[TonySandos]

Dr. Peggy Drexler
Author, research psychologist and gender scholar

Quote:

Thirty-year-old Jennifer was pregnant with her second child when she stopped by her neighborhood liquor store to stock up on wine for a birthday party she was throwing her husband. The clerk, she remembers, looked at her with raised eyebrows, and then refused to make the sale. "I told him the wine wasn't for me personally, but that it was none of his business besides," says Jennifer. "He still said he needed to call his manager. He was visibly disgusted."

Throughout the second and third trimesters of both pregnancies, Jennifer did, in fact, enjoy what she calls a ceremonial half glass of Pinot Grigio every Friday. "It was just something to look forward to, and sometimes I didn't even finish it," she says, adding that her doctor had given her the okay. But she pretty quickly learned not to drink in public. "I knew people were out there judging -- or, worse, feeling compelled to actually say something," she says. "The next table over would be whispering and not bothering to hide it. A waiter once refused to even show me the wine list. I just felt like I had a big target on my face."

Until the early 1970s, moderate drinking while pregnant was both common and, for the most part, unquestioned. Many share stories of how their own mothers drank or smoked throughout their pregnancies, a cultural standard revisited in television shows like Mad Men, in which a very pregnant Betty Draper is seen smoking in the maternity ward. In 1973, however, a University of Washington study identified a group of physical and mental birth defects caused by drinking alcohol, together now known as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, or FAS. Though studies showing that FAS was a very rare outcome of largely severe alcoholism emerged as early as 1980 -- with numbers never rising over 1 case in 1,000 -- FAS as a notion was transformative.

According to a 1999 report published in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism, FAS was key in turning excessive drinking from a moral (and largely private, family) concern to a viable public health matter, and by the 1990s was widely associated with child neglect and abuse, poverty, rising crime, and mental illness. In 1990, Wyoming became the first state to charge a drunk pregnant woman with felony child abuse.

The U.S. Surgeon General's official position since 1981 has been for pregnant women to abstain from drinking completely, and alcohol consumption among mothers-to-be declined throughout the '80s and into much of the 1990s. But now those numbers are changing, and women like Jennifer are becoming ever more common. Recent Centers for Disease Control findings show that non-binge drinking -- that "every now and then" glass of wine or two -- among pregnant women has been increasing steadily since 2002. According to the CDC, the highest increase of women who drink while pregnant has been among college-educated women between 35 and 44.

In part, this is because studies keep coming out showing, in some form or another, that drinking while pregnant is safe. Like one published in June in the International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology reporting that consuming up to nine drinks in one week, and even as many as five in one sitting, did not have any significant negative cognitive effect on kids five years later. This study followed an earlier one published in the International Journal of Epidemiology that stated not only could pregnant women safely drink a glass of wine or two per week, but that their children would actually perform better three years after birth than those of women who chose not to drink at all. And in Europe, of course, where the perception, at least, is that pregnant women regularly drink and smoke -- though, in fact, the official position on drinking in France is abstinence throughout pregnancy -- birth defect rates are lower than those in the U.S.

So if science is telling us that drinking while pregnant is okay, why do we continue to judge the woman with the outstretched belly sipping from a glass of Merlot? Turns out, it's not only right wing Republicans questioning a woman's control over her own body, is it? Drinking during pregnancy is just one example. In fact, modern mothering is chock full of judgments, starting with how we conceive to how we act and what we eat while pregnant, and continuing after that, including how we choose to give birth and whether or not we decide to breastfeed. This summer, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg banned free baby formula in city hospitals in order to encourage new moms to breastfeed (after much uproar, he modified the decision to make formula available, but still harder to get). On the flip side, who can forget the uproar over the Time magazine cover featuring the breastfeeding mom who, so many declared, had "gone too far?" Moms, it seems, have a hard time winning.

Which is why despite the studies that seem to indicate low levels of drinking during pregnancy is perfectly fine -- as are moderate amounts of caffeine and even raw fish -- as a whole we continue to judge women who opt to have that occasional glass of wine -- or coffee or sushi. We're so fully entrenched in the age of over-parenting -- having opinions, and voicing them, about how other people raise their kids -- that, it seems, we can't help but start in before the baby is actually born. And as the only ones who can carry a child, women bear the brunt of this judgment. We say we're in support of a woman's right to make choices, but are we?

This is not a call to drink while pregnant, or to be careless in any way. We know much more now than our own mothers did, and that's an advantage. But years of experience studying gender and working with families have shown me, time and again, that mothers get a bad rap. This can create needless fear, anxiety, and self-doubt. Perhaps it's time to rethink the tendency to assign blame, constantly monitor, and voice our every opinion about the choices other mothers make. After all, isn't the prospect of having a baby daunting enough?

This first appeared on Psychology Today

Peggy Drexler, Ph.D. is a research psychologist, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Weill Medical College, Cornell University and author of two books about modern families and the children they produce. Follow Peggy on Twitter and Facebook and learn more about Peggy at http://www.peggydrexler.com

Unsurprisingly, there is no comment section below this piece.

Anyone with more research based science, like fetal alcohol syndrome studies, to contradict this womens studies professorette?

[kaotic]

How would I know, I'm a male who fucks girls.

Not sure how this applies RVF.

I'm not sure putting anything in your body that impairs you is a good thing.

[SamuelBRoberts]

I would agree with the women's studies professor. Humans have been consuming alcohol while pregnant throughout most of our history. If a glass of wine once every two weeks could wreck your baby the entire human race would be nothing but drooling, down's syndrome retards.

[Moma]

(01-05-2015 03:29 AM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote:  

I would agree with the women's studies professor. Humans have been consuming alcohol while pregnant throughout most of our history. If a glass of wine once every two weeks could wreck your baby the entire human race would be nothing but drooling, down's syndrome retards.

The key word here is, could NOT will. Some people smoke crack, do pills, smoke ciggies and shoot smack all throughout pregnancy and the child is still born healthily.

[dads]

Regardless of how much it affects the kid, If you can't take a break from drinking from nine months when you're carrying a child, you have an alcohol problem that needs to be addressed. Even if drinking makes the chance of your kid having FAS or other defects .01%, the fact that a mother is willing to even take that chance for alcohol says a lot. But that's my opinion, and if science (great infallible SCIENCE) says that it doesn't hurt the kid, who the fuck am I to tell them to put the bottle down?

[Days of Broken Arrows]

The woman who wrote this biased, ill-informed piece of crap is Peggy Drexler, a man-hating feminist best known for the book "Raising Boys Without Men." They leave that title out of her bio. Guess why.

That book came out in 2005, and had pre-manosphere writers like Glenn Sacks frothing at the mouth at its stupidity. Of course, the lamestream media ate it up. Read Sacks' taking down of her book here.

As for fetal alcohol syndrome, it's devastating. It impedes brain development and causes a myriad of problems. What's worse is that kids can get this in "degrees," so it can be insidious. The severe cases are easy to diagnose. But there are are very mild cases, where the the kid can't speak well or read up to par, but no one knows why. I have a nephew like this whose mom drank like a fish.

Drexler is a twisted narcissist whose (subconscious?) goal is to ruin families lives by serving up lies about women under the guise of "liberation." This is her latest one.

Drexler is a PhD, not a medical doctor. It's not that hard to get a PhD. Even I was asked to be in a master's program and be on a PhD track -- and I was no academic.

According to medical doctors (remember them?) who work at the Center for Disease Control, here is what they say on their Web site:

There is no known safe amount of alcohol during pregnancy or when trying to get pregnant. There is also no safe time to drink during pregnancy.

It's hard enough to raise kids without having to deal with one with developmental disabilities. Anyone who would put a child at risk is a fool -- and perhaps even criminal.

Just the fact that Drexler gets away with writing this stuff shows what a sick society we've become and how twisted our priorities are. There is no Violence Against Children Act. But there is a Violence Against Women Act. What does that say? If there were a Violence Against Children Act, drinking while pregnant would be a felony.

[Beyond Borders]

Not ready to jump on board the drinking while pregnant idea quite yet, but I found it a helpful piece on a topic I perhaps misunderstood until it veered into the whole "this is another example of people trying to control women's choice" retard path.

If she's right, this is a simple case of public mis-education - nothing more, nothing less. Not sure why writers like this can't address misperceptions without making it into a personal feminist crusade. Given the nature of the misunderstanding, the people frowning at the Jennifer in the story had their hearts in the right place (aside from the liquor store clerk - he's just an idiot).

I want more accurate information (assuming this info is even accurate, as I'd have to research it); what I don't want is it delivered in this same ole' tired tone.

Also, the real troubling thing is that many people lack the self-control to have just a glass of wine or two. Lower the social stigma against pregnant women drinking and you'll get plenty putting back 9 a night instead of 9 a week, even if they start with good intentions. Booze is tricky like that.

[2Wycked]

Quote:

Though studies showing that FAS was a very rare outcome of largely severe alcoholism emerged as early as 1980 -- with numbers never rising over 1 case in 1,000 -- FAS as a notion was transformative.

I was thinking of a longer form post, noting how progressives (notice how she blames conservatives) were the ones guilty of politicizing motherhood and causing needless amounts of shame and anxiety in mothers.

Then I read this quote. Only one in a thousand of mothers who drink affect their fetuses? And only "severe" alcoholism causes FAS? When does alcoholism rise to "severe" levels? Can there be non-severe alcoholics? How is she defining alcoholism?

I'll say this bluntly: Even if the chance is 1 in 10,000 chance your decisions while carrying a child could result in biological defects, you are and will be a terrible mother. If you know there is a chance that your decisions -- based on personal pleasure -- while your child is in the womb will hurt your child for life, you are a terrible, horrible individual.

Children come first in every instance. If you think scientific research into the effects of alcohol on fetuses is simply the expression of male control of female bodies, you have serious, very serious issues. It means your politics and personal desires come before what's best for your child.

This is -- in essence -- feminism at its core.

[Chaos]

I don't know.
But I know that seeing a pregnant women drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette is utterly repulsive.

[Simeon_Strangelight]

All nerve toxins harm the fetus during pregnancy. Actually drinking harms women's eggs before pregnancy, why some studies point to the fact that women should rather start drinking only after having born their 1,5 children.

Alcohol is way more destructive than it seems. Only because it has been in done in human history with 50% child mortality and plenty of retarded kids born does not mean it is healthy.

Only recently we know for a fact that certain lacks of nutrients during pregnancy produce sub-optimal children. You should ask yourself why cows during pregnancy get gigantic levels of vitamins and minerals - orthomolecular levels (even when adjusted for weight) - while human women are only getting minimum levels of folic acids and Omega 3s?

You think that impacting your child's nervous system during pregnancy does not hurt it? What if it lowers IQ by 10%? No problem?

Fuck that - the study sounds like just like the one criminally done by this one scientist in France who made millions proving how healthy wine is. He was later found to have faked all studies, as wine contains resveratrol and other helpful nutrients, but you can get that from grape juice as well. Alcohol itself has been proven especially in recent years to be by far more toxic than it seemed even 20 years ago.

That does not mean I am not drinking it - I love scotch, quality Whiskey and sometimes good wine, but I would not recommend it for any pregnant woman or best no woman until she has born her desired children. She can get drunk later as a mommy.

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

I don't know what amount of alcohol would be able to harm the fetus, or measurably increase the chance of harming it, but given that we know it can happen I think it best to not even experiment with it. Is it one glass per day? Three glasses every week, all at once? I don't want to know.

[Mage]

Sorry, but I don't see how this is a question at all and definitely not a loaded one. A woman who drinks during pregnancy is trash, that is so simple, no question about it. A woman who smokes, either pregnant or not, is not mother material at all and deserves nothing more than being pumped and dumped in protected sex. I knew this obvious truth even when I still thought that bringing flowers to first date is a good idea.

[Nonpareil]

Unless you're living off the grid in nature and farming your own food, there's contaminants in everything; growth hormones in our beef, fluoride and groundwater leech in our drinking water, industrial fumes in our air and preservatives in processed foods.

I don't think a glass of wine once a week is going to be much of a problem.

[NorthxNorthwest]

Greatest risk for FAS seems to come between weeks 7-12 according to this study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22250768.

There were some decent effects with even 2 drinks a day: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/articl...drome.html

You have to remember that a fetus has a much smaller volume than an adult and that even a relatively small amount of alcohol will result in pretty substantial BACs. I'm sure some of you have encountered those 90 pound girls that get sloppy after 2-3 drinks, just imagine similar concentrations in an object the size of a lime.

Exposing a developing kid to a CNS depressant that has high membrane permeability, fairly toxic metabolites, induces oxidative stress, and has been unequivocally linked to birth defects just to have a little fun or relax is folly plain and simple.

[Mage]

(01-05-2015 03:29 AM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote:  

I would agree with the women's studies professor. Humans have been consuming alcohol while pregnant throughout most of our history. If a glass of wine once every two weeks could wreck your baby the entire human race would be nothing but drooling, down's syndrome retards.

Maybe we are retards compared to what we could be.

[Days of Broken Arrows]

(01-05-2015 04:13 AM)Nonpareil Wrote:  

Unless you're living off the grid in nature and farming your own food, there's contaminants in everything; growth hormones in our beef, fluoride and groundwater leech in our drinking water, industrial fumes in our air and preservatives in processed foods.

I don't think a glass of wine once a week is going to be much of a problem.

"I don't think a glass of wine once a week is going to be much of a problem."

Here's the problem with that. The one glass of wine per week for the mother doesn't translate into that for the fetus. For the fetus (which is much tinier, remember) it's a massive rush of alcohol into its small blood supply.

The glass of wine, in fact, might physically be bigger than the fetus in its early stages.

Unlike food, which needs to be digested, alcohol gets into the bloodstream through the stomach lining. The mother's bloodstream is connected to the fetus, of course. So having that one drink is like pumping alcohol directly into the fetus.

Not all babies will be affected because we're all genetically different: some mothers will process the alcohol differently and some fetuses will be able to withstand it.

But all told, it's instructive to remember something: Smoking is thought to harm babies, yet there is no Fetal Smoking Syndrome diagnosis. But there is one for alcohol. Despite its legality, alcohol is seriously destructive to the body. Much more to the still-developing body.

[Geomann180]

If a woman I was with expressed the view that it was okay to drink while pregnant - I'd immediately strick the thought of making children with her from mind.

G

[CactusCat589]

Quote:

This is not a call to drink while pregnant, or to be careless in any way.

That is literally a call to drink while pregnant, yet she drops in a line at the end anyway. The author's insane and psychopathic, she'll try and sabotage a developing fetus because she thinks it'll spite the patriarchy and spite men.

Typical feminist. Knew right off the bat she couldn't be a medical doctor, but instead must have a PhD in a trash subject. Am gratified to see that I am right.

[Simeon_Strangelight]

(01-05-2015 05:00 AM)CactusCat589 Wrote:  

Quote:

This is not a call to drink while pregnant, or to be careless in any way.

That is literally a call to drink while pregnant, yet she drops in a line at the end anyway. The author's insane and psychopathic, she'll try and sabotage a developing fetus because she thinks it'll spite the patriarchy and spite men.

Typical feminist. Knew right off the bat she couldn't be a medical doctor, but instead must have a PhD in a trash subject. Am gratified to see that I am right.

The dumber the populace, they easier they are to rule over.

That's why the government does not even acknowledge Harvard Medical studies on fluoride and the lowering of IQ by that rat poison:

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/feature...jean-choi/

I am certain a gender crazy psychologist is your best choice of advice when even most conventional MDs stress to stay away from alcohol for at least 9 months.

But I guess for the elite it will be fine to have middle-ages circumstances with the gentry being much taller, stronger and smarter - kept the peasants from revolting.

[Benoit]

Almost all societal alcohol limits promoted by doctors are based on politics, not science.

In the UK we have a recommended amount of 'units' per week for men and women, heavily promoted by the NHS and doctors. The evidence base for the numbers they use? Absolutely none. They just 'think' it's right.


That said, I'm in favour of women abstaining from alcohol and smoking during pregnancy, but I'm not going to freak out if they have the odd glass of wine with a meal. The dose makes the poison.

How many women go jogging while pregnant? Running along busy roads, taking in big lungfuls of pollution? There no outcry against this, because it's socially acceptable.

[Tengen]

Drinking in moderation is possible if the person in question is a sapient, rational human being with agency and self-control.

Otherwise, zero alcohol consumption while pregnant is the safest option.

[ElBorrachoInfamoso]

This is a holdover from the temperance movement.

The FAS studies looked at women who drank 2+ drinks per day. 2 drinks per week is no problem for the fetus.

[Tengen]

[VolandoVengoVolandoVoy]

Hamsterism detected!
Being a wino has somehow become a badge of modern feminist identity. I never watched the show, but was this a Sex and The City tradition or something?

[Nonpareil]

(01-05-2015 04:24 AM)Days of Broken Arrows Wrote:  

(01-05-2015 04:13 AM)Nonpareil Wrote:  

Unless you're living off the grid in nature and farming your own food, there's contaminants in everything; growth hormones in our beef, fluoride and groundwater leech in our drinking water, industrial fumes in our air and preservatives in processed foods.

I don't think a glass of wine once a week is going to be much of a problem.

"I don't think a glass of wine once a week is going to be much of a problem."

Here's the problem with that. The one glass of wine per week for the mother doesn't translate into that for the fetus. For the fetus (which is much tinier, remember) it's a massive rush of alcohol into its small blood supply.

The glass of wine, in fact, might physically be bigger than the fetus in its early stages.

Unlike food, which needs to be digested, alcohol gets into the bloodstream through the stomach lining. The mother's bloodstream is connected to the fetus, of course. So having that one drink is like pumping alcohol directly into the fetus.

Not all babies will be affected because we're all genetically different: some mothers will process the alcohol differently and some fetuses will be able to withstand it.

I understand what you're getting at, but, for even a small 95 lb. chick, a glass of wine raises her BAC to what, maybe 0.05%? It's not giving a straight shot of alcohol directly to the fetus; it's a trace amount of alcohol in the bloodstream. I'm sure the better option is to abstain entirely from drinking altogether for 9 months (if you get a girl pregnant and she gets despondent and moody because you're blocking her from her once weekly glass of wine...well you should have picked a better one), but I still think there are far worse things for a fetus.

Quote:

But all told, it's instructive to remember something: Smoking is thought to harm babies, yet there is no Fetal Smoking Syndrome diagnosis. But there is one for alcohol. Despite its legality, alcohol is seriously destructive to the body. Much more to the still-developing body.

While I definitely think smoking doesn't help a child during gestation (not as bad as alcohol consumption is of course), I'd imagine the attempts to basically re-criminalize tobacco in the last 20-odd years has something to do with this.