they should not drink, just in case they might be pregnant.
FFS! Enough to make me pour another glass of wine.
Kate – the issue is not whether alcohol is a risk factor for babies it is the amount of attention placed on that risk factor above others and the way attention is given to it – which is in a very controlling manner over women.
One of the most significant risk factors for a child’s development and outcomes is poverty, absolutely devastating – poverty and stress can shape their very brain development but look how differently that particular problem is approached.
And also look at how similarly it is approached (in terms of society taking no responsibility and instead playing the mother-blame game again with the demonisation of single mothers etc)…
I am in my second trimester, and when trying to understand if it was safe for me to consume a glass of alcohol while pregnant I found quite a few research projects with results similar to the ones you have just linked to, along with many many ‘advice’ pages that told me nothing at all (apart from ‘don’t do it at all’ with no evidence attached).
I concluded that if I felt like drinking one standard drink twice a month, I could do that without fear or guilt. After all my careful research and serious decision making, I was astounded to discover that my husband will not accept that my decision is an appropriate one. He has gone so far as to request a sip of my glass of wine (which I trustingly acquiesced to even though he had his own much fuller glass) and then proceed to drink it, which given how small my one standard drink was, he could do in one large sip. It’s fairly out of character for him to show this lack of respect for my judgement, and frankly I’m dismayed since he has not been able to give me any reasons for his difference of opinion.
I think that my three standard drinks of alcohol since becoming pregnant have been OK for me and my baby based on anecdotal evidence: in my first trimester alcohol did not appeal to me at all, and in my second trimester a small amount of it appeals greatly (after which I don’t want any more – less than one standard drink satisfies me).
Kate, you simply can’t say “if you’re drinking, so is the baby”. The alcohol isn’t going into the fetus’s stomach. It’s going into the woman’s bloodstream, being metabolized by her liver, and then a small portion of it – some in altered form – is traveling to the fetus.
There is essentially no risk to one standard drink (4-6 oz wine, 12 oz of beer, 1 oz of hard liquor) taken at intervals (a few days apart). Beyond that, there maybe a risk in larger amounts, but the fact is FAS doesn’t correlate with the quantity of alcohol consumed. It just doesn’t. A little is safe. A lot probably isn’t. The cut-off is really, really, really hard to determine and probably different for everyone.
The larger point, as several others have mentioned, is that there are far more significant risks to the health of children (live, present children, not fetuses) that are not caused by the behavior of women but we’re not being subjected to condescending campaigns to correct those problems. The public education campaign isn’t about saving babies; it’s about controlled and shaming women.
Louise, that’s a very scary story.
I stopped reading after Kate’s comment. I am a physician and everything she says is absolutely not true. Physiologically, it makes no sense. I’m all for thinking for yourself but that’s dangerous when you don’t know what you’re talking about and then post as fact. People do your research properly. The answer is simple. An occasional drink in pregnancy is safe. It has always been and will always be. Just like feeding your baby formula is safe. But there’s a bunch of fanatics out there who want you to do what they say and will bully you into it. Use your judgment and talk to your doctor.
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Meanwhile, there is very little stigma attached to exceeding the recommended limits for men, which in Australia means “drinking no more than two standard drinks on any day to reduce your risk of harm from alcohol-related disease or injury over a lifetime” and “drinking no more than four standard drinks on a single occasion to reduce the risk of alcohol-related injury arising from that occasion.”
To illustrate, one regular stubby of Carlton Draught is, I think, 1.8 standard drinks? So this would mean that men (and women) are advised to never have more than 2 and a half stubbies of beer, in one day, ever.
I think it says a lot about the way we view mothers that no-one ever says to a man “should you be drinking that?” unless there is some extreme scenario,like he’s blotto and supposed to drive. We can apply a ‘reasonableness’ filter to men’s alcohol consumption, but not mothers’?!
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