Good Lord. Ann at Feministing has a post about a Today show segment on mothers who get together for cocktails while their kids have playdates:
Many of my girlfriends have joked that when they have kids, they’re going to instruct their little tykes, “Now fetch mommy a cocktail!”
Well, the Today Show wasn’t kidding around when they put together this “trend” piece more or less alleging that mothers who have a glass of wine while their kids are playing nearby are bad caretakers. The story implies they don’t just drink, they get drunk: “There are safety issues to consider. Who would drive to the hospital if a child were hurt?” (Um, don’t know about this reporter, but I can have a glass of wine and still be under the legal blood-alcohol limit, perfectly fine to drive or watch children.)
Who would drive? If the kid really has to go to the hospital and the adults are actually impaired, how about a paramedic?
Smell the judgmentalism. From the MSNBC link:
Then, there’s the fine line between social and problem drinking. Psychologists suggest moms sometimes drink as a coping mechanism. Others say if you wouldn’t allow a caretaker to drink while watching your children, why the double standard? I’ll leave those debates to other moms (some who’ve blogged extensively on this) and the experts.
Indeed. Why the double standard? And I’m not talking about the caretaker/mother double standard. I’m talking about the double standard involving the utter absence of any sort of mention of men here. Why is it okay to see Daddy with a beer in front of the TV, but not okay to see Mommy with a glass of wine in the backyard?
In fact, Ann found a blog entry from Melissa Summers, which describes her contact with the producers and gives a window into NBC’s mentality on this one:
In the beginning they wanted to come and film my playgroup for the piece. Since our kids are now all in school full time, we don’t have a weekly playgroup anymore so this was problematic. I suggested a more ‘happy hour’ gathering where we’d meet after school and our husband’s would swing by after work for our usual family pizza night. Alicia [the NBC producer] said the mixing of dads would ‘taint’ the story (Read: “Make the subject more palatable because men keep their women in line and they have an auxiliary liver in their penises.”) So I told Alicia it just wasn’t going to work out.
She did wind up in the studio, somehow forced to defend alcoholic moms; she also discovered that somehow a gathering at which the women who did drink had one glass of wine apiece (and one didn’t drink at all) was presented as a “wine orgy.” Clearly, the idea that NBC wanted to present was that moms who drink at all are hopeless, falling-down drunks:
Alicia said it would be a live segment in the studio and there would be a psychologist, Dr Janet Taylor, there with me. Here is where the lies begin and this is a huge part of why I am so angry about the experience and am using this platform I have to explain it.
The psychologist is ‘on board’ with the whole thing. She’s a mother herself and understands. She’s just there to set limits and to explain what may be ‘a problem’. Which makes a lot of sense to me. Once we define problem drinking and how to know when you might be crossing over into that realm, we can have a light hearted conversation about moms getting together to be social while their children play. Just like Regular Grown Ups.
As time went on ramping up to my appearance. The psychologist bit seemed to be changing a little. Alicia informed me the psychologist was now feeling like she had to say mother’s of very young babies shouldn’t be drinking (something I still disagreed with, but okay….), “…you know things like that.”
Right before Alicia left town (she was not on set for my appearance….hmm….surprising) she said, (something like, I’m starting to realize why she always wanted to talk on the phone, not via email) “Now, Dr Janet Taylor’s position has changed a bit. She’s feeling like as a professional she has a responsibility to make sure women understand the risks.”
Which still, I was okay with because in my world there is a difference between drinking and drinking to get drunk.
In the end I showed up on a show with Dr Janet Taylor, well trained media machine who was not discussing drinking in moderation but was instead talking about women as children who have no clue how to drink in moderation and can not be trusted.
I was told this was going to be a ‘lighthearted’ discussion. I pictured talking about how no one is talking about ‘Kids And Keggers!’, I pictured discussing drinking as a social activity many adults do, I pictured discussing how my husband and I often drink as a social activity at kid centered activities and not a single reporter or television has ever called to ask my husband “what that glass of beer means to him”. I wanted to emphasize how silly it is to call this a trend. I wanted to emphasize how mothers are raising children, they are not children themselves.
I was not at all prepared for a debate between “Melissa Summers, blogger!” and “Dr Janet Taylor, psychologist with impressive resume and four kids.” I was especially not prepared for a debate which involved Dr Janet Taylor repeating the same thing over and over like a very tall robot.
Let me say a little something about that. My father was a hopeless, falling-down drunk, so I am intimately familiar with the damage that does to kids. The man drank a liter of Dewar’s every single night and passed out by 9 p.m. on weeknights. Weekends, he got an earlier start, so he would often be drunk during the day. I was in the car with him more than once as he held a glass of scotch between his legs. He and his alcoholism ruled the house and the family. To this day, I can’t watch TV with the volume up, because that was one of the things that would wake him up and bring him downstairs in a violent rage. Same thing with shouting. Can’t stand it. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg of the psychological damage his alcoholism did to me and to the entire family.
My mother rarely drank at all. Mostly, I think, because she felt that someone had to look out for the kids while her husband was drunk (that, and if she had a drink while we were out, someone would bug her for the cherry in her drink, which annoyed her). On the rare few occasions when she’d have a drink or two — and it was only ever a drink or two — Jesus, the kids loved it. Mom got giggly and loosened up a little. Come to think about it, that was usually when my father was away on business.
Believe me, there’s no comparison between how my father drank and how my mother did, and we knew the difference. There’s no comparision between a serious drunk and women who get together for a glass or two of wine while their kids play. It serves no one to lose the distinction between drinking and alcoholism. And I’m not even talking about denial — trust me, my father was King of Denial, so I know it when I see it. I’m talking about judging women more harshly for doing the same things that men do, and judging mothers most harshly of all.