Interesting article from the Guardian on pregnancy guidelines

[bumperlicious]

Here. Not trying to be controversial , though feel free to debate away! Just though it might interest some people.

for example, i was watching a wedding show on the bbc and some woman was v preg and getting hammered on her wedding day and saying 'i know you shouldn't do this but i did it with her and it didn't do her any harm.' i'd have been happy for one of her pals to say 'er, well, i thought the govt said that you'd not to do that' but they all said 'right on' and ptsl. but that scrawny child hopefully will get a clear message of total abstinence and that, i think, is a good thing for her children. and if that makes me sound like a snob then kinda so be it, it's silly not to acknowledge that some people are less well educated and need a clear message more than others.

hmm, I rather think that assumes that ones "peers" are as well educated as oneself! Or that one is not going to be in a public place like a hotel or bar. I just think women should not be made to feel like pariahs for drinking while pregnant and it is inevitable that they will be. These kneejerk guidelines are not just guidelines in a vacuum, they are part of a much bigger picture of women being supervised and chivvied and harried from the moment they become pregnant until their children leave home. By the time my daughter is pregnant, I'm sure that she will feel intimidated enough never to drink while pregnant, even if she fancies half a glass. And that saddens me, because it is unnecessary and it is a symptom of women being bullied rather than a genuine need.

But Aitch, women like that are exactly the type who are not going to follow the guidelines.

It will be normal women who feel intimidated into falling into line.

i think i can live with that if it means other people's grandchildren are safer as a result, tbh.

No I can't because it won't stop there.

Attacks on women's automony never do.

i agree, but it's her child and her grandchildren that i see benefitting from this message, VSS, not unlike you and i absorbing the 'don't drink and drive' message. and it's not killed us, has it, to not drink if we've got the car. (plus by the time our kids are having kids i'm sure they'll just download pleasure by blinking at a computer screen).

i really, really think that it's a stupid area to become radicalised about. i'm a happy feminist, very pro-women's rights but i do actually think that there are women unborn who will benefit from this message and i feel strongly about them too. (so not a pro-lifer, btw, don't panic.)

I think you are very optimistic to think that this woman's children will benefit from an unthinking bullying of women.

On the contrary, they will be subject to all the other bullying that the acceptance of this bullying will legitimise.

but i Just Don't Accept that it's bullying, VSS. it's just a general health message, like the 'get fit' ones. or the stop smoking ones. i saw this bullying argument advanced here about the no smoking policy in scotland, but i didn't give a shit about it tbh. smoking is bad for people, drinking more than moderately is bad for babies. some people are too dense to realise that moderately means 'hardly at all, and watch your measures, and watch the alcohol percentage to volume' so let's go for all-out abstinence, i say. it's no skin off anyone's nose for nine months, surely?

also, just returning to the idea that i know i shouldn't drink and drive At All, despite the fact that the govt would allow me to get behind the wheel with a glass or whatever of wine inside me... perhaps the limits while pregnant differ from woman to woman and baby to baby? that ties in with your genetic predisposition to FAS point also... so again a blanket ruling seems sensible to me. what you can say, for definite, is that if you don't drink your child won't suffer any ill effects. other than that, it seems up for grabs for me, judging by the effect that one glass of wine has on me.

I don't buy the "it's no skin of anyone's nose, surely"? argument.

Because its implication is, that if it is skin off your nose, then there is something wrong with you. So it puts any mother who does actually want to have a glass of wine, in the position of practically having to declare herself a drunk, a slut and an unfit muther (just thinking of Sue Ellen from Dallas here) in order to have one. Most right-thinking women are going to be far too intimidated to take on such an unpopopular battle and so they are going to jump into line, however much they feel it unnecessary or unfair.

I cannot accept that this is a healthy, equal or good position for adult women to find themselves in, at the beginning of the twenty-first century. I simply don't accept that this is not a feminist issue. It is, big time.

am LOLing at the fact that you cite Sue Ellen as a case in point.
i do understand your point, VSS, i just don't care about it At All. we're only pregnant for nine months, we have on average 2.4 children (or whatever it is nowadays) so it's not a lot of time in the scheme of things. it is genuinely no skin off my nose not to drink for that time.

Nor mine. As it happens, I didn't with DD2.

But for me this isn't about whether I want to have a drink in pregnancy or not. It's about the creeping controlling tone used to women, not only when they're pregnant, but also when they are mothers, in the media and from public authorities. It is already a tone which is being extended to all women of childbearing age in certain states of the USA as already mentioned further down the thread, to say nothing of other parts of the world. This is part and parcel of it and it has to be fought imo.

see, i think you should choose yer battles, really. this is not the one. more bfing support, more normalisation of bfing, better maternity leave, better work opps after ML, better creche facilities in the workplace... just off the top of my head these seem more important to me.

I don't think it has to be either or.

Anything which infantilises women and which sanctions a wee bit more social control of them, is worth a fight imo. You give 'em an inch, they'll take a mile. Seriously. You have to fight every little encroachment, because if you don't, you are conceding that someone else than an adult woman has some stakeholding interest in her body and her behaviour. And that is utterly unacceptable. We are not yet at a stage where to sink back into chatteldom would be unthinkable.

Anyway this has been a very interesting discussion Aitch, I'm off to bed, perhaps we'll continue it tomorrow. Good night.

night night, vss. sleep well.

wow! I've really enjoyed reading your discussion, Aitch and VSS - for a change, both sides of the debate put calmly and persuasively.

sorry? you were saying, lazyemma?

Thankyou Eemie and Berolina, helped me calm down

lazyemma is right - you two obviously don't agree but my god you can debate sensibly and calmly. I am willing to bet neither of you reads the DM.

I love the 50/50 line - that's the one I use to annoy dh (who's big into stats, yawnarama). And I always but always get a very complex explanation of why it is shite.
But it is a two-state thing: you take care to avoid listeria as much as you can because one exposure could have a devastating effect - no brainer imo. Similarly drinking and driving: you might have one drink but say that one drink made you drive badly and you killed someone - not worth the risk.
Having the odd glass of wine whilst pregnant is so clearly not the same sort of issue at all so for the message to the public to be that absolutely no alcohol is the 'correct' way for a pregnant woman to behave seems insidious to me. Though I am more worried about the way things are going in the US, since we inevitably follow.

I agree with VSS about fighting every little encroachment. There is no doubt that this is a tiny issue and that of course abstinence is no bad thing. But we let this kind of thing go unchallenged at our peril, I think. I am always vociferous about this, not because I want to drink whilst pregnant, but because even if other women think I am ridiculous, I want my dissent to be registered as an option.

tbh though pruni, i do agree about the encroachment on womens' rights to govern what goes on in their own body and i do see VSS' and your points completely. it's just a battle picking scenario for me. dh is also v boring about stats, but sitting in that doctor's office, even he saw the sense of the 50/50.
i had dd in a hospital that services a v tough area of Glasgow, where you ahve to battle through hordes of heavily pregnant women smoking and even on the odd occasion smelling of drink. much as they are clearly resistant to govt health messages, i could have done with a fair bit more opprobrium being heaped upon their sorry arses... i think that's probably coloured my view on this one more than anything.

lol @ "pork tongue in jelly, which nobody in their right mind would ever eat"

I think the problem with those women is that there's probably already loads of opproprium heaped on them in all avenues of their lives and more in this area isn't really going to stop them in their tracks. That's part of a wider issue of class, education etc., which just doesn't seem to being tackled at all.