From "Mother’s Little Helper Is Back, and Daddy’s Partaking Too/After the kids go to bed, the grown-ups are drinking and smoking pot to distract themselves from the hellscape that is pandemic parenting" by Jessica Grose (NYT). Here's that "battered parent" ad:
The article works to connect the story of housewives' tranquilizers to the present-day use of alcohol and marijuana during the pandemic. Grose gives us lots of cultural details and mostly keeps it light. We hear about ads and celebrities and memes on TikTok, but we're talking about the grim problem of drug and alcohol dependency.
Despite working more hours, mothers in the 2010s spent more time on child care than they did in 1965. That’s around when 'wine moms' entered the lexicon.... On Instagram, around 70,000 posts are tagged #winemom, but when you look through them, you realize that a small portion are posts about trying to stay sober in a wine mom world — a difficult task made even harder by a pandemic.... [F]or some parents, getting just a little stoned is the only way they can eke out a small measure of joy in an otherwise fairly hopeless time. Deborah Stein, 43, said her nightly pot gummy is the one thing allowing her to get a good night’s sleep on a regular basis... After dinner, the couple splits a 'chill' gummy containing 1.8 milligrams of THC."The article has an amusing correction: "An earlier version of this article misstated the dosage of THC shared by Deborah Stein and her husband. It is 1.8 mg per gummy, not 50 mg, which is the dosage contained in the entire package." I'm looking at an edibles dosage chart, and I don't really know what Deborah Stein and her husband are up to. Half of a 1.8 mg candy doesn't even count as a microdose. An unsplit 1.8 gummy is the recommendation for "first time consumers." 50, split in half, puts you in the range for "well-seasoned consumers" looking for "strong euphoria." The 0.9 mg that Stein says is needed to get a good night's sleep seems like nothing but a placebo.
I'm just not seeing how this article hangs together. It lingers in the past rather interestingly, then it flits through what gets my tag "MSM reports what's in social media," and ends up with a relatable/dull story about a particular middle-aged woman who, I suspect, represents the NYT idea of a NYT reader, and never really lets us get despondent about the seriousness of the declining mental health we're experiencing in the lockdown. Is there even anything in the article about the predicament of children stuck in the care — 24 hours a day — of adults who've dulled or damaged their consciousness with drugs and alcohol?
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74 comments:
Sooo - you didn't like the article. Because it was poorly written. In the NY Times.
Most people who peruse the Times feel this way about almost every single article. Don't tire yourself out over any one particular horrid article, go for the long haul of deploring the entire news organization that is the NYT.
And if this is a disguised cri de coerr for mental health support, we're here for you.
If I lived in New York City, the target audience of the NYT, I might need a pharmacology solution. But I don't and even left dystopic California.
"Mother's Little Helper" without vocals.
It's the NYT, Ann.
Amy Sohn, erstwhile sex columnist for the wonderful NYPress, did this topic., well. NYT should just link to that and shut the fuck up with this re-warmed, half-baked crap. And I think somebody's getting confused, because the lowest THC dosage edible I've seen is 5mg.
"mothers in the 2010s spent more time on child care than they did in 1965."
In 1965, child care consisted of "Go outside and play. And don't come in until the streetlights come on." If mothers in the 2010s are going to insist on micromanaging their kids' lives to the point of scheduling playdates, well then, by definition, they'll be spending more time on child care.
Author's source Metzl is on the "white people are bad" bandwagon: "My book, https://dyingofwhiteness.com, shows how Trump/GOP policies that claim to make white America "great again" end up making the lives of working-class white supporters harder, sicker and shorter—and in the end, threaten everyone’s well-being."
What the hell would this country do if there was a true crisis?
I think the answer is to get back to normal functioning. I've never seen so many people pine for a crisis, war, pestilence or economic collapse. We are so spoiled we don't know what to do with ourselves.
My reaction to that vintage ad for MILTOWN (Meltdown or MILFTOWN?) is much the same as my reaction to the Chuckwagon Dog Food commercial.
I want to see the brat crush his miniaturized mother with that block the same way I wanted to see the dog tear apart those miniaturized cattlemen and horses.
This is not new...
Grok was fermenting mangos in his cave to escape the stress of not being eaten by a sabertooth tiger 120,000 years ago...
later satirized to chilling effect in 'The Stepford Wives.'
It was satire!?!?! That explains a lot.
It's anti-feminist bullshit. Mental health is real, and having treatment options was empowering to women (and men), not a force for conformity. The people who would deny you those choices do not have your best interest at heart.
Note the parallels to the pandemic and the lockdowns. "Don't trust treatments. Don't think about sending your kids back to school. Don't listen to people who say you could feel better. Just shut up and suffer."
So placebo abuse is real.
Yeah, .9mg is ... nothing. Maybe if you're 90 pounds and very sensitive to THC and new.
Plenty of people can take a more standard 5mg and just feel a little mellow.
(I am also not at all sure that the asserted "'50s medication of women who Were Not Submissive!!!" is anything but bullshit.
The entire cultural analysis part is too pat and cheap.)
Is it still a pandemic? It was, but there are actual criteria which defines a 'pandemic' and I heard awhile back that those criteria were no longer met.
If you are out of college and still smoke weed, you are a loser.
Seriously. Grow up.
Ironically, the media causes most of the anxiety that makes people feel that they need to self-medicate.
If a family is cooped up in a city apartment, and all the parks are closed, I can understand being rather miserable. Otherwise, I don't get all the current complaining about parenting. What were they doing before the pandemic? Is it because schools are closed in these places? Schools are open here.
Liberals need to self medicate because they run around with their hair on fire screaming:
Trump is trying to kill us.
Metzl: My book, https://dyingofwhiteness.com, shows how Trump/GOP policies that claim to make white America "great again"
Did Trump or any GOP member claim they were going to "make white America 'great again'"?
I don't think so, so I do think that the director of the department of medicine, health and society at Vanderbilt University can't be trusted.
The 1950s scourge Valium is still a popular prescribed drug that is addictive and has deadly withdrawals. Big Pharma Uber Alles.
"Suddenly...life was worth living."
Just say "no!" to ahedonia.
Women weren't prescribed these things to punish them or hold them down. They were viewed as a real solution to the problems of women who were greatly unhappy. The method was wrong because of faulty premises, not ill intent. We see the same thing, to an even larger degree, today, with an alarming proportion of the population apparently in need of their brain chemistry altered via MAOIs and other drugs, according to doctors. The same as when doctors were prescribing lots of mother's little helpers. Now they're half the population's little helpers!
I was just listening to that song the other day. The lyrics are hilarious.
Some parents might be getting loaded for fun rather than to cope.
Are you there, Margaret? It's me, Vodka.
If I thought the worldview of the NYT times and its writers represented reality I would be stressed-out, depressed and miserable, too. Probably the best remedy for the mental health of the average NYT reader would be to stop reading the stupid thing. And stay the heck away from the network talking head shows.
The actual reality is pretty nice -- if you get outside the hellscape of NYC.
Blogger I'm Not Sure said...
"mothers in the 2010s spent more time on child care than they did in 1965."
In 1965, child care consisted of "Go outside and play. And don't come in until the streetlights come on."
Exactly. My older son walked 6 blocks to Kindergarten in 1970.
Bill, Republic of Texas said...
What the hell would this country do if there was a true crisis?
I think this is missing the current state of our country.
The United States is an unprecedented derailment of the river of history.
The Aristocracy is being held to account in ways that has never happened before. They have thrown every lie and artifice of power they have at Trump and they cannot take him down.
They have infested the media, the university and education system, popular culture, the technology industry, the health system and have weaponized it against their enemies.
And they still fail despite all of their wealth and control.
They have to resort to mail in voting and open election fraud to even have a chance in November.
This is the greatest crisis in history as far as the world's wealthy elite are concerned.
Matt said...
If you are out of college and still smoke weed, you are a loser.
Seriously. Grow up.
Like drinking alcohol.
Or coffee.
That is grown up.
You folks that are afflicted by the NYT--and have to have a couple of highballs and a valium or two to get through a days worth of the NYT---don't have it so bad.
You'd need to be falling down drunk and have taken a healthy dose of LSD to confront each day's issue of the Los Angeles Times. I take the the LA Times--but it mostly ends up in the recycle bin. It's a rare day that it takes me more than three minutes scanning the paper before it winds up in the bin.
Middle class and working people's adult beverage unwinding has long been medicalized by certain progressives so that they can morally preen as supreior people. Their adherence to the neo-puritanism of the temperance movements of the past simply reveals their desire to control others for their own good.
If it’s a bone-chilling look at alcoholism as a delusional buffer against professional trauma you want to see, look no further than John Terry’s brilliant performance as Christian Shepherd, Jack’s father, on “Lost.”
50 mg would put most people to sleep. He'll, 10 mg will do that to many.
2mg is one of the most common gummy sizes at my dispensary. Yeah, they have those huge dose products for people who smoke concentrates all day and have insane tolerances .... but for flower/bud consumers generally all they get is 2 or 5 mg.
Perfect for a hike or paddle, baking bread or raking leaves.
If you call it a placebo, would you be happy if I drove 65 mph on the highway under it's effects? If not, well ....
"My older son walked 6 blocks to Kindergarten in 1970."
I walked two blocks in 1959.
The New York Times has zero credibility writing about -- or commissioning a piece about -- the middle class. None.
I have 3 boys age 8, 6, and 2 and work ~50 hours a week fairly steadily right now. I have outdoor space and more resources than most, albeit no real external help (i.e. no nanny, babysitter, grandmother, family who helps share the load).
I've never been so connected to my kids. Wish I had more time with them. Yes, life is hard. Only part of that is the kids.
I was struck, when watching some old Bewitched reruns recently, with how much Darrin drinks.
Granted he had unusual problems, and was about to be replaced by a doppleganger..
Forget about how it is written, the substance is garbage. People have been drinking and using other mood- and mind-altering drugs for thousands of years, in many times and places far more than in 20th Century or present-day America. The only thing that was new in the post-war is more advanced and ambitious chemistry to create new products, not limited to the US.
This article is, at heart, just another effort to deligitimize America in the minds of gullible people who mistakenly think they are smart b/c they read the NYT.
Michael K said... My older son walked 6 blocks to Kindergarten in 1970.
In the late 50's I walked 5 blocks to school in Rogers Park. At age 10 I got a scholarship to a school in Lincoln Park and walked 7 blocks to the #22 Clark street bus which I took to school. In order to cut time from the one hour commute, I switched to the El and transferred to a bus at the Fullerton station.
The result of my childhood travails was that I learned to deal with the real world. We shelter kids way too much these days.
Parents should read Jonathon Haidt.
50 is not divisible by 1.8
I thought this was phony way back then and I still think it's phony. A small minority touted up as though a huge number, even a majority, of the wives. Total BS.
Except the cocktail hour. That is a positive phenomenon which we try to practice religiously.
That meprobamate was bad stuff. I had a patient in the late 1990's who had been on it since the 1950's. I had never even heard of it until I met her. I could not get her off of it due to the physical dependency, and I couldn't get a psychiatrist to help me. No one was familiar with it. I had to beg her insurance company to let her continue to have it because stopping it would cause her physical harm. She changed doctors when I stopped accepting Medicare. I often wonder if her new doctor had any better luck.
Chapter 63 of the Boomer Handbook. “If it feels good, do it”.
"Exactly. My older son walked 6 blocks to Kindergarten in 1970."
In Tokyo, school children as young as 6 or 7 routinely take trains in from the suburbs of Yokohama or Kawasaki, transfer to the subway, transfer to buses, and then walk to school.
They are told that if they are ever in trouble they should look for a police officer, or that any adult will help them.
I saw this many times...
In the mid-'60s my mother would hand me a bag lunch and send me off to kindergarten which was a few large blocks and across a busy street away...I don't ever remember being driven to either school or a sports practice or game. Feet or bicycle...
@Don B., if 1.8 mg is rounded up from 1.785 and 50 is 49.98 rounded up then it certainly does divide.
Overwrought article on an overwrought subject.
Don B: 50 is indeed divisible by 1.8, you simply have to accept that there is a remainder. In baking, there is always batter left on the beaters and in the bowl. The only argument is who gets which to lick clean.
I subscribe to the Seattle Times. The only reliable pages are the comics. The editorial page might as well be written by the DNC. The news pages are full of slanted stories from the NYT and the WaPoo. It's rare to find a readable story.
In 1955 I walked six blocks to Kindergarten. In all weather: in thundershowers and howling blizzards and below-zero temperatures. From the first day in Kindergarten to my last day as a high school senior there was only one instance when school was called off due to weather.
ONE. SINGLE. WEATHER. DAY. in 18 years.
Chicago: blizzard of '67. Started snowing Thursday afternoon. Friday off.
I am telling the absolute truth.
It almost sounds as though a substantial fraction of the mommies who read the Times don’t much care for their kids and tolerate them more than love them. Is that true across the board? Is my wife exceptional? *
* Okay, my wife is clearly exceptional, and not just because she has been able to put up with me for more than 45 years.
“... or that any adult will help them.“
That’s the way it should be. I know I am always looking out for children and would help any child who seemed alone and lost.
People have been drinking and using other mood- and mind-altering drugs for thousands of years.
Make that hundreds of thousands of years. Going back to the dawn of man and before. Neanderthals use mind-altering substances. So, for that matter, did earlier hominids.
It's no big deal. It's normal. Over the long, long courses of hominid history and evolution, abstinence has been the exception to the practice of getting plotzed.
That’s the way it should be. I know I am always looking out for children and would help any child who seemed alone and lost.
What's more, back when I was a wee lad, adults were also unconstrained about stepping in on kids who were behaving badly in public.
Like, we'd be throwing stones at streetlamps, and some random passerby would bellow: "HEY, YOU KIDS: CUT THAT OUT!"
Terrifying. We'd stop what we were doing and take off running.
That’s the way it should be. I know I am always looking out for children and would help any child who seemed alone and lost.
Yes, and you are a woman, so you could do that safely for both of you.
In my neighborhood of tenement apartment buildings, Eastern European immigrant janitors were the real cops. The real law enforcement officers. They kept the kids in line. They were scary.
All of the 2020 as apocalypse memes are overwrought. Get a grip!
Based on some people's postings, you'd think MERS was sweeping the country, Jim Crow was in force, and WWIII was underway.
I’m stranded for four hours at the Fort Wayne airport. I’ll say this, they got the best airport music I’ve ever heard, not to mention a painting of Gene Simmons.
"Middle-class parents’ self-medication
As far as I can see, none of their references mention "parent" or "income" or [middle] "class". One mentioned age.
I, too, am always looking out for children. Girl children, about 18 to 20.
Sugar is an addictive drug that people use to cope, too, and the only way to get out from under it is cold turkey. If you have not experienced this, congratulations.
Nearly everyone has some form of numbing behavior; the trick for everyone is to make sure the coping mechanism is on balance healthier than not doing it, and if the drug of choice is too destructive to try to replace it with something that is healthy and produces enough happy brain chemicals to get you maybe 60 or 70 percent of where the poorer choice would have.
I'm not remotely interested in shopping, gambling, marijuana, alcohol, pornography, trashy TV, doomscrolling social media, or video games, but, depending on how depleted my tanks are, I literally cannot control myself if there is ice cream or chocolate in the house. If I have some energy, I can talk myself into a walk instead, which is nowhere near the same thing as a handful of Milk Duds for the immediate pleasure burst but overall makes me feel much better. The problem is that other soothing behaviors require time or privacy which often mothers do not have.
I'd let my kindergartner walk 5 blocks to school, but my wife disagrees, and someone would probably call the cops. 8 or 9 seems to be the limit in Brooklyn's not so polite society.
“ If you are out of college and still smoke weed, you are a loser.”
Maybe overall. Most people I know who have smoked pot long term are losers. But not all. I know one extraordinarily successful tort attorney who smokes to calm himself down between trials.
The result of my childhood travails was that I learned to deal with the real world. We shelter kids way too much these days.
In the 1940s (1944), I walked to kindergarten myself but only for about 4 days. The nun scolded me for something so I never went back. A friend of my father owned a flower shop and nursery next door to the school. I just went there instead and helped the old uncle of the owner in the nursery. At noon, I would hear the school bell and walked back home. The school never called my mother and she sent me off every morning.
Of course, this was Chicago and November was coming but we moved, saving me and she never figured out that I had ditched KG. I told her years later.
My experience with that was through Mad Magazine. Not every cartoon was centered on psychiatrists and tranquilizers and the like, but enough that you could get the idea that it was a big deal. Thinking back on it all, it seems those were in the collections from the 1950's to early 1960's Mad Magazine. I don't recall seeing it very much in the 1970's editions, I guess that fad had ended.
The hellscape is lockdown parenting.
Lockdowns are artifacts of lying authoritarian governments, not pandemics.
Lying authoritarian governments issue illegal executive orders, over and over again, that put people out of work and deprive us of freedom to worship, assemble, and generally to pursue happiness as we fit. Not pandemics.
And pandemic parenting is, or should be, uneventful because the seasonal flu kills far more kids every year.
Matt said...
If you are out of college and still smoke weed, you are a loser.
Seriously. Grow up.
Like me, you are out of touch. A friend of mine was relating a neighborhood Friday night block party-ish. Just neighbors hanging out in two houses, sharing finger foods, and adult beverages. These people are almost all grandparents. Some grandkids were in attendance. Nothing exceptional, just good fellowship. He asked a buddy of his where he disappeared to. He said 8-10 were getting together in a third garage, to pass a joint(s). As my friend doesn't drive truck, he does maintain a full CDL license, with all endorsements including HazMat. He hasn't done pot since college, but said when he retires, he, and his wife will probably join in.
Another friend found out the 70 year old single grandmother that moved into his apartment building, fires up her bowl twice a day, and asked him to join in. He wasn't a user in collage, and said he wasn't interested in revisiting.
In short, there is a lot more pot smoking (and eating) going on then I can imagine.
"Exactly. My older son walked 6 blocks to Kindergarten in 1970."
I road my bike to school in kindergarten, 1961, 1.5 miles, with a 1/4 of a mile on the shoulder of Hwy 30 (before I 80 was built). Only when my older brother was also riding to school.
A lot of these women mention being stressed by the news but no one is writing an article about how being shut up in an apartment with the news on all the time leads to drug and alcohol abuse. "Doomscrolling", they even have a name for obsessing about the news. I blame Drudge - I looked recently at the new Drudge Report and if I believed in it at all I'd be on drugs, too. I get "news attacks" every now and then in which I find myself constantly switching through news sites looking for some piece of news - The Second Coming? Spring 2021? - which is never there. I treat the attacks by reading for hours from print books, seeking the most boring I can think of. I read Palamon and Arcite or The Knight's Tale in Chaucer the other day. That took five days and completely restored my nerve tone. In college I was told it was considered the most boring piece of literature in the English language. It remained on my non-bucket list till a month ago when I cooled my imagination by reading it. It lived up to its reputation.
Like, we'd be throwing stones at streetlamps, and some random passerby would bellow: "HEY, YOU KIDS: CUT THAT OUT!"
Pretty much the same here, except we'd have to go on a bit of a hike to get to somewhere where the passerby wasn't somebody who knew us. Or our parents. And wasn't shy about letting them know what we were up to.
“ I'm Not Sure said...
"My older son walked 6 blocks to Kindergarten in 1970."
I walked two blocks in 1959.”
Inflation.
I'm a SAHM mom with 5 kids. I don't smoke or drink. Neither does my husband. I can't figure out what people could be sad, depressed about.
I think the stereotypes existed to persuade the Boomers not to settle down. I don't think the Boomers are any happier than their parents were.
If you are out of college and still smoke weed, you are a loser.
You mean like Michael Phelps whose net-worth is approximately $80 million?
50 is not divisible by 1.8
Any mathematician will tell you that 27.777777777777778 is a real number.
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