So you're basically saying that it's OK to roll the dice with a child, since after all it's only a 20-sided die? That a mother's temporary gratification is more important than a 5% chance of your child suffering damage?
>"The government advises that people should not regularly drink more than the daily unit guidelines of [...] and 2-3 units of alcohol for women (equivalent to a 13% ABV 175 ml glass of wine). ‘Regularly’ means drinking every day or most days of the week."
[175ml is about ¾ cup (USA) and the units above are about equivalent to a single pint of 4% beer]
FWIW If I have 2 glasses of wine I'll be "buzzed" because I don't drink every day. Take a month off from drinking, try two normal glasses (ie not pub measures) and you'll notice.
For example:
So you're saying that it's OK to roll the dice with a child, since after all it's only a 20-sided die? That forcing a mother to restrict all alcohol, and thus suffer stress (which we know to be harmful to the child) is more important than an unknown chance of the child suffering damage from alcohol?
So was the phrasing of the post I responded to. He didn't even raise the question of whether the mother's drinking might have benefits (such as the one you cite) which might outweigh the risk the alcohol poses to the child. He just said, "oh, it's not really all that dangerous". That, IMO, is not a justifiable mindset for a parent.
If there is no compensating benefit, then IMO a parent should not incur any avoidable risk to a child. There must always be a reason for incurring the risk, and it must be a stronger reason than "well, I like drinking". If the mother's stress level would really be increased that much by not drinking, then that could be a valid reason. (Though I would tend to be skeptical of such a claim; is abstaining from alcohol, for a person who is not an alcoholic, really that hard, hard enough to outweigh the risk to the child's health?)
Wait, what? Are you actually serious? Not joking? I'm sorry to ask but I have a problem understanding people and I can never tell when people are pulling my leg or not. I almost never spot satire. So, if you're engaging in some devastatingly witty attack on something or other then I'm afraid it's gone right over my head.
> There must always be a reason for incurring the risk, and it must be a stronger reason than "well, I like drinking". If the mother's stress level would really be increased that much by not drinking, then that could be a valid reason.
We don't know if a pregnant woman drinking a couple of units a week is doing any harm to her child. Thus, the advice is to avoid all alcohol. But this has some disadvantages. It makes people ignore much clearer health advice. (This thread has someone suggesting that the drinking advice is similar to the smoking advice, as an example.) It also causes a great deal of stress to women. Some women may drink their regular amounts and then be very distressed when they discover that they are pregnant and have been drinking during the pregnancy. For most women the stress they experience is more harmful than the alcohol.
> (Though I would tend to be skeptical of such a claim; is abstaining from alcohol, for a person who is not an alcoholic, really that hard, hard enough to outweigh the risk to the child's health?)
Wow. That sentence bundles up so many misunderstandings of pregnancy and societal pressures and all kinds of stuff. It's too hard to respond to.
> There must always be a reason for incurring the risk
I'm quoting this part again because it's the core of your message, and it's very very wrong.
You assume that we know what the risks are, and that we can communicate those risks to pregnant women, and that they have power to control the risks they're exposed to.
Women undergo a bunch of prenatal checks. To get to those checks they have to use some form of transport. Are the risks of travel outweighed by the benefits of the prenatal checks?
What about different types of scans? There's no point in the 3d / 4d scans, and there's a possible risk of harm, so should the scans be banned? Or should we tell women not to get them? And who should we be criticising, the firms making money by pushing a possibly harmful but pointless scan to vulnerable women, or the women who get these scans?
(http://www.nhs.uk/news/2010/02February/Pages/Warning-over-so...)
