December 18, 2009 Friday
Edition 1;
Scotland
Middle-class women hit bottle hardest;
Research reveals the 'hidden harm' to those drinking at home
BYLINE: Melanie Reid
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 1079 words
Highly-educated, professional women drink more often and more heavily than almost any other female group, a new study has found. The harm this causes, both to families and to health, has until now been largely hidden as much of this prolific consumption takes place in the home.
The research, released today by the University of Lancaster, suggests that moral panic over "ladette" culture with its images of binge-drinking young women causing chaos in town centres is misplaced and is leading to them being unfairly demonised.
Instead, the study found that the higher the household income, the higher the alcohol consumption amongst women - and it suggests that there is a reluctance to address an apparent increase in the "hidden harm" from frequent drinking into middle age by educated women.
The researchers claim that society's desire to dwell on young people's public excesses also acts as a diversion, consolidating middle-class, middleaged drinking as "comparatively civilised and unproblematic". The findings, published in Probation Journal, underline an investigation, published in The Times last week, on the drinking habits of middle-class women in which stressed, working mothers revealed how they routinely drank half a bottle or more every evening.
"Like a huge number of women I am mildly drunk every single evening," said one woman. "In a tableau played out across the UK, we're climbing the stairs for bed, pretty woozy on our feet, grinning gently to ourselves."
The paper, by Fiona Measham, senior lecturer in criminology at the University of Lancaster and Dr Jeanette Ostergaard at the University of Copenhagen, argues for a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between alcohol, women's changing lives and northern European drinking cultures.
The academics analysed data from both the UK and Denmark, both countries with high levels of alcohol consumption for young people and adults. Danish girls aged 16-20 are the heaviest drinking in Europe, with an average of 6.8 cubic litres of pure alcohol consumed on the last drinking day, whilst consumption by British girls was also relatively high, at 5.7 cubic litres.
The girls drank less frequently and less heavily than boys.
But evidence shows stability and decline in girls' alcohol consumption. Self-reported lifetime and past month drunkenness, frequent drinking and heavy episodic drinking amongst the young remained stable or declined moderately in both countries in the past decade.
Furthermore, fewer girls were getting intoxicated for that first time at 13 or younger.
Historically, said the study, young women are the focus for social anxieties surrounding changing patterns of alcohol consumption. But the figures show immoderate drinking peaked at 42 per cent (of 16-24 year old women in the UK) in 1998 and has since fallen to 35 per cent in 2006; while binge drinking peaked at 26 per cent in 2000-2 and fell to 21 per cent in 2006.
The proportion of young British women drinking more than 14 units of alcohol a week has fallen from 33 per cent to 20 per cent in 2006. And while young women remain the heaviestdrinking age group, they are only slightly higher in consumption than older women. Those aged 16-24 consumed an average weekly 11.3 units, with 25 per cent drinking more than 14 units, compared to 24-44 year olds who drank an average of 10.2 units a week, with 24 per cent drinking more than 14 units. Women aged 45-64 drank an average of 9.9 units a week, with 22 per cent drinking more than 14 units.
However, national statistics show that it is women in managerial and professional occupations who report drinking both more frequently and more heavily. Such women are more likely to drink at home than those in routine and manual occupations.
"Given that professional women's alcohol consumption is more likely to be within the home - with less acute health and crime related consequences - their drinking has received less attention and has only recently been recognised as a 'hidden harm'," said the researchers.
British women drink more wine than men, and consumption increases with age.
A recent Danish health survey suggests immoderate drinking is more prevalent among 45-65 year old women (15 per cent) compared to 16-24-year-old girls (10 per cent). Furthermore, the older women's trend was increasing, while the younger trend decreasing.
The researchers say a key factor fuelling the trend has been the falling cost of alcohol - which in 2007 was 69 per cent more affordable in the UK than it was in 1980.
They also query whether the UK's policy of encouraging 'sensible', supposedly civilised European café bar and home-based drinking, whilst demonising working class adult 'problem drinking', has been the right one.
"It may be that it is this idealised Mediterranean model of more frequent wine drinking within the home which presents less acute but possibly more chronic alcohol related problems when overlaid on traditional British and Danish drinking cultures," say the researchers.
They also highlight the point that the problematising of young people's public excesses also functions to consolidate middle-class, middle-aged drinking as comparatively civilised and unproblematic.
Dr Measham said: "Current alcohol trends challenge some of these enduring stereotypes of problem drinking and lead us to question why we are so eager to demonise young people yet so reluctant to recognise that drinking trends can go down as well as up."
Turning to drink
Men are still the heavier drinkers but women - especially teenagers - are catching up fast
Women are advised by government health officials to drink no more than three units on any day and not to exceed 14 units per week
Following a recent reclassification a small 125ml glass of wine counts as 1.5 units, a medium 175ml glass as two units and a large 250ml glass as three
Under the new measurement system women now drink an average of 9.4 units a week 6 13 per cent of women consume alcohol on at least five days a week
In 1992 girls aged 14 in England drank an average of 3.8 units a week; by 2004 that had risen to 9.7 units
The highest proportion of people who drink "hazardous" amounts - 15-35 units a week for women - are found in prosperous areas such as Surrey and Harrogate
British women aged under 25 drink more than their peers in other European countries
Sources: Office for National Statistics; Liverpool John Moores University; ICM; Datamonitor
Online The latest news and analysis from Scotland
No comments:
Post a Comment