Set down “Mommy’s sippy cup.” The world needs you to show up.
Instead of tossing a second job into our juggling act, the universe has thrown us an anvil labeled Covid-19.
Our current alcohol epidemic shares two of the three causes and conditions of other drug epidemics identified by Carl Erik Fisher, author of “The Urge: Our History of Addiction”: a novel drug, an addiction supply industry and community wounding.
While drinking is certainly not novel, it is more accessible and acceptable for working moms to drink:
- We can have booze delivered. (I’m looking at you, UberEats, as our addiction supply industry.)
- We’re at home so co-workers don’t know what’s in our coffee mugs. Or how early we switch from water to wine.
- Mommy wine culture normalizes day drinking while we’re caring for our kids.
And for God’s sake, the community of working moms is the walking wounded.
Women with children under age five seem to be the most vulnerable to excessive drinking — with rates that increased 323% during the pandemic according to a recent study from RTI International.
Well, duh.
We are currently doing what is not humanly possible.