I thought I was going to have a nice, quiet weekend. I thought it was going to be a relaxing time unwinding, laughing at Trump's allies falling one by one as America reaches its mid-season finale. Then, I saw this in The Guardian, and my hackles immediately went up.
First a little background. Earlier this week, Anne Hathaway revealed that she would be quitting alcohol for a full 18 years whilst she raises her now-two-year-old son.
She explained during an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show: "I quit drinking back in October, for 18 years. I'm going to stop drinking while my son is in my house just because I don't totally love the way I do it and he's getting to an age where he really does need me all the time in the morning. I did one school run one day where I dropped him off at school, I wasn't driving, but I was hungover and that was enough for me. I didn't love that one."
Admirable, right? Not for some. There are those who would prefer to tear Hathaway down for making that choice, pointing and laughing at how silly she is for trying to be the best parent she can be. Let it be known that nobody's saying that you cannot be a good parent if you still indulge in drinking alcohol whilst raising your children; just that every person is different and surely, the best person to make an informed decision about whether or not they should drink during their earliest years with their child, is the parent of that child themselves.
Attaching Hathaway's decision to stay away from alcohol whilst raising her son with the notion that she'll instantly be cast aside by her fellow moms on the playground is a dangerous thing to do. It props up the idea that a person can only be a good time by drinking alcohol; that they'll only fit in once they're a few glasses of wine down.
Founder of COAisathing.com (a platform made for people affected by a parents drinking to come together and share their stories), Josh Connolly comments: "As someone who watched their father drink themselves to death in the very literal sense, I find the flippancy of the article disturbing. One in five children suffer as the result of a parents drinking and I don’t think this article helps their plight! I think it’s great Anne Hathaway has made such a courageous decision."
When called out on her piece by a reader, the writer of the piece simply responded with a "lol". Alcoholism is no laughing matter, and no journalist who treats it as such should be commissioned to write such a piece.
What's interesting is that alongside this, The Guardian have published another article from journalist Rossalyn Warren on growing up as the child of an alcoholic. It's an incredibly emotional read, and one that Warren herself says it has taken her "entire adult life" to write about.
So where exactly does The Guardian as a publication stand on the issue of alcoholism? You'd be forgiven for having no clue.
What I do know however is that it is utterly irresponsible to allow somebody with apparently no knowledge of functioning alcoholics and the issue of alcoholism, and somebody who thinks those who are concerned about alcoholism are simply there to be laughed at, write such a damaging piece.
Tagged in Anne Hathaway