CNN recently (November 1, 2017) ran an interesting story entitled “Being a heavy-drinking ‘bad mom’ is more worrisome than funny.” The piece by Elissa Strauss, was spot on, and for me it raised several personal and ethical issues. The ethics of “A Bad Moms Christmas”!
In my own, and in several families, I have known, alcoholism covered up in all of its cute ways, jokes and party-time excuses caused a lot of heartbreak and broken lives. The latest variant of the good old family drunk story, concocted and nurtured by our friends in Hollywood, is the portrayal of the “Bad Mom.” The bad, alcoholic, shot drinking mom who has had enough with holiday cheer and holiday stresses.
As Ms. Strauss points out, “Between 2002 and 2013, ‘high-risk drinking’ among women rose 58%”
High-risk drinking is not a couple glasses of wine with pizza on a Saturday night, it can be knocking back several glasses of wine, beer, whiskey or whatever every day. As Strauss points out:
“Like in the first ‘Bad Moms,’ released in 2016, the scenes of mom-driven debauchery in the holiday sequel are played for their shock value. We, the audience, are meant to be equal parts astonished and amused by the sight of three moms turning an ordinarily feminine and organized activity — such as going to the grocery store or shopping mall — into a Bacchanalia.”
Moms Coping with Stress
As a man who has gone through a tremendous amount of introspection in his life, and as a father and grandfather, as much as I can and am able, I must side with women on the issues they face.
Movies such as “Bad Moms” or “Girls Trip,” television programming such as “Cougar Town” or “Sex in The City,” are highly stylized portrayals of the stressors women face. Mila Kunis, star of “Bad Moms” is very wealthy in real life. Hollywood can create aspirational portrayals all it wants, but at the end of the day, moms – and single moms in particular, must cope with a lousy system of medical care, poor benefits or no benefits, unequal pay and a myriad of other issues.
Alcohol is frequently a release from stress and it can be a very “cruel friend” that Hollywood doesn’t like to address in its slick, on-screen products. A working mom, with a demanding job and family pressures, who struggles under tremendous stress is not Mila Kunis. Whether her spouse is sympathetic or not, at the end of the day, too much time spent with that “cruel friend” can lead to catastrophic results from drunk driving to abandonment to child abuse. Alcoholism frequently is embodied in depression. When the drunk high wears off, mom or dad is plunged into further despair.
While rebellion from pressure can occasionally be a good thing, when rebellion can and sometimes does lead to
endangerment, it is hard to find celebration and laughter. The ethics of “A Bad Moms Christmas” goes overboard.
Then there are those companies, often headed by insensitive people looking to make a quick buck, who market and celebrate unnecessary stuff from specialty “mommy” wine glasses and t-shirts to mom’s drinking games and mom’s wine festivals. Drunken moms are also celebrated in certain areas of the internet, such as Twitter and Facebook. But is any of it a celebration?
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About 12% of Americans are alcoholics. That’s bad enough, but it is not just about them. Alcoholics also destroy lives, their families, property and even their organizations. Alcoholism among women has skyrocketed. Do movies and merchandise celebrating the culture contribute to this trend? Ethically, I shudder to think of the consequences of those who market and glorify such “harmless fun.”
While we all like to have a good time, alcohol is also a drug that many women as well as men cannot handle.
“Bad Moms,” is another form of ethical exploitation. There are messages, dangerous messages, that some moms with a tendency toward alcoholism cannot discern from comedy. That said, there are societal problems such as paid or subsidized child care and paid maternity leave that have been swept under the carpet for far too long. To assess blame in one instance and ignore it in the other, is also unethical. Again, the Ethics of “A Bad Moms Christmas” are questioned.
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