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"Middle-class parents? self-medication has long been recreationalized, even romanticized in America..."

"... think of sitcom dads pouring a drink and sinking into the BarcaLounger after a long day with Bob in accounting, or neurasthenic moms popping pink capsules while the casserole browns.... These powerful drugs were sold as a way to sedate women who didn?t fit the 1950s submissive ideal later satirized to chilling effect in 'The Stepford Wives.' In 1966, the Rolling Stones released their infamous track 'Mother?s Little Helper,' placing the blame on tranquilized mothers for needing a pill just to get through the day.... A particularly offensive ad from the ?60s called 'The Battered Parent Syndrome' implies that Miltown is the cure for any unhappiness a college-educated woman may feel about 'the guilt burden of this child-centered age' or having to 'compete with her husband?s job for his time and involvement.'.

From "Mother?s Little Helper Is Back, and Daddy?s Partaking Too/After the kids go to bed, the grown-ups are drinking and smoking pot to distract themselves from the hellscape that is pandemic parenting" by Jessica Grose (NYT). Here's that "battered parent" ad:

The article works to connect the story of housewives' tranquilizers to the present-day use of alcohol and marijuana during the pandemic. Grose gives us lots of cultural details and mostly keeps it light. We hear about ads and celebrities and memes on TikTok, but we're talking about the grim problem of drug and alcohol dependency.

Despite working more hours, mothers in the 2010s spent more time on child care than they did in 1965. That?s around when 'wine moms' entered the lexicon.... On Instagram, around 70,000 posts are tagged #winemom, but when you look through them, you realize that a small portion are posts about trying to stay sober in a wine mom world ? a difficult task made even harder by a pandemic.... [F]or some parents, getting just a little stoned is the only way they can eke out a small measure of joy in an otherwise fairly hopeless time. Deborah Stein, 43, said her nightly pot gummy is the one thing allowing her to get a good night?s sleep on a regular basis... After dinner, the couple splits a 'chill' gummy containing 1.8 milligrams of THC."

The article has an amusing correction: "An earlier version of this article misstated the dosage of THC shared by Deborah Stein and her husband. It is 1.8 mg per gummy, not 50 mg, which is the dosage contained in the entire package." I'm looking at an edibles dosage chart, and I don't really know what Deborah Stein and her husband are up to. Half of a 1.8 mg candy doesn't even count as a microdose. An unsplit 1.8 gummy is the recommendation for "first time consumers." 50, split in half, puts you in the range for "well-seasoned consumers" looking for "strong euphoria." The 0.9 mg that Stein says is needed to get a good night's sleep seems like nothing but a placebo.

I'm just  not seeing how this article hangs together. It lingers in the past rather interestingly, then it flits through what gets my tag "MSM reports what's in social media," and ends up with a relatable/dull story about a particular middle-aged woman who, I suspect, represents the NYT idea of a NYT reader, and never really lets us get despondent about the seriousness of the declining mental health we're experiencing in the lockdown. Is there even anything in the article about the predicament of children stuck in the care ? 24 hours a day ? of adults who've dulled or damaged their consciousness with drugs and alcohol?

Full post as published by Althouse on October 06, 2020 (boomark / email).