This Mother’s Day, watch out for the dark side of ‘Mummy Wine Culture’

As I sat at the kitchen table, my daughter excitedly handed me a Mother’s Day card she’d made at school. “To the best Mum ever,” it read. It went on to list Mum’s favourite things. Next to Mum’s favourite drink, she had written “wine.” I laughed it off but inside I felt instantly ashamed, and guilty. It struck me that my six-year-old daughter had gotten used to watching me take the edge off my daily stresses with wine. An ever-present glass of wine at the end of the day meant one thing to her – it was Mum’s favourite drink. Mum’s way of coping with life. Mum’s not-so-secret crutch.

That was six years ago.

This week I’ve been watching the impact of Big Alcohol on Mother’s Day. From catchy memes about “wine o’clock” to pyjamas covered in wine bottles with the slogan “wine down time”, the messaging is clear: mothers need alcohol to cope with the demands of their daily lives. Being a mother requires wine as a reward.

Mother’s Day has become insidiously intertwined with Mummy Wine Culture and dressed up as cute, fun, novel, and bonding among women. It’s a culture that’s not only normalised among mums but actively encouraged, with Big Alcohol leading the charge and many mothers not needing to be told twice that they “deserve” that evening glass.

But the constant marketing of alcohol as a form of self-care, stress relief, and an appropriate gift around Mother’s Day creates a dangerous narrative.

Over the past 30 years, alcohol use disorder in women has increased by an alarming 84 per cent. This disorder is defined as consuming 14 or more units of alcohol per week, roughly equivalent to just over a bottle of wine. If you’re a grey area drinker, like I was six years ago, this is not a huge amount. Many mums are secretly drinking much more than a bottle a week.

I know because that was me.

And now I see the fallout every day of the impact of Mummy Wine Culture through the thousands of women I coach – the anxiety, the shame, the exhaustion and the lost motivation. We don’t have to be an “alcoholic” for alcohol to still be robbing us of so much in life.

What’s even more concerning is the impact Mummy Wine Culture has on the role modelling to our daughters. Research tells us girls who grow up seeing their mothers use alcohol as a coping mechanism are four times more likely to develop alcohol use disorder themselves. They’ve never had healthy self-care modelled to them. This highlights the intergenerational impact of unhealthy behaviours and the importance of setting positive examples for our kids.