Mothers Who Drink

A stand-up comedienne/blogger/mother who helped popularize the idea of the "cocktail mom" is causing waves across the Web with her declaration that she had quit drinking. Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, whose books include "Sippy Cups Are not for Chardonnay" and "Naptime Is the New Happy Hour," realized in May that drinking wasn't good for her any more.

On her blog, she said drank when one of her daughters was an infant to deal with stress. She calls herself "the cocktail playdate mom" who doesn't have anything against drinking in moderation but said for her, it became a "nightly compulsion."

"I'm more scared that my consumption of alcohol will consume my life and I can't afford that," she wrote in mid-May on her blog, Babyonbored. "I need to be present for my husband in the evening; I need to be fully reliable for all three of my children at all times and, for me, if I'm 100% honest with myself, I can't do that if I drink."

The New York Times picked up on it in an article called, "A Heroine of Cocktail Moms Sobers Up." The article, which has special resonance for New Yorkers after a 30-something mother of two killed herself, four children and three others in a head-on collision after police said she downed vodka and smoked marijuana behind the wheel of a car on an upstate New York highway.

Wilder-Taylor's resolution isn't a reaction to that horrific accident, which happened in late July. Wilder-Taylor began writing about her decision in mid-May. But The New York Times said the "outrage and bafflement over mothers who drink to excess" has boiled over with the Diane Schuler case. And Wilder-Taylor's blog has started a separate conversation over whether mothers can be everything they need to be if they are also drinking.

Wilder-Taylor takes the issue head on in several instances in her blog, including here and here. The entire blog can be read here.