Huh

So this article intrigued me.

The whole "drinking while mommying" thing has really hit the proverbial fan these days, and I'm not sure what to think of it. I'm not the type of person who really enjoys evenings like that -- even in university, my "hard drinking" days, I would rather hang out with a few friends and play music / eat dinner / watch movies while drinking that head out to a bar with a bunch of people. I did that too, but I much prefer a quieter intimacy. So it comes as no surprise whatsoever to me that I also don't enjoy that as an older adult. My preferred method of relaxation is a book and some alone time; some knitting and a good movie.

On occasion, though, I do drink. I like having an open bottle of wine around the house, and I do have a glass every now and then. I'm a very cheap date; I can drink about a glass a night with a meal and that's enough for me. I can honestly say that while I might joke about needing two, I never have done so (at least, not for years). I just don't want to. I only have a glass once a week, sometimes twice, on average.

So I don't get the whole "going out to drink to get away from the kids and reclaim who I am" thing. It wouldn't work for me, on a number of levels.

What I DO get is the urge to have some time to yourself, doing what you used to do before you had kids, not for reliving your youth, just because you LIKE to. I mean, no one would suggest to me that I am reliving my youth when I kick back with a good novel for an afternoon. Maybe those women really liked hanging out with their friends in bars in university / post high school / as young single people. That's what they did to relax. And there's nothing wrong with that.

And writing an article about that makes about as much sense as one saying "Mother read book all weekend leaving child in back yard to play in sandbox!"

Now, leaving aside the marginal cases where the mother is getting drunk and neglecting her child (or reading her book to the extent of all else and neglecting her child, which is possible, I suppose), let's just take a step back and realize that these articles? are ridiculous.

They are part and parcel of the redefinition of motherhood that is currently going on. They are part and parcel of the cult of the perfect mother, the cult that we apparently all should join and should completely abandon every last iota of our own personalities, hopes, dreams, desires, and enjoyments while we pour every last molecule of our being into our children and our homes and to a lesser extent, our partners. (I'm not suggesting our partners demand this of us; but there is still a culture out there that suggests that this is actually desirable -- witness The Man's last boss, who had a SAHW and who suggested to The Man, when he wanted to leave work at a perfectly reasonable hour to go home and be with his family, that I quit my job so that he could focus on his. This was 2007, people, not 1950. WHO KNEW.)

And you know, there's just nothing wrong, nor even newsworthy, about a group of women who take a break from bring a mom and a wife and a employee every once in a while and go blow off steam in a bar. That's their choice. That one choice alone does not at all mean that they are not excellent, attentive mothers who love their husbands and hold down a good job. All it means about them is that's how they relax.

We all deserve the time to relax, however that is needed.

Even mothers. Perhaps especially mothers. What is this media spotlight on mothers who drink? Yeah, sure, I know, there were a few -- a very few! -- cases of mothers out there who obviously drank too much while in the public eye. And now we're all under the microscope. The vast majority of mothers who blow off steam with a drink are just doing it because they like it, that's how they relax, that's who there are. It's nothing more than that.

It seems so much more sinister, though, that the media jumps on it. Not just here, I've seen it in other places. Women drinking! While mothering! How dare they! How dare they take some enjoyment in their lives while mothering! At a backyard barbeque where a man has a beer and the woman has a martini, guess who gets lambasted the next day.

There are so many issues here, so many problems and sadnesses and sentences that start with "yeah, but". I know that excessive drinking ruins lives. I know that child neglect, due to any circumstances, is a real problem. But as a child who grew up with parents who had a drink most nights, and who still do, let me just note that drinking in and of itself can be as harmless a pastime as reading a book. It's meaningless, when, like everything else in life should be, it's done in moderation. Everything in moderation, people -- this is the real key to life.

And more to the point, we need permission -- nay, we don't need permission -- we just need to quietly sit down and take what is rightly ours: the right to take time off from a job that is 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. How we do that is our own business.

So stop with the drinking mommies. It's ridiculous. If they were eight childfree women in their thirties at a bar, no one would care. This is mommy bashing, make no mistake about it. They deserve that time as much as any one else. And the media needs to go the hell away and let them get on with it.