Does Drinking Make You a Selfish Parent?

There have been several articles in the press recently about alcohol and parenting.

The headline of Liz Jones's column in the Mail on Sunday last weekend read Parents who drink are selfish. My boozy dad taught me that.

Liz wrote: Me, aged 11, in my narrow divan. It's 11pm and I can't sleep. Not until I hear the crunch of my dad's car on the gravel, which means he has made it home from the Wheatsheaf. I'd been praying, hands clasped, for him not to crash. Only when lights streak the ceiling can I unclasp; my palms are wet.

Liz goes on to talk about her sister's children coming home from school to find their mum unconscious, surrounded by bottles, children who are now motherless.

Then the Telegraph ran an article, inspired by the tragic death of Sean Hughes, from cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 51, titled Are alcoholics born or made?

The article reads: The former Never Mind the Buzzcocks team captain may have joked of a childhood where he was left in the car outside pubs for hours - “We would while away the hours by nodding at the other kids parked up in other cars as we all looked to the warm glow of the pub” – but he also talked of disliking his father for his behaviour.  

It seems fairly obvious that those drinkers, like Liz and Seans' fathers, who have travelled pretty far down the slippery slope of alcohol addiction towards rock bottom, do not make good parents.

But what about the bottle-of-wine-a-day drinker, like I was? What about the mum who has just one or two large glasses of wine at the end of each day to reward herself for a job well done?

To be honest, I didn't think I was a selfish parent. I thought I deserved that wine come six o'clock. It was me time. Mummy's little helper. It made me feel adult. It helped me wind down.

Surely, I would argue to myself, a relaxed mum is a better mum? Happy mother, happy child.

And this general acceptance that boozing and motherhood go hand in hand has inspired endless Facebook memes and books like Why Mummy Drinks and (the hilarious) Hurrah for Gin.

But last week, the Guardian ran an article titled Even moderate drinking by parents can upset children, based on research by the Institute of Alcohol Studies.

The study found that even parents drinking 'moderately' can leave children feeling embarrassed, worried or lead to their bedtime being disrupted, and that children who see their parents tipsy or drunk are less likely to describe them as a positive role model.

15% of children in the study had asked their parents to drink less, and 11-12 year olds described alcohol as “like sugar for adults” and said parents drink to “solve their problems”.

Even so, I'm not sure that I would agree that drinking necessarily makes you a selfish parent. I know many, many wonderful parents who enjoy a glass of wine on a regular basis.

Also, I don't think it's right or fair to judge other parents. We mums are all just muddling along trying to do the best we can.

However, I would argue that being sober can make being a good parent a lot easier - at least I'm certain that's the case for me. Here are five reasons why...

1. I'm not constantly running away

In the drinking days, I was always looking for excuses for 'me time.'

On a Saturday or Sunday morning, if I woke up with a hangover (which I often did), the last thing I'd want to do is to push the swings in the park, play Monopoly or (god forbid) go to a soft play centre. I'd be much more likely to switch the TV onto CBeebies and crawl back under the duvet.

At countless children's bedtimes I would skip over pages of whichever picture book we were reading, so I could turn the lights out as fast as possible and retreat to an armchair with a goblet of vino. Because I'd earned it.

I'm pretty sure my children knew that I was often searching for an escape hatch. But they didn't blame the vino, they just thought I didn't like spending time with them very much.

2. I'm more consistent

Any parenting expert will tell you that children hate uncertainty and crave consistency.

One of the main reasons why children are uncomfortable with their parents drinking is that their behaviour changes - they become different people and that, for a child, is scary.

A few months after I quit drinking I asked my son whether I'd changed. "Yes," he replied, "You're more....mummyish."

What he meant is that I was behaving like his mummy all of the time. I was no longer swinging from being mummy, to being grumpy hungover person, to being wild child, then back to mummy again.

3. I have more time and more energy

Drinking, and recovering from drinking, takes up an awful amount of your day.

I get twice as much done at the weekends now as I used to. I bounce out of bed (well comparatively speaking, at least) and never fall asleep in the afternoon.

In the old days, I would often engineer separate 'child activities' and 'adult activities' at the weekends.

My favourite Sunday activity would involve a long, boozy lunch with a group grown ups, while the children watched a movie. I told myself this was more fun for everyone.

I certainly wouldn't plan anything that involved driving anywhere after lunch, or in the evening.

Now, I'm much more likely to plan something for all the family: a bike ride and picnic, swimming, bowling or a cinema trip. I am - I hope - making memories, ones that will have me actually joining in.

(I still arrange those long Sunday lunches with friends, but now, instead of sending all the children off as quickly as possible, I organise games for everyone, like Charades or Who am I?)

4. I'm more patient

Looking back now, I realise that I was a pretty grumpy mother when I was drinking. I was often short tempered and I did an awful lot of shouting.

This was partly because I didn't like myself very much, but to my children it looked like I didn't like them.

Being free of the constant merry-go-round of recovering from one drinking event and trying to hurry through to next one has made me, comparatively, zen. Liking myself again has helped me like the world a lot more.

5. I'm a better role model

One of the main reasons I quit the booze is that I didn't want my children to grow up thinking that it was normal for mothers to spend every evening with a glass of vino welded to their hand.

I didn't want them to believe that all grown-ups need alcohol to enable them to cope with the ups and downs of life.

I wanted to be able to show them that it's perfectly possible to live a fabulous life without a drug to take the edges off.

I'm still far from a brilliant mother. I'm a work in progress, and I expect I always will be. But, I'm very much better at it than I was.

I'm also certain that I wouldn't have got through my recent treatment for breast cancer, without all the wheels coming off in front of the children, had I still been drinking.

I don't begrudge those mums a large glass of vino at wine o'clock (there are still times I'd love one myself), but I've come to realise that, for me, and for my children, life is a lot happier, easier and more peaceful without it.

Check out the SoberMummy Facebook page for lots more inspiration and information about quitting booze. If you 'like' the page, Facebook will keep you updated with new posts.

To read SoberMummy's book (described as 'Bridget Jones Dries Out') and find out what it's like to go sober in a world where everyone drinks click here: The Sober Diaries, or here if you're in the USA.

Love to you all,

SM x

Children of Alcoholics

Last week was National Children of Alcoholics Week.

According to a parliamentary group there are 2.5 million children of alcoholics living in the UK and one in five children under eighteen are exposed to a family alcohol problem.

The National Association for the Children of Alcoholics (NACA) have a helpline which received 32,000 phone calls and e-mails last year, some from children as young as five.

One of the services they provide is reading bedtime stories for kids whose parents are too drunk to do it themselves. Some children call so regularly that the staff keep their favourite books by the phone.

To read more click here for a harrowing article sent to me (sobermummy@gmail.com) by Catherine. Thank you Catherine!

It's really easy to read articles like this one and to think that's not me. I never neglected my children. But I know that, even though I always read bedtime stories to my kids, there were many ways in which my drinking affected them and that, had I not quit, it would only have got worse.

What about all those times when you skipped a few pages so that you could get to 'me time'? All those little signals that let your kids know that you are not really enjoying this. You'd really rather be somewhere else.

I was constantly engineering family and social events in a way which would separate the kids from the adults, thinking that everyone would have more 'fun' that way.

Even when I was with my children, my head was often elsewhere.

Here's a post I wrote six months after I quit drinking about how quitting booze changed the sort of parent I am. Click here.

The ramifications of being a boozy parent are deep and long reaching. In 1983 Dr Janet Woititz published a bestseller titled Adult Children of Alcoholics in which she outlined thirteen characteristics that these children tend to share.

These include: fear of losing control, fear of emotions and feelings, conflict avoidance, harsh self-criticism and low self-esteem and difficulties with intimacy.

It's no wonder that the children of alcoholics are four times more likely than average to become addicts (and five times more likely to develop an eating disorder) themselves.

So quitting booze isn't just the best thing you could do for yourself, it's the best thing you could do for your kids too....

By the way, if you live near Birmingham and would like to meet up with some other fabulous sober people then lovely reader Tori has set up Club Sober.

The first meeting is on Thursday March 2nd at 6.30pm and is free (all funded by Tori).

To find out more, and to connect with Tori, go to her blog by clicking here. And please let me know how it goes so that I can post an update on my blog.

Love SM x

Alcoholism and Ancestry

It has long been accepted that alcoholism is, at least in part, an inherited trait. 40-60% of your susceptibility to alcoholism is genetic. The remainder is environmental. One study I looked at estimated that 25% of children of alcoholics become alcoholics themselves.

In her fabulous memoir - Drinking, a Love Story - Caroline Knapp writes: Alcohol travels through families like water over a landscape, sometimes in torrents, sometimes in trickles, always shaping the ground it covers in inexorable ways....In some families alcohol washes across whole generations, a liquid plague.

We can fight against our genes (after all, three quarters of children of alcoholics don't follow that path), but there are traits and tendencies buried deep within our souls.

I was thinking about this as I was dreaming (again) about our holiday in the land of my fathers: Cornwall (leaving tomorrow!). Despite the fact that I've never lived there, the minute I see the harsh, yet stunning, landscape unfolding in front of me, I feel an overwhelming sense of coming home.

There's something about the rugged cliffs, windswept moors, multi-coloured heathers and rough seas that appeals, at a fundamental level, to my Celtic roots.

I am a classic Celt. Dark haired, blue eyed, pale skinned. Years ago, when men were trying to chat me up, they used to say that I looked like Elizabeth Taylor in her younger years (they were lying, obviously). Spookily, until recently, I rather resembled Liz in her later years - puffy, overweight alcoholic, going slowly crazy.

It's often said that the Celts (particularly the Irish) have a genetic predisposition to alcoholism. I can't find a reliable study on this one but, spookily, there is a recent study showing that people with blue eyes (like the Celts) are significantly more likely to have alcohol problems.

Apparently, the genetic components that determine eye colour line up along genes related to excessive alcohol use. How weird is that? That's me, Liz Taylor, Richard Burton (Welsh - also a Celt) ....how many of you?

I worry about my blue eyed children and their mother with alcohol issues (still can't say the A word!).

I particularly worry about #2 who, at nine, is already horribly obsessed by sugar and Minecraft. He will happily spend hours (if he were allowed to) watching Stampy videos. (If you don't have children this age you will not have heard of Stampy. All I can say is "lucky you!")

But I remind myself that only half of alcoholism is genetic. The other 50% is environmental. And the environment that I'm creating now is one where alcohol is never drunk at home alone. It is a treat (for Mr SM, not for me, obviously), for special occasions.

Because no-one needs alcohol to be happy. Right kids?

Love SM x