Mind Your Own Business
Under the headline, “Kate Hudson, What Are You Drinking?”, the utterly disposable website Popeater shows sneaky photos of the actress sipping a glass of red wine.
A New York-based OB-GYN who has not treated Hudson says of her choice of beverage, “Right now, no one really knows what amount of alcohol is harmful for the fetus, so it’s recommended that you don’t drink at all during pregnancy.”
The doctor’s suggestion? Abstain. “We just don’t know enough.”
“Enough” is a pretty subjective word. How much would we have to know to know “enough”?
While we may not know how much alcohol is harmful to a fetus, we’re pretty sure we know how much isn’t. We know, for example, that a study of more than 12,000 women showed that those who drank a couple of glasses of wine a week during pregnancy had children who, at three years of age, had fewer behavioral problems than the control group. And we know that “no study has been able to correlate moderate drinking with birth defects” even though correlation is a good deal less than the establishment of a causal relationship.
We also know it’s fun to sit in judgment of the rich and famous, and that physicians offering advice on medical cases about which they have no knowledge usually do so anonymously because their commentary is a breach of medical ethics.
If it makes women feel bad about themselves along the way, well, that’s just a bonus.
April 5th, 2011 at 10:24 AM
Amen. Had a woman last week come in for a tasting, well she was sharing a tasting with her husband, and she was not in there ten minutes before someone came out to inform me that they were pretty sure it was illegal to let a pregnant woman drink. I informed her that it was not while thinking that apparently being judgmental, nosy and stoopid was not either….
April 5th, 2011 at 8:28 PM
Are all NY-based OB-GYNs that stupid?
No – and not every woman, much less every fetus, reacts to alcohol the same way.
In our polarized cultural climate it seems there are only two allowable answers to everything: 1) if a little is good, there is no such thing as too much (anyone for triple-oaked Cabernet?) or 2) if any amount is bad for anyone, the only acceptable response is zero-tolerance for everyone.
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is a tragic condition. The women who give birth to babies that have FAS are mostly quart-of-Jack-a-day drinkers. Most are also heavy smokers and “recreational” drug users (if meth or oxy are recreational).
For those of us older than say, 40, most of our mothers drank some during pregnancy and when they were nursing. As far as I can discern there is no credible evidence that a glass of wine or two a week does any demonstrable harm, much less leads to FAS.
Doctors who say “[r]ight now, no one really knows what amount of alcohol is harmful for the fetus, so it’s recommended that you don’t drink at all during pregnancy…” either have an anti-alcohol agenda, or an anti-malpractice agenda. Either way their agenda has nothing to do with the health and well-being of the fetus or the mother.
April 6th, 2011 at 8:13 AM
The problem is that these agenda-driven comments get just enough play to make an impact, because most people don’t do their own research nor do they question the so-called experts, something they couldn’t do even if they wanted to when the “experts” are anonymous.
The FAS syndrome situation has been blown up by people spreading PR for the anti-alcohol contingent, plain and simple. It’s those PR hacks that either become or have access to journalists either with an agenda or a nose for building readership–or both.
April 6th, 2011 at 8:22 AM
If you dig down into why public health groups says stuff like this, it’s because of lack of confidence in the public’s ability to exercise self-control. Because some people will self-define “moderate drinking” in a way that is immoderate to justify their bad habits, it is better just to tell everyone crap like “we just don’t know enough.”
By treating the public as infants, the advocates for public health get to feel noble — and, truth be told, they accomplish something good if they get women to be more conscious of their health during pregnancy. But the rest of us get to go through life fearing something unreal.
John reminds me of a picture of my mother and four of her friends. They’re all dressed in 1950s bathing suits, with cat’s eye sunglasses, massively pregnant sitting in lawn chairs on a hot summer day. They’re smiling joyfully, cigarettes in one hand and martinis in the other. They all had big families, smoking and drinking along the way.
April 6th, 2011 at 9:58 AM
Tom,
Exactly! And look how good you turned out. (Wink)
April 6th, 2011 at 11:44 AM
My wife and I just recently went through this. I was amazed at the misinformation being taught in our birthing classes and from our doctors about alcohol consumption (and fish. Pregnant women “shouldn’t eat fish”). They basically said any amount would result in FAS. We do live in a state that only allows abstinence to be taught in health class, though.
So my wife simply quit drinking in public and would have an ounce or less of anything I opened at home. Imagine that kind of control. If my senses were ever heightened to that of a pregnant woman I’d be “tasting” all day.
Now that the boy arrived, what I’m really surprised at is that she is still to abstain because the baby could “get buzzed from the breast milk”.
What bothers me most about this is that I don’t know what I would do if my wife ever finishes off the vodka and all we have in the house is Kahlua and ice.