I’m sorry that Melissa got dragged on national television and made to look like an alcoholic. Really, because regular mommies are babysitters, help hired by studly working husbands, so says Meredith Viera.
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.
Call CPS!
What Melissa argues is very simple: moms can get together and let the kids do their kid thing while the moms share a nice bottle of wine. Having a drink, she continues, is different than being a problem drinker or an alcoholic, and as adults we can model numerous ways to socialize in a heathy manner (one of which includes healthy attitudes toward alcohol).
This elementary argument, with which I clearly agree, was lambasted on the Today Show by not only the psychologist mentioned above, but by ex-Viewer Meredith Viera, and was also accompanied by a rather incendiary video contrasting babies and martini glasses with the upper-crust moms of Manhattan and Encino. I’m so tired today that I can’t bear to get into the massive abuses of sex, class, gender role, and race issues in this one, but god forbid soft media report on motherhood without a pointy finger.
I’ll excuse the “I don’t like crying SEXISM” addendum because she’s already put her finger on it and that’s exactly what it is. Additional links at the end of the post. Melissa does a damn fine job picking apart the misleading ways she and the other parents interviewed were represented — and picking apart the blatant sexism as well, especially considering that “not a single reporter has ever called to ask my husband ‘what that glass of beer means to him’.”
Heavens, no. Men have a second liver in their penises, and that’s what makes the beer at the neighborhood barbecue so much different than wine at the neighborhood playdate.
via Chuck
That MSNBC article made me want to hit things.
1. Who would drive? The mother who’d had the least to drink. Considering we’re talking about a maximum of two glasses, by the mothers’ own report, that’d probably be a mother with 1/2 to 1 glass of wine in her. Big fucking deal.
2. There actually isn’t that fine a line between social and problem drinking. Blurring the distinction not only harms mothers who drink socially, it harms people with alcohol problems by making the term “alcoholism” effectively meaningless. If it’s alcoholism to enjoy 4 or 5 glasses of wine per week–let’s say 1 at Tuesday’s play date, 1-2 Friday night, 1-2 on Sunday–then everyone’s an alcoholic, which means no one is.
This kind of naggy-ass finger-pointing doesn’t help anyone. Well, it helps Janet Shamlian feel virtuous for not being like those dreadfully irresponsible mothers she’s writing about, but I don’t actually believe she’s that different from them–it looks like to me like the old Exception Clause is in effect.
Just take your concern and shove it, Janet.
Wow, NBC really sandbagged her.
Wow. Are they next going to go against those evil, abusive parents who don’t have a car? How about two-parent families who only have one car, so that sometimes one parent is home with the child while the other parent is out with the car? Clearly, if you can’t have a car with you at all times, your children should be taken away.
When I was three, I managed to step on something and rip up my foot while my dad was out running errands with my family’s one car. My mom bundled me up, found the closest neighbor who was home, and got her to drive us to the hospital. If that hadn’t worked, I guess she’d have called an ambulance. Maybe she would have ascertained that I wasn’t that badly hurt and called a cab. At any rate, she would have coped, as those poor, benighted single-car-family people generally do.
I remember reading about this in the NY Times and wondering how long it was going to be before we got into “But you’re a bad mommy!” screeching. There is little mythology in contemporary America that seems as powerful as the bad mother.
I am also very confused how “drinking while watching your kids” is different from “having wine with your family at dinner”.