Rule 3: Pregnancy Does Not Damage Your Child
Jennie Bristow has a fantastic article at Spiked, examining the UK Department of Health’s oxymoronical position on alcohol consumption by pregnant women — if you drink on purpose, you’re an evil person who’s harming your baby, but if you got smashed every night before you realized you were preggers, relax, the kid will be fine — and the widespread governmental and cultural efforts to control women’s pregnant bodies. After explaining that the Department of Health fully admits Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is so rare that even alcoholic women have a 95% chance of delivering healthy babies, Bristow says:
Women are not being told to give up all alcohol during pregnancy because of a health risk, but because to do so indicates that they have the right, responsible attitude to motherhood: not doing anything for themselves that might conceivably impact negatively on the baby in any way.
That the government feels free to be so explicit about this is very bad news. Not only does it panic women unnecessarily, adding extra guilt to the already burdensome process of pregnancy; it also fuels a process in which the mother-to-be is being cast as someone separate to her fetus, and who simply by being pregnant puts her baby-to-be at risk. [Sociologist Elizabeth] Armstrong discusses how, through the framework of FAS, the ‘bodily relationship’ between the woman and the fetus has become redefined, ‘from thinking of the woman and the fetus as a single entity to thinking of the woman and the fetus as two separate individuals. From thinking of pregnant as something a woman is to regarding pregnancy as something she carries.’ Whatever happened to concepts of women’s bodily autonomy, privacy, their right to make choices about their own pregnancy? Some chancer in the Department of Health decides to exercise his or her prejudices about drinking in pregnancy and these crucial concepts are pissed up against a wall.
I remember being at my sister’s baby shower about 13 (gulp!) years ago, and hearing my mom’s friends laugh about how they’d gone through their own pregnancies drinking, smoking, taking aspirin, consuming caffeine, eating whatever they wanted, and hopped up on prescription amphetamines, to boot. And while I think the elimination of speed and ciggies is probably to the good, I just don’t know about the rest of it. All of those women have a bunch of healthy, ordinary grown children, just as millions of other women who ingested all the same substances while pregnant did. (As a bonus, they didn’t have to deliver 9-lb. babies.)
The problem is not that there’s some huge risk of damaging your child by having a glass of wine while you’re pregant — the problem is that if something does happen, and it can somehow be pinned on your choices, you will never get over the guilt. You will be the bad mother to end all bad mothers, having fucked your kid’s chances before he was even born. Nobody can bear the thought of living with that.
But still, isn’t it interesting that in a time when women had so many more cultural restrictions on their freedom (my mom’s friends were mostly having babies in the late ’50s and early ’60s), they were at least still treated like autonomous adults while pregnant? It’s almost as if you take away one method of controlling women, and you have to replace it with another. Huh. Go figure.
In a previous incarnation I worked in a lab studying the effect of alcohol on embryo’s, specifically how it affected neural crest cells (the cells that make the face and the nerves in the head). Exposure to alcohol kills these cells. There does appear to be a significant genetic component, but alcohol really does have risks for embryo’s.
There are also more subtle changes that happen, even when the mother drinks one drink a day. There was a study done by others at UW that looked at the effect of a single drink a day on monkeys. There were subtle differences in the ability of the boy monkeys to form bonds and join the larger monkey troupe. This effect was exacerbated by stress.
One of the other issues is that fetal alcohol syndrome requires facial deformity. But the facial deformities only happen during a very restricted point during pregnancy (3 to 5th week). Other effects can happen later in pregnancy.
All of this is my long way of saying that I do believe that women should be allowed to make their own decisions and even their own mistakes. That being said, I think that alcohol during pregnancy can be dangerous and if I was pregnant or thinking of becoming pregnant I would avoid alcohol. I also think other women should but also believe they are adults and can make decisions without me playing guardian.
I have also pondered long and hard wondering why it appears FAS is more common now than in the past when women were drinking more regularly during pregnancy. I have no idea, although I suspect that stress and other environmental factors are playing a role.
Not arguing with you specifically, you just happened to trigger one of my little soapboxes.
Yeah, Bisky, I should point out that I don’t intend to keep knocking ‘em back if I ever get pregnant — I’m thinking more of the friend of mine who had half a glass of wine and, in a horrible coincidence, couldn’t feel her baby move for most of the next day. She called me sobbing, utterly convinced she’d killed it. (Baby is now 2 and healthy and adorable.) There’s just a huge disconnect between the actual risk and the constant messages to women that they are horrible people who are killing! their! babies!
But I’m not arguing with you specifically, either. :)
Back in the early 70s, one of my dad’s friends was pregnant. She went into very early labor (i think in her 6th month). The doctors managed to stop the labor, but told her that if she felt any more contractions, she should take a shot of vodka.
She spent the last trimester of her first pregnancy quite plotzed. Her son was born healthy, no birth defects of any kind.
It’s kind of a moot point for me personally, because i don’t really even like alcohol. But for the women who like the occasional glass of wine, i don’t think they should have the fear of god pounded into them about it.
Considering that all women of childbearing age are supposed to think of themselves, and be treated by the medical field, as pre-pregnant according to a recent report by the CDC, none of this is at all surprising.
What is ironic with the alcohol issue is that the most damage done during pregnancy as relates to alcohol is during that time when women are not showing (or as much). It is safest to drink alcohol during your last trimester, but the social stigma is so strong that there are places that will refuse to serve visibly pregnant women even small amounts of alcohol.
Weight is like that, too. In the Victorian era and during the 1950s, when women weren’t allowed to do anything outside the home, they were “permitted” to be full-figured. But as soon as any feminist wave hits, it’s like, “OK ladies, you can have that job and that car and your own property if you insist, but we’ll make you starve for it.” And of course it’s other women who do as much as anyone else to reinforce that, because after all if they have to starve in exchange for their “own” money, what makes the rest of us think we can weasel out of it?
Similarly, pregnancy — “You’re saying I could have had a drink all the time I was pregnant and in horrible pain and in a terrible mood and it would have been okay? That’s not possible! If I couldn’t have a drink during pregnancy, no one can! Off with their heads!”
Meowzer, don’t you think that this ’starvation’ thing is as much down to feminism as anything else (and not part of any anti-feminist backlash as commonly stated)?
Wriggles, how do you figure feminism is to blame?
I think certainly some feminists who have been visible in the media such as Gloria Steinem have felt it incumbent upon themselves to keep their weight down inasfar as doing so would help keep the cameras on them and counteract the widespread media view of feminists as “fat ugly hairy lesbians who can’t get men.” But the fact that the latter prejudice existed at all was hardly their fault, as far as I can see.
But still, isn’t it interesting that in a time when women had so many more cultural restrictions on their freedom (my mom’s friends were mostly having babies in the late ’50s and early ’60s), they were at least still treated like autonomous adults while pregnant?
They might have been treated like autonomous adults while pregnant, but they certainly weren’t while birthing (pardon me, “having their babies delivered”, because we all know that the obstetrician is much more important to the process than the mother).
But I do take your point. Recent moves to criminalise drug addiction/use in pregnancy are taking some US states even further in the same direction.
Part of the problem is the communal agreement that a pregnant woman belongs to everyone. You can be touched by strangers, you can be regaled with horror stories by randoms, and you can be chastised for the smallest action that “might, maybe, ok we don’t know but you don’t want to risk it do you?” cause the baby harm. There is a huge push to have pregnant women take in the correct amount of folic acid–and it does come down to being always pre-pregnant. If you even think you want to be pregnant, there is a list of things you “should” be doing: folic acid, preggers vitamins, exercise (cuz you can’t get fat while pregant anymore), and stopping drinking. There is justice though in the concept that men are supposed to stop the caffeine, alcohol, and such if they want their boys to be able to swim. It is possible to micro-manage all the joy out of thing and make it just another job.
My boyfriend’s mother, as advised by her doctor, drank a pint of Guinness a day while pregnant to prevent anaemia.
While I’m sympathetic to the difficulties faced by pregnant women, it’s important to remember that the environment a foetus develops in not only affects its health at the time, but also has potential consequences for the health of the child throughout its life.
Low birth weight is linked with an increased risk of adult coronary artery disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension and stroke, an association known as the fetal origins hypothesis first proposed by Barker about 10 years ago. Unfortunately it is also thought that even if the baby’s birth weight is not afffected, stress caused by a uterine environment that is not optimal can nevertheless result in an increased risk of adult disease.
So while I am uncomfortable with the sometimes hectoring attitude adopted by the medical profession and media towards pregnant women, it is important that sufficient information is provided to enable expectant mothers to make informed decisions about matters that will affect the lifetime health of their unborn child.
Tim
[Fetal origins of postnatal health and disease; R Harding, Early Human Development Volume 81, Issue 9, September 2005, Pages 721-722]
Tim, that kind of statement is exactly what the article I referred to is talking about.
I don’t think anyone reading this blog is ignorant of all the things that will supposedly create an “optimal uterine environment.” My female readers are the kind of people who, if they become pregnant and choose to have the baby, will read every book and website under the sun about how to give the fetus and then the baby the best opportunity for good lifetime health. That’s A.
B) Even women who aren’t keeners like that do not generally have adversarial relationships with their fetuses and babies.
C) One of the things that causes a great deal of stress on pregnant women and mothers is the pressure to do everything perfectly for the fetus/baby/child, and the guilt about being a bad mom if they slip up. That stress has negative physiological and emotional consequences for both mother and child.
D) The advice given to pregnant women is often maddeningly contradictory, as the article I’m discussing clearly illustrates. You quote one source. There are a LOT of others to consider.
E) Women are human beings, not incubators, period. Fetuses do not develop in “uterine environments,” optimal or otherwise. They develop inside human beings. That’s the point.
Heh – sorry about my phrasing, I can see how that’s unhelpful. I’m a medical scientist currently training in public health and unfortunately that’s the kind of stance represented in the scientific end of the literature (though public health tends to be much better).
Clearly, ambiguous and contradictory advice provided by the DoH is unacceptable and I think it needs to be changed. Likewise excessive pressure on pregnant women – I believe in providing accurate, clear advice in a way that isn’t paternalistic, and allowing people to make their own choices.
But the reason I responded to your post is that you wrote about 95% of alcoholic mothers giving birth to healthy babies, and the children born to your mother’s generation being fine (if slightly underweight). Healthy at birth, certainly, but at higher risk of becoming part of the increasing proportion of the population that have chronic diseases. You didn’t mention this and as a result your post is part of the contradictory advice that irritates you so much.
Tim
Tim, fair enough. To clarify, I’m certainly not advocating that we return to the way my mother’s generation did it. But I think I was illustrating the contradictory advice more than adding to it. In fact, you’ll notice I didn’t give any advice in this post.
Oh, and I should also add that when I said (very much with tongue in cheek) that “they didn’t have to give birth to 9-lb. babies,” I certainly wasn’t suggesting that low birth weight is a plus, either. I was 7 lbs. 11 oz. at birth, which is plenty big. But all of my siblings’ kids and most of my friends’ have been well over 8 lbs., a few over 9, one over 10. As the owner of a vagina, I can’t help being a little nostalgic for the days when babies that big were much, much less common.
hahaha :)
I am so glad to read a post highlighting that most curious of double-messages about alcohol and pregnancy.
I also enjoyed laughing with your mother and her friends at their recollections of neurosis-free pregnancies.