Patterns and Perceptions of Maternal Alcohol Use among Women with Pre-School Aged Children: A Qualitative Exploration of Focus Group Data

Abstract

Background: Quantitative studies of women's alcohol use suggest that social advantage is associated with increased frequency of alcohol use and disadvantage with increased quantities. Very few studies have examined patterns among mothers; even fewer have explored mothers' perceptions and understandings of their alcohol use. We examine how mothers describe and make sense of their patterns of alcohol use in the context of advantaged and disadvantaged circumstances.

Negotiating identities of ‘responsible drinking’: Exploring accounts of alcohol consumption of working mothers in their early parenting period

“…autonomous woman and caring parent), or as an element of care practices (Jackson et al, 2018; Killingsworth, 2006). Other studies have explored how socioeconomic and domestic environments influence maternal alcohol use, describing participants’ alcohol consumption as a cause and consequence of stressful life events (Baker, 2017; Waterson, 2000). These studies highlight a basic tension between the regulation traditionally associated with maternal consumption and the portrayal of drinking as an enjoyable and restorative activity, performed between paid and unpaid work.…”

Parents' management of alcohol in the context of discourses of ‘competent’ parenting: A qualitative analysis

“…For example, engagement in the workforce may open opportunities for drinking (e.g., after work drinks), conversely, the constraints associated with child‐rearing may reduce opportunities for drinking (Room et al., 2009). Additionally, ‘competent parenting’ discourses encourage appropriate displays of alcohol consumption and alcohol‐related boundary setting with children, and alcohol is further entangled with parenting through a range of symbolic and embodied emotional usages embedded in adults' practices (Baker, 2017; Cook et al., 2021; Killingsworth, 2006). Despite these concerns, researchers have paid little attention to how parents manage tensions between normative discourses of ‘competent parenting’ and their desires to consume alcohol.…”

“…These understandings are underpinned by broader contemporary views that parents, and especially mothers, should always be available or “on call” for their children (Correll et al., 2007), and that alcohol consumption is incompatible with this responsibility. This social disapproval highlights that parents are required to negotiate broader and parent‐specific social discourses when considering their alcohol consumption (Baker, 2017; Wolf & Chávez, 2015).…”

“…Despite the social disapproval, previous studies reporting on parents' experiences of consumption have identified various positive ways in which alcohol is used in everyday life. For instance, Baker (2017) reported that women with pre‐school aged children commonly described their alcohol use as a means of delineating time away from childcare responsibilities. Similarly, in a study of women in Scotland aged 30–50 years, drinking after children were in bed designated a change from time spent focussing on children to adult time (Emslie et al., 2015).…”

Exploring the significance of relationality, care and governmentality in families, for understanding women’s classed alcohol drinking practices

“…personal resources such as money and availability of support) and subjective aspects of social class (i.e. the meaning and value given to different practices) can also alter the extent to which women engage in certain drinking practices (Brown and Gregg 2012 ; Baker 2017 ). Drawing on the accounts of young working-class women’s drinking in the North East of England and Australia, Brown and Gregg ( 2012 ) argue that drinking with friends outside the home offered space for relief and respite for young working-class mothers.…”