I originally thought I’d just hop on Instagram and find a
link to an article like this
or this, but
it looks like the mommy bloggers on Scary Mommy (my personal favorite) have
caught up to the dangers of the mommy-wine narrative that’s been imbibing
America’s mothers with its sweet reassurance that good mamas are allowed their
wine. Their children are alive; they deserve to enjoy a bottle, right? And I
mean, who uses corks to save some for tomorrow? Just drink the whole thing,
might as well. Diaper changing is tough shit, guys.
Therefore, may I present to you an article originally posted
on Ravishly that made its way to my
favorite mommy-blogger site, Scary Mommy
by author Sarah Hosseini. In her article,
she talks about how she lets slip a mommy-wine joke to some colleagues she’s
met at a book launch and the immediate
regret she experienced upon learning that the women she spoke with were sober.
The rest of her article is spent breaking down the narrative
that a great deal of mommy bloggers and moms have bought into: that mothers
deserve wine in excess. Although she does not specifically use the word
narrative, she uses the word culture, and I think that in this context they
might as well be the same. We’ll come back to this in a second.
I knew I’d be coming to this narrative because I too have
bought into the narrative, told myself the “story,” if you will, and during
divorce season no less. You can imagine how well that worked out for me.
Culturally, narratives like this one (and ones like racism/sexism, etc.) look more like excuses than they do
anything else. Because we tell ourselves these stories/excuses, we have a place
to reference when asked about our behavior. Take, for example, the second link
in the first sentence. It’s literally just a list of times it’s appropriate for
moms to have a glass of wine. A few of my favorites are:
6. You are making
dinner. Quesadillas count. So does mac & cheese. Actually, anything with cheese.
Cheese stick: wine it up.
7. You had to go to
work today. Working from home counts. And in case you even need to ask, being a
stay at home parent absolutely counts as working from home.
12. It is after 5 p.m.
in a major city within five time zones from you. Unless it is the weekend. Then
don’t worry, it’s fine as long as it has bubbles.
So, at the very least, I’m proud of Hosseini for breaking
the cycle with her article. Additionally, I’m very interested in how she approaches
it. She grabs our attention with a
personal story (after all, as a mommy-blog reader, I’m dying for confessions),
then ties it in to a larger narrative, something larger than her or any of us,
but something that many moms have relied on for reassurance that we aren’t
being totally horrible moms. And believe me, every mom I’ve met thinks they’re
a horrible mom. From where I stand, as long as you’re not microwaving your
child or leaving them unattended in a hot car with no windows down, you’re good
with me. But I digress.
It’s interesting to me that she somehow uses a narrative
structure (by this I simply mean using personal stories to teach us something) to
break down another narrative structure, a culturally accepted conversation of
joking acceptance of alcoholism in overworked, super-stressed moms. She goes on
with another personal anecdote, her own struggle with alcohol when she was in a
dark place. This helps further illustrate how powerful the mommy-wine narrative
has been in our culture or at least the culture of suburban moms who read this
stuff. She gives great statistics about moms, alcoholism, and the current state
of affairs of being a mom in a country that doesn’t recognize the true struggles
of motherhood.
“The challenges we are up against as women and mothers are
not funny, they’re scary” she says.
And I don’t know if she knows it or not, but she’s written a
great article that will help break down the former narrative that suggests that
wine is the easiest way to escape your hell of a life, even if it’s just for a
moment. Because there is no escaping reality. And your child shouldn’t wonder
what he or she has done to make you reach for the wine. Motherhood is hard, believe
me, but who the hell said it was supposed to be easy?
I see some connections between your analysis and my own regarding the danger some of these cultural narratives cause - hiding alcoholism behind mommy-wine jokes and creating excuses because so-and-so had opportunity. I can think of so many American narratives that are low-key damaging. The opportunity narrative, the American Dream, the mommy-wine, the perfect life on social media, the One True Love....
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