Mothers drank alcohol less frequently as the COVID-19 pandemic progressed, according to a small study of women in Ohio, but another finding was of more concern to the researchers.
The results showed that the number of drinks per day increased for mothers later in the pandemic, raising concerns that mothers were more likely to binge when they drank.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has been particularly stressful for parents as they juggle working from home and caring for their children,” said study co-author and professor of social work Bridget Freisthler at Ohio State University.
“Our study provides insight into how some mothers used alcohol to cope with the pandemic.”
Freisthler conducted the study with Jennifer Price Wolf, associate professor of social work at San Jose State University. Their study was recently published in the journal Alcohol and alcoholism.
Researchers recruited 266 mothers in central Ohio for a parenting study in April-May 2020, when Ohio was under pandemic stay-at-home orders. The participants, who all had children between the ages of 2 and 12, were recruited via social media and word of mouth, so this was not a random sample.
Most of the sample consisted of white, educated, married women.
The mothers took part in three waves of the study: the first in the spring of 2020 and once more around the same time in 2021 and 2022.
Overall, 77.8% of mothers reported having consumed alcohol during the three waves of the study.
This study does not have pre-COVID-19 data, but previous work has shown that alcohol consumption increased among women following the onset of the pandemic.
Additionally, other research finds that alcohol consumption among women has increased over the past two decades, particularly among white women and highly educated people, Freisthler said.
The results of this new study showed that among women who drank alcohol, participants drank an average of 9.2 days out of the previous 28 days when the stay-at-home orders began in 2022.
The consumption frequency dropped to 6.95 days in 2021 and remained regarding the same in 2022.
The total consumption volume also decreased from 2020 to the last two years of the study.
However, the average number of drinks per day increased from 1.47 in 2020 to 1.65 in 2021 and remained stable at 1.61 in 2022.
“We didn’t expect to see the number of drinks per day increase during the pandemic, even though they were drinking less frequently,” Freisthler said.
The study cannot say why the changes in alcohol consumption occurred during the pandemic.
But Freisthler said the findings are troubling, especially given trends of increasing alcohol consumption among women even before the pandemic began.
“We already had increased alcohol consumption, and then we have this pandemic which added forced confinement and social isolation to the already difficult work of parenthood,” she said.
“It is not surprising that some mothers have used alcohol to help them cope, but we know that excessive alcohol consumption in particular can have adverse effects on parenthood.”
The study was funded by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
Source of the story:
Material provided by Ohio State University. Original written by Jeff Grabmeier. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
