Why ARE women judged for liking a tipple or two?
MOST of us have a little evening ritual to mark the end of a working day. Here’s mine: most nights, around 7.45pm, after my five- year- old is tucked safely into bed, I pop downstairs and pour myself a stiff G&t or a glass of wine.
sometimes it’s just the one, sometimes — and at weekends always — two or three. on nights out, the tally usually rises and if I’m really in the mood to let my hair down I can easily sink a bottle of wine.
Does this mean I drink too much? While I make a point of not counting my units — where’s the fun in that? — the answer according to current doctrines is absolutely, given that women are warned we should not consume more than 14 units of alcohol in any week (around one and a half bottles of wine).
Maths isn’t my strong suit, but even I can work out that’s roughly a weekend’s work for me.
While medical professionals admit the guidelines are somewhat arbitrary, the overall consensus is many of us are drinking more than we should — and that people like me, a 46-yearold working mum, are among the worst offenders. According to a recent study, alcohol consumption is highest in the UK among men aged 55-64 and women in the 45-54 category.
A recent slew of headlines has served to underline the point about what one report called the ‘Almost Alcoholics’ — those of us who, while we may not be popping vodka into our water bottles and leaking alcohol from our pores in morning meetings, are actually dependent on booze.
We’re drinking ourselves into an early grave, into early onset dementia, heart trouble and liver issues. When we’re not embarrassing our sober, sensible millennial children, we’re putting immense strain on our already overloaded National Health service.
Women like me — mums who admit they like a drink — seem to come in for particular scorn, because whirling round all this is a lingering stigma around female drinking in particular. While openly drunken behaviour is never to be applauded, the gender of the drinker all too often plays a part in the severity of the censure.
Not that we are much bothered, apparently: the most recent study, released last month, found middle-aged drinkers care more if their habit harms their image rather than their health, believing that as long as they are not vomiting or slurring and remain able to carry out their responsibilities, then they’re not doing anything wrong.
Well frankly, guilty as charged — on the last point at least.
Because here’s the thing: while middle-aged, middleclass women’s drinking habits appear to have become the latest moral panic, I simply can’t bring myself to feel (too) bad about my own contribution to the statistics.
THE fact is I like drinking alcohol very much — I always have, ever since I acquired a taste for it in my late teens, and it has proved a happy constant in my life ever since.
Barring pregnancy and illness, there isn’t a week in recent history I can remember where I didn’t drink around four nights a week.
When I got married 11 years ago, my two beloved bridesmaids, charged with doing a speech, contemplated making a slide show for the guests called ‘wine around the world’ featuring a rolling display of the blushing bride, glass in hand, at assorted holiday destinations over the years.
It’s a slideshow that could now be topped up with another decade of images, because while my drinking habits have changed in tune with my lifestyle — nights out in my singleton 20s morphing into a more domestic scene with my husband Duncan and daughter Connie — it is still the way I choose to unwind at the end of most days.
A half bottle of wine with a sunday roast, a Friday night tipple over a takeaway or a midweek date night with my husband ( maybe even a cocktail), giggling as we weave home slightly squiffy to relieve the babysitter — what could be nicer?
this, of course, is exactly what all those finger-wagging studies are talking about — outwardly respectable drinking that nonetheless falls into the category of ‘too much’ these days.
to which I want to say: maybe, but I will take my chances — just like, I suspect, many women in my age group.
It’s an attitude that many find hard to accept. some of it is generational — my dear dad and many of his peers remain horrified by the notion of an openly drunk woman — but even young men are not above judging the drinking habits of the female of the species while ignoring their own.
Labels like ‘ wine o’clock’ and ‘ slummy mummies’, often coined by women themselves, have been all too eagerly seized upon by those of both genders to express mild disapproval. ‘Nothing worse than a bunch of drunken mums,’ a male friend of mine recently declared, as if a bunch of drunken dads were somehow different.
Yet it’s hardly a surprise we’re turning to the bottle, stuck as many of us are between the miserable twin pillars of being in the sandwich generation, caring for old and young with their varying needs, and also staring down the barrel of menopause.
In my case that translates into juggling caring for my five-year-old with parents who live 200 miles away, and who until recently were both in hospital — as well as an erratic freelance career, where if I don’t work I don’t earn any money. some days life can feel less like a walk in the park than an assault course.
there are many like me, and many dealing with far worse stresses too.
the experts’ rubberstamped solution, of course, is eating well, getting enough sleep and exercising. I really try to do this, and to have at least three nights a week off booze. I fully intend to get to my 80th birthday and beyond if possible.
But what helps me to de- stress and forms a counterbalance to the frenetic days is a drink or two — or sometimes three.
We mustn’t forget that alcoholism is a dreadful affliction and I am all too aware of the wasted lives and devastated families who are proof that alcohol can be the most false of friends.
But it can also be a lovely, life - enhancing thing — especially for those of us grown-up enough about drinking not to wake up with a crashing hangover.
And if that makes me an ‘almost alcoholic’ — well, it’s a label I’ll have to live with.