“Because mommin’ ain’t easy,” “her wineness” and “surviving motherhood one sip at a time” are among the slogans adorning novelty wine glasses found in a search for mom wine glass on Amazon. Likewise, “Dad’s fuel,” “working on my dad bod” and “to Dad from the reasons you drink” under dad beer mug.
This cutesy rebranding of casual alcohol obsession is nothing new—any cottage-country knick-knack store will provide sufficient evidence of this. It’s a bizarre approach to alcohol that casualizes heavy drinking, disdain for one’s own children and needlessly-gendered drinking stereotypes. And with a recent report from The Lancet revealing new dangers associated with alcohol consumption, there’s never been a better time to ditch the wine-mom, beer-dad mentality.
One notable finding of the report was that 59 per cent of those who consumed dangerous amounts of alcohol in 2020 were between the ages of 15 and 39. It also found that drinking alcohol has no health benefits for those in this age range.
Young people need to view alcohol consumption as a risk, rather than a fun part of their personality.
One of the major problems with the wine-mom, beer-dad aesthetic is that it is inherently tied to parenthood. Words like mommy juice adorning a wine glass or tumbler essentially sends the message: ‘I have to drink, because it’s the only way I’m capable of dealing with my children.’ This kind of messaging is extremely harmful because it promotes the overindulgence of alcohol during adverse situations like child-rearing.
The inappropriate use of children’s existence to justify day drinking should disgust young people enough to turn them off drinking full stop. Instead, this casual perspective often leads to alcohol consumption being viewed as a facet of everyday life despite alcoholism being directly linked to experiences of abuse.
On top of this is the bizarre gender dynamic that marketers seem to have leaned into—that wine is the ‘mom’s domain’ while beer rests in the ‘dad-zone’—an adult spin on the pink-or-blue toothbrush binary.
This cutesy approach to justifying drinking as a parent will be harmful to future generations, gendered or not. Moving forward, such language should be eliminated by the businesses that produce them in an effort to stop the glamorization of alcoholism.
Feature graphic by Angel Xing
