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Susan D. Stewart. "On the Rocks: Straight Talk about Women and Drinking" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022)
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Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Hello, welcome to the New Books Network.
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Hello, and welcome to another New Books and Sociology session, a channel on the New Books Network. This episode I have Dr. Susan Stewart, who is a professor of sociology at Iowa State University and also serves as co editor in chief for Population Research and Policy Review and is the co president for Iowa Sociological Association. Yeah. Welcome to the show, Susan.
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C
Thank you very much, Michael. I appreciate you inviting me on the show.
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A
Excellent. And today we're here to talk about on the Rock Straight Talk About Women and Drinking, published by Roman and Littlefield in 2023. And I look forward to talking about this book because there's a lot of stuff that I learned. Women tend to not be thought of as drinkers. They tend to be thought of as nurturers and emotional regulators like Arlie Hochschild and others, plenty of other people who have studied. So I'm glad that you're bringing this to the forefront because not only does it recognize women as being people who also have fun, but it also brings out other things, like some of the difficulties that are associated with drinking and addiction. And to recognize women as potential drinkers also recognizes them as potential people who can get addicted to alcohol. So thank you for this work.
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C
Oh, you're welcome. Yeah.
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So I guess first off.
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C
Yeah.
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So first off, how did you come about writing this book? What interested you in women and alcohol?
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C
Well, often with my research, it combines kind of this, what I'm seeing day to day in my own life and the people around me and my research interests, which happen to be on gender and family and women's health. I'm a demographer. I read a lot of statistics. I teach a class on population, and we study mortality and health. And I happen to be reading about alcohol consumption. And in the last decades, alcohol consumption had been going up and up, but specifically amongst women at midlife. And so what was happening is that women's and men's alcohol use has been converging, and not because men's alcohol use has been declining or leveling off, but because women's alcohol use has been increasing to match men's. And so that's very troubling. Meanwhile, I was seeing, like, on the ground all around me, just movies where, you know, women were like, bad moms and rough night and TV shows like Grey's Anatomy and things like that, where women, more and more women were shown drinking. Not dangerous levels of drinking, but for fun, for partying. I, you know, teach on a college campus. There's a lot of drinking there. And then when you, you know, go to. Just go to shops and. And, you know, you see all the products geared toward women, like dish towels and magnets and greeting cards and the whole thing. And they're all about women and drinking girls night out and. And the message was all about using alcohol to cope, basically, women as nurturers. And that's spot on. Right. But that takes a toll on women. And so what I was noticing is that it's too much and that women seem to be using alcohol. And it was kind of a ha ha sort of thing, supposed to be funny, but it really spoke to a troubling trend that I think we were all seeing around us.
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A
Excellent. And so you start off with a. With a study of about 34 women, and you found that there was an increase in alcohol usage. And you also talk about in the media and how women, how women are seen more with alcohol. What do you think it is about life that changed and resulted in women drinking more alcohol?
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C
Well, there's some theories about that. I think as women Move into male spaces, like in the workplace, they pick up the behaviors of men. Like smoking would be a good example in the 60s and 70s, for better or worse. Alcohol is part of that, I think, you know, kind of the new, you know, tech driven workplaces. It's not uncommon to see like a beer fridge at the workplace. You know, you open that up on a Friday afternoon, it's supposed to be, you know, you're the hip, cool workplace and alcohol can be like part of that. And, you know, that would be maybe appealing to younger workers. I think a lot of professional environments, whether it's, whether you're a journalist or in law or in, you know, academia, business, you know, alcohol is everywhere as part of working with clients. So in the, you know, professional realm, certainly alcohol is, you know, is, is part of that. And then there's the whole kind of wine mom culture that I talk about in the book where it's seeped in to parenting as well. And so like going to baseball games and, and play dates and things. And it's, it's a way for women to bond, I think these days too.
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Yeah. And perform gender and, and to network with other mothers. And to not do it may result, may result women being excluded from those social circles that might leave them at a disadvantage in their life if not to have those social networks.
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C
Because one of the few behaviors that you have to defend not doing right. And so you're rarely asked, you know, why do you drink? You're asked, why aren't you drinking?
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Yeah.
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C
Like you're a weirdo.
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Yeah. And as, I mean, one of the things I tell my students, if nothing else, I know that we're social beings, and as social beings, we are better together. You know, while Putnam was a political scientist, he saw that first and foremost with bowling alone. It just doesn't make sense to go out bowling by yourself.
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C
Correct. And that's one of the things that came through with my interviews is that we were talking about social drinking. What does it mean to be a social drinker? And that was an acceptable way for women to drink. And one of the features of social drinking is that you don't drink alone. That's bad. Drinking by yourself is not considered acceptable.
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A
But the interesting thing is that women's drinking often lacks this vocabulary, this vernacular available to identify what is necessarily acceptable drinking or problem drinking as a result of women drink. Women's drinking oftentimes not being talked about.
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C
Right, right. We have very limited vocabulary in drinking, drinking in general, but especially for women's drinking. So we think about drinking as either, you know, lighthearted and fun, like you have a glass of champagne or a glass of wine, or you're an al raging alcoholic and you're, you know, you're going down a downward, downward spiral and you know, you'll end up homeless and on the street. And drinking is none of those things. And especially for women, it can be very complicated. It's contextual. It's dependent on relationships. Women's drinking is highly dependent on their partner's level of drinking, the social setting. And I think we know very little about those kinds of variables. Now in my book, I did talk to women and they, you know, they spoke in their own words, but in terms of the amount of research on women relative to men, it's very little. So this is just scratching the surface.
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And I like that about your book where you. The interviews are very important. It provides depth. It's, you know, deep, thick description that is often missing from surveys. Surveys can tell us numbers and percentage of women who are drinking and how many drinks they've had in the last month. But what was that experience truly like? And I appreciate those interviews and I hope listeners will take the time to really read through all those passages that are available from the interviews that you had with the women in your study.
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C
Thanks. It was really fascinating. It was really fun. And one thing that I wanted to make sure when I was recruiting my participants is that I didn't want women with substance use disorders. Like, I didn't want women who'd been in treatment or, you know, the cause. A lot of the research was conducted on those women, you know, clinical levels of problems. Right. I wanted just everyday women. What is your relationship like with alcohol? Where do you see it around you? You know, what, what is its place in your life? How has it affected your family? How do you talk about it in relation to your kids? What stories do you tell them? What messages do you. Do you tell them, you know, what about your partners, you know, those sorts of things. And it was really, it was really revealing. Yeah. And so I just had them kind of express in their own words and, you know, took me down some places where I didn't necessarily think, you know, it would. So it was interesting to me. You can't think of everything when you're doing a survey.
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Well, and in sociology, I say it's a complex discipline, not a complicated discipline, meaning that it's complex, meaning that the sum is greater than its parts. And to understand the internetworks of sociology across the institutions can't be figured out. But it's complex. It's knowing how to do sociology. And that being said, the subject of women and drinking is also a complex subject in sociology. And you bring that out when you talk about the relationship of women and alcohol across the life stage. Because a woman drinking at the age of 16, 17, 18, or 21 likely may be different than, or at least we assume that it's going to be slightly different than a woman who is drinking after she becomes a mother or goes into midlife or even later stage in life. Did that stand true in the research that you conducted?
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C
It sure did. So, first of all, I did not interview anyone who was under the age of 25 because I didn't want that temporary upswing in drinking, binge drinking, to sort of get in the way. And I was interested in this older, you know, women beyond their college or young adult years. But I did find that women were not wholly honest with their own kids who were young or, you know, adolescents or young adults about their own drinking when they were growing up. They had ways of kind of managing it, like don't ask, don't tell, and, you know, other kinds of things. And then also what was interesting is that they had, as mothers, they drank, but they made sure to communicate that they had all these guardrails up. Like, they never drank around their kids, or they never drank during the day, or they never, you know, they never did this or they never did that, or they told their kids. You know, I just have this many. And so there were all these ways that they communicated that they weren't. That they other. That they were othering. Like, I'm not. That. I'm not a bag lady with a, you know, with a bottle of whiskey. I'm, you know, I'm this kind of lady who drinks wine at dinner or something like that. And it. So, and. And honestly, they did do those things. They did. They did have those protections kind of built in as well, because they were mothers. You know, for those who were mothers, they always sort of led with that. Like, and there were a couple of women who had gotten DUIs and who had gotten trouble, in trouble with alcohol. And there were always, like, long explanations of how that happens. Like one was going through a divorce and one was, you know, having this other stressful time and that it was temporary and that, you know, it was a lot of describing how it all unfolded and how they got out of it and how they mitigated the damage and things like that. I just found that fascinating as well. When did making plans get this complicated? It's Time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn more at WhatsApp.com Imagine fast hydration combined with balanced energy. Perfectly flavored with zero artificial sweeteners. Introducing Liquid Ivy's new energy multiplier, Sugar free. Unlike other energy drinks, you know the ones that make you feel like you're glitching, it's made with natural caffeine and electrolytes so you get the boost without the burnout. Liquid IV's new energy multiplier, Sugar free hydrating energy. Tap the banner to learn more.
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A
Yeah, I see some social forces going on here. Something that's greater than themselves and greater than the institutions they're a part of. That's sort of because labels, labels aren't self induced. They come from the social other. Right. So they're imposed on that person. So to see the potential of being deemed an alcoholic or something like that, and to try to prevent such a label from being imposed on them, there's some, well, performance management. I'm thinking of Goffman. Right. And just how they're trying to manage their impressions that they are giving that they are giving by saying I'm not that person, but yes, I do drink. But not necessarily having the as you said earlier, the vocabulary to explain how they drink and how it is socially acceptable for themselves as women to drink. Maybe going to the extent of not until after this time or not when the kids are present or although we see plenty of shows where dad's drinking a beer with the kids and it's normal for them to have a beer after they get off work. But moms should be explain themselves in a manner.
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C
Yeah. But I did find out when I gave the women the little survey that goes along with the interviews, one of them was the an instrument that assessed their level of having an alcohol use disorder, which is from the National Institutes of Health. Mild, medium and severe. There's no measure of like alcoholism and I don't like that word, it's not a scientific word. But about a third of them qualified as having a mild alcohol use disorder based on this inventory, based on these 10 questions that they filled out, which I thought was fascinating because none of them considered themselves anything more than a social drinker.
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So then they'd be telling us something Of. But that. But then I'm. That may not necessarily be a personal trouble. Right? It is, but there might be some sort of a social problem, and it may extend to the same group of people who are creating these surveys. Maybe a public health conversation to be had. Like, how do we educate the women at a younger age to teach what a social drinker is and what an acceptable rate of drinking is? There is available for men, usually through their social circles at a very young age when they're drinking. Drinking a beer with their buddies.
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Yeah, yeah. And, you know, they might not consider it a problem. That level of drinking. Every family has its own culture. Right. And so some families drinking is more part of their, you know, what they do every day, and other families, that's not. And so what's okay for one and might not be okay for the other. And, you know, these, you know, in these measures, you know, they're. They're useful, but there's no one acceptable level of alcohol use that's kind of out there. I mean, they try. There's measures of binge drinking, for example, for men and then for women, but, you know, it's all over the place in terms of, like, the recommended level of alcohol. You see variation there.
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Oh, and the comparison, they're not funny, but they're kind of curious and they kind of are amusing a bit. The comparison of how much beer is as to wine, as to harder liquors, and how much is an acceptable consumption rate and what it can do to the blood alcohol content, just, you know, two beers or whatever. But it's. Yeah. So what. So what implications do you think can come from this research? What do you hope. What do you hope to come out of this book and the research that was associated with it?
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Yeah, I want to come out that I like to study things that aren't studied. And so I'm like, hey, why is no one looking into this? Because drinking is dangerous. And women do have more negative health effects from drinking than men. And it's not just related to the body size. It has to do with their hormones and, you know, lots of other things.
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Metabolism.
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Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, we have to consider that. And like, I mean, drinking is unhealthy. It used to be, oh, a glass of wine with dinner, it's good for your heart. Subsequent studies have shown no level of drinking is. Is healthy for you. Is. Is good for you. Right. And with, you know, women's increasing alcohol use. Yeah, that's definitely a concern. Although I would never tell anyone, oh, don't drink at all. Like, that's not my job, but I did want people to know. Oh, okay, here's a trend. Why? What do they think about it? Why are they doing it? If women are drinking to reduce stress related to their husbands, their work, their kids, well, that's. That's a concern. Is this an unhealthy way of coping versus other kinds of, like, self care? That might be, you know, like, that might be better. Because women did describe it in that way. Like, well, I don't have time to go to the gym. I can't do this, I can't do that. But I can have a glass of wine while I'm making dinner, while I'm doing laundry, while I'm doing these other things. I can do at least that one thing for myself. But again, is that what we want for our moms?
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Yeah. Thank you. I think that should be a goal of any author out there, is to make the information transparent and to educate. And whether or not people listen to this podcast and read the book and use it and accept the information from it is really a decision that they get to make. But at least it starts as a conversation.
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C
Yeah. It's not our job. It's just to say, look, you know, here's this thing that I, you know, when I. When I used to watch the Today show with Hoda and Kathie Lee, and they're sitting there drinking wine at 10 o' clock in the morning, and I was like, hmm, something's going on here that we think that's okay and funny, and it is. But then you have to dig a little bit deeper and go, okay, why are we thinking this is funny? Acceptable. Good.
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Yeah.
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So there's, you know, so I like to just look around me every day and be thinking about, you know, what's deeper.
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And I will say that you also continue this research and conducted over six, about 500 interviews during COVID And then you were also just telling me before the show that you've extended this research to the LGBTQ2 + population as well. While I don't necessarily think we have the time today to necessarily dig through all of that research, is there a place that you could give me to share in the blurb where people could go to explore that research?
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C
Yeah. So as I was writing this book, finishing it, Covid hit. Right. And if. I don't think, I don't think any of us weren't aware that alcohol use went up during COVID all around the world. And for men and women, I mean, you could get alcohol like delivered to your house, and people were at home and they were doing zoom happy hours and whatnot. And so I put together a really quick survey and ended up with almost 600 participants. Women talking about their alcohol use. And so if you put in Google or Google Scholar, Susan Stewart. And alcohol use or day drinking? Because one of my papers resulting from the COVID survey has to do with the prevalence of day drinking during COVID And then the LGBTQ work is about higher prevalence of drinking amongst that community relative to people who identify as woman or man. And so. And into those more dangerous levels. And so you could just look me up and you'd find those papers as well.
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A
Excellent. Well, thank you again for your time today. This is all the time that we have for questions regarding this book. But there is one question that I still would like to ask of you, and that is, what are you working on these days? What's your newest project?
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C
Oh, this is funny. Okay. So one of the things in the book women kept talking about is cannabis. So I didn't intend to set out to ask them about cannabis, but some of the women started talking about how they were sort of switching over or they were using both. So then, as a sociologist would, I started saying, I better start asking these women about their use of cannabis. And this is. These are midlife women, mind you. And it turned out the substantial numbers in my group were doing edibles, and so I was going to start doing research on that, especially now that many states have legalized recreational cannabis, and for the first time, alcohol use has declined for both men and women. And in a news article, I read a doctor speculating that it could be because of the. Because maybe the use of weed is offsetting alcohol, but there's been no studies on that yet.
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A
Interesting.
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C
That's my plan.
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A
There's THC beer out there now, too. I learned that one day that I was walking with my wife through the beer lane, and she was like, oh, this beer isn't as expensive as the other. I said, amanda, did you realize that as thc. Oh, I didn't know that I had.
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C
I didn't know that. You better be. I know you better look at the labels these days.
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So interesting. And I hope that this, too, turns into a book or even some articles that I get to read and have conversations with you about that. So thank you for your time today, Susan, and I look forward to continued conversation with Iowa Sociological association and other ways that we're able to connect. So thank you.
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C
Thank you so much. I really appreciate being on the show Excellent.
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Well, this has been another episode of New Books in Sociology, a channel on the New Books Network. Have a great day. Limu Emu and Doug.
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