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It’s a bitter sip.
“Wine mom” culture celebrates alcohol as both a requirement and a reward for the maternal workload, with infinite cheeky memes and products boasting, “The most expensive part of having kids is all the wine you have to drink.”
But for some, such lighthearted messages and merchandise — think “mommy juice” wine glasses and “mama needs wine” sweatshirts — belie a much darker reality.
“What began as me ‘relaxing after a hard day’ turned into a full-blown alcohol addiction,” content creator Taylor Krajewski told The Post.
Krajewski, who documents her sobriety on TikTok, said that while she was always a drinker, her dependency escalated when she became a mother.
“Wine mom culture gave me a way to escape that felt justified,” she said, adding that she would use any excuse to drink.
“I glamorized so much about having a glass of wine,” she said, admitting that she leaned on her “wine mom” identity to co-sign her own consumption: drinking while preparing meals, pouring herself a glass when her daughter went down for a nap, and topping off her Stanley tumbler with wine if she was headed to the park for soccer practice or a play date.
At the height of her addiction, Krajewski was drinking three to four bottles of wine a day, she admitted.
But she did it “in such a nonchalant, joking way, like, ‘Mommy has to have her juice box.’ It’s all very cutesy and fun … until it’s not,” she said.
Experts say that Krajewski’s trajectory from cutesy to critical is increasingly common.
“Wine mom culture has normalized using alcohol to cope with day-to-day stressors,” clinical counselor and addiction specialist Diana Burdette told The Post.
Indeed, there has been a dramatic increase in the consumption of alcohol among women since the 1990s, according to experts.
The rise of “wine culture” has been named as a potential driver for the uptick, putting women at greater risk of significant health consequences, including cirrhosis, alcohol-related liver diseases, congestive heart failure, heart attack and stroke.
But despite the increase in consumption, women — and more specifically mothers — have the lowest rates of seeking help, according to Burdette.
“The stigma attached to substance use prevents many individuals from seeking help,” she explained, citing that criticism is amplified for mothers.
“They still have to sit in the bleachers and watch the sports game, or do pick-ups and drop-offs. On top of that, they have to carry the societal guilt and shame.”
Krajewski began to question her own alcohol use when she saw how it impacted her ability to parent.
“I became less patient, I wanted to be alone more, and I stopped doing all of the fun things with my daughter that made me love being a mom so much.”
In her active addiction, mom wine memes felt like a permission slip.
“My social media was filled with memes, and I loved a good selfie holding a glass of wine, cheering myself on because #momlife,” Krajewski told The Post. “I figured that if I could make light of it, it wouldn’t be such a serious problem.”
She shared that the merchandising of wine mom culture also felt designed to encourage and excuse her drinking.
“When I was just trying to survive motherhood, it was everywhere. Wine was framed as a reward for getting through the day. It speaks directly to burnout and sells it back to you as relief.”
According to Burdette, the lighthearted presentation of wine mom merchandise feeds both revenue and hypocrisy.
“Society allows the playful aspect to thrive as long as an exchange of capital can be had, yet after the individual becomes observably dependent, puritanic values become the framework used to chastise mothers.”
While Krajewski does not blame the whole of her addiction on wine mom culture, she believes it is a diversion that prevents parents from demanding better support systems.
“It takes the edge off just enough that you keep coping instead of questioning why you’re so overwhelmed in the first place,” she said.
“For me, it kept the focus on getting through the day instead of asking for real support. While it’s not the root issue, it can definitely distract from what moms actually need.”
Her opinion is echoed by Burdette: “It is a failing of society that mothers turn to numbing substances to cope with the high expectations of motherhood and are not able to safely seek out help to learn new forms of coping,” she said.
Krajewski, who is now four months sober, recalled that toward the end of her active alcoholism, she spent frequent mornings on the couch or in bed nursing a hangover with a fast-food breakfast.
“I hated what I had become because being a good mom was all I ever wanted,” she lamented. “I knew I had to make some changes so that I could be the mother my daughter deserved.”
After attempting to beat booze through AA and detox protocols, Krajewski found sobriety with the support of naltrexone, a medication that decreases the urge for alcohol by blocking opioid receptors.
Despite her commitment to change, Krajewski was concerned that without the crutch of alcohol, parenting would be unmanageable.
“I was worried I wouldn’t have the energy to keep up with her without something to numb me out.”
In fact, the opposite proved true.
“I feel much more ready to take on the day because I’m not fighting a hangover. The thing I thought was helping me get through motherhood was actually making me more depleted and reactive, and less present.”
Over time, she said that sobriety has made parenting feel “lighter.”
“I have the patience to play outside with my daughter, get down on the floor with her and play with her dolls, and I am able to handle her big emotions because I am keeping my own emotions in check.”
In essence, Krajewski has proudly traded happy hour for a happy life.
“Life is so beautiful sober, and it’s possible to get through the hard chapters of motherhood without numbing everything away with a glass (or bottle) of wine,” she said. “Sobriety has given me everything that alcohol promised me.
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