Mom Wine Club: Drinking and Parenting Effects of Maternal Identity and Ingroup Alcohol Use

About This Grant

Project Summary/Abstract Most US women of childbearing age (86%) are mothers who will develop a maternal identity reflecting their own beliefs and behaviors related to motherhood. Theory and research suggest that many women look to their social groups for cues about how to be a mother. Identifying with a social group has powerful effects on human behavior, including an influence over choices about alcohol use and risky drinking, though this work has largely targeted a social cuing effect related to exposure to alcohol cues, leaving ambiguity about their relevance for the downstream consequences of explicitly linking social group identification and alcohol use. The current study is an opportunity to understand whether a contemporary cultural phenomenon, the “wine mom,” which conveys drinking as a socially acceptable and potentially necessary aspect of motherhood, leverages the same neural mechanisms of alcohol salience as have been identified in other established social groups, not only to increase the salience of alcohol cues (Aim 1), but to determine whether such salience effects may interact with maternal identity to predict real life consequences. Specifically, this work will test whether associating alcohol with maternal identity, predicts concurrent (Aim 2) and longitudinal (Aim 3) maternal drinking behaviors. Moreover, because mothers comprise the majority of primary caregivers, increasing links between alcohol and the maternal identity ma also affect the mother-infant relationship via maternal parenting dynamics. As such, this project also includes a test of whether associating alcohol with maternal identity is linked to concurrent (Aim 2) and longitudinal (Aim 3) observations of negative and positive parenting behaviors when mothers interact with their toddlers. This project will test effects for mothers of young children given the critical importance of maternal behaviors for offspring development during this period. This project leverages both cross-sectional and longitudinal data, both experimental and correlational components, and a multi-trait, multi- method design. Maternal identity and drinking behaviors will be assessed via self-report, alcohol salience will be tested at the level of neural activity using event-related potentials (ERPs), and parenting behaviors will be assessed in the laboratory through observations of mother-toddler interactions. Results provide pilot data regarding the potential for the “wine mom” movement to impact maternal function with downstream consequences for maternal drinking and child development. This work can also offer a proof of concept for a larger and much-needed longitudinal study of the unfolding “mom wine” movement for maternal and child development. Consistent with the aims of the NIH to enhance maternal health and understand social influences on drinking behaviors, the long-term goal of this area of work is to provide information about the social dynamics of “mom wine” culture and offer insight into the need for potential intervention in the future.