Happy Halloween!
Submitted by Boys and Schools Blog
Happy Halloween everyone!
Faithful readers may recall that I temporarily lost all reason and decided to make a costume for my 4-year-old son, who wanted to be a Jedi for Halloween. My house is now littered with loose threads and tiny scraps of fabric, but my battle against the forces of cotton-linen blends has been won. Unfortunately, now his brother wants a Jedi costume too. I really should have seen that one coming. Actually, my biggest mistake was letting them pick out lightsabers before I was done my other shopping. Every time we paused to look at cereal, get milk, etc., the two of them jumped up to enact an epic lightsaber battle in the middle of the store aisle. Youngest son is going to be Ironman tonight, so we’re totally covered on the superhero front around here. (Their sister is going to be a lamb. That’s what you get when you haven’t yet learned to talk.)
So, since it’s Halloween, how about some weird-ish news? The Guardian reports that a recent study suggests that light drinking during pregnancy may be good for baby boys. No, really:
Boys born to mothers who drank lightly were 40% less likely to have conduct problems and 30% less likely to be hyperactive, even when the differences between social and economic circumstances were taken into account. They also scored more highly in vocabulary tests and were better able to identify shapes, colours, letters and numbers.
There were similar results for girls, but family background played too big a part in the possible explanation for the results. And it was a large study–more than 12,000 children were involved. Needless to say, the researchers involved are reluctant to attribute the findings directly to the consumption of alcohol, pointing out that it may have something to do with social conditions. And others point out that this still leaves big questions about long-term consequences of drinking during pregnancy.
(Obvious disclaimer–this is about light consumption–everyone agrees that heavy consumption is very, very bad. Also, no one who is pregnant should make any drinking decisions whatsoever based on the news in this blog. Though I’ve found that a little light alcohol consumption in the evenings can do wonders for one’s ability to cope with three-year-old boys. . . . Just kidding . . . Please don’t call CPS on me. I never touch the stuff . . . . Except on days that end with “Y.” . . . Wait, that was a joke too . . . Oh no, was that the doorbell?)
So, in summary: there seems to be some kind of connection between mothers who drink lightly in pregnancy and boys with lower incidences of behavior problems and higher test scores. But researchers are reluctant to attribute this directly to the effects of alcohol, because no one wants to encourage pregnant women to drink. (Having been a pregnant woman relatively recently, I can attest that there is a depressingly long list of things that people don’t want you to do.) And since it’s ethically impossible to do anything more than chart these correlations, take it as an interesting factoid and listen to what your obstetrician says. But if you already have a young boy, and you drank lightly during pregnancy, feel free to point out the results of the study to your mother-in-law and anyone else who hassled you about it.
