About one in 10 pregnant women have admitted to drinking alcohol occasionally, according to new federal research, and honestly they have enough on their minds and don’t need the judgment they’re getting from you right now.
Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed a survey of over 200,000 women taken between 2011 and 2013, including 8,333 who were pregnant at the time, and found that older mothers were the most likely to drink during their pregnancy; college graduates were twice as likely to drink as non-graduates, and unmarried women 4.6 times as likely to drink as married women.
NBC News reports:
Nearly 19 percent of the pregnant women aged 35 to 44 admitted to having at least one drink while pregnant. Thirteen percent of college graduates and 13 percent of unmarried women also said they’d had a drink.
The study also found that while only 18 percent of all women 18 to 44 in the U.S. report binge drinking (defined as at least four drinks in an evening/morning), the 3.1 percent of pregnant women who copped to binge drinking copped to doing so more frequently than non-pregnant women: 4.6 times in the past month, compared with three times, possibly because women who would binge drink during pregnancy are more likely to be alcohol-dependent than a woman who isn’t, according to researchers.