I’m a Woman With a Drink, Not a Mommy Having 'Mommy Time'
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Social media loves a wine-sipping mom.
I realized this after getting my all-time most Instagram likes on a picture of me holding a giant iced wine, with the kids I was caring for out of frame but not out of mind. If you’re a mom with even a passing thirst for social media props, you’ve probably figured it out, too: the defiant wine shot will get you to double digits even quicker than a kid photo.
Moms In Need of Wine is an essential genre of social media humor, born out of a desire to defend moms’ freedom to have a goddamned wine if they want one. This is a good position, and a fair one, initially staked out in the Mommy Wars against the over-policing of maternal behavior. People seem to enjoy cheerleading for moms while they’re having a drink. It feels like cheering for the underdog. And, as a mom who drinks regularly and feels the dubious warmth of that Instagram love, I appreciate the intentions behind the people who heart the mom with a drink in her hand. But it also frustrates me, a lot. Here is why.
THE RULES OF THE GAME ARE PRETTY STRICT
If you’re a mom and you’re tempted to share a photo of yourself drinking, here are the ground rules if you want to avoid flaccid jokes in the comments about “calling Child Services.” (Love that one, guys. So funny.)
First, you should be tidy. You should look happy. You should look generally under control. You should probably not be alone. Above all, you should not be drunk. Never surpass a demure buzz. Jane Marie, the former editor of Jezebel’s Millihelen, remarked in an email, “As long as the drinking has zero effect, you’re good. Like, since it is possible to have a glass of wine and not be inebriated, that’s okay, but god forbid a mom talks about smoking weed or something. A high mother? Are you insane? It even extends to the way we talk. I once called my kid a jerk in front of a group of moms—my daughter was not there but she WAS being a jerk—and you would’ve thought I called for her head.”
These rules, which are very real, indicate the rigid norms that still govern moms’ appearance and behavior. For all the defending of a mom’s right to drink, we sure do have to work for it!
IT DOES NOTHING TO NORMALIZE DRINKING WHILE BEING A MOTHER
Cutesy jokes and paraphernalia around moms and drinking (“Mommy’s Time Out” is a brand of wine that exists) is meant to create an inclusive space for moms who enjoy the occasional glass of wine, but the effect does the opposite of normalizing moms who drink. Moms Drinking ™ is not a step in the right direction; it shines an unnecessary spotlight on something that should be no more unusual than Moms Being Adult Women™. Is it necessary to make cutesy jokes about moms and wine because the idea that moms could exist untethered from their children is too scary?
There’s something deeply ironic to me about the notion that having a drink or going out with friends could ever pose a threat to my identity as a mother. Motherhood is so totalizing an experience, so oceanic in its scope, that it would take way more than a few drinks, even followed by a mild and very regrettable hangover, to make me forget I’m a mom—or to create a set of circumstances where my kids were actually endangered. I contain within me an overheating server farm of granular data about my children. Even if I wanted to forget they existed for a few hours, I couldn’t; they take up so much space in my brain.
Yes, there are mothers who put their children in danger because of substance abuse. More on that further down. But I don’t think it’s controversial to state that they make up a minority of mothers. Most mothers don’t endanger their kids: their transgressions, if you want to call them that, are moderate and permissible. Most mothers I know have a civilization-perpetuatingly strong commitment to the well-being of their children. Their desire to have a drink should not deserve its own type of wine, or its own cutesy label. When I am enjoying a highball with another mother, we are not “having mommy time.” We are two women drinking.