Anne Hathaway has given up drinking. Not for ever, just for 18 years, while her son – now two – is under her roof. She doesn’t want him to see her drunk, because “I don’t like the way I do it” and she doesn’t want to do nursery drop-offs hungover, which will make it difficult for her to make friends, but she is American and they do things differently there.
An elaborate architecture of absolutism has built up around parenting, with alcohol as its core scaffolding. You might think: “Wait a second, it’s not the end of the world for a child to see its parent being raucous or even just sitting on the sofa rather than tidying.” But the arguments marshalled against you would be severe: figures on the negative psycho-social impact of an alcoholic parent; analysis of addiction and how it interrupts attachment; figures on what counts as a binge; how people who think they are social drinkers are actually functioning alcoholics.
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