What Encourages Women to Drink?

Abstract

In the previous chapter I explored some of the general questions surrounding women’s drinking. Where do ideas about mother’s ruin come from? Why should motherhood and drinking be linked together? Does society view women’s drinking in a different way from the way it sees men’s drinking? Finally, I looked at how changing consumption patterns in society at large, coupled with changing perspectives on alcohol-related harms, had made both drinking for pleasure and its potential risks or harms part of everyday life for the majority of us.