Dads that "give up the booze for a month" when their wife is pregnant are absolutely obliterating their own pretensions to being a good father.

I'm a dad to a 2 year old, and I'm a 5th generation brewer. My brewery is overwhelmingly a family operation.<br><br>When my wife got pregnant, I drank a little less. But I was still primary fermenter filler, and I religiously tasted every beer we made. I never once thought that the beer was worth more than my child, but I was (and still am) determined that my child should grow up in the brewery God and/or Science dammit gave me the ability to create for her. I absolutely was not going to let some Puritanical, out of touch law ruin what was for me a generational dream come true. I absolutely was going to allow her to grow up in the place I spent most of my childhood.<br><br>There is new evidence coming out that dads who drink can cause problems for their wives livers during pregnancy and their children's brains after birth. This shit has been in my genetics for generations, so it's worth noting that I start to drink regularly when I was 4 (1/4 pint of bitter with an orange juice chaser, lol). But who cares, the science is settled, right? If I knew before, I'd have absolutely cut out the booze. <br><br>But there's a particular subset of father who retains absolutely full access to the evidence that paternal drinking effects the liver and the baby. These are the ultra-macho, paranoid dads who have entered the last trimester with their partner and realise drinking could harm the baby. The evidence that paternal alcohol consumption effects the liver is much weaker, but they're terrified the baby will be born with a liver condition, so they stop drinking entirely until the baby is born. If they're really paranoid, they even avoid food with booze in it, like steak Diane or a good Carbonnade Flamande. <br><br>And they never ever miss an opportunity to talk about it. Never.<br><br>These guys are often proponents of the ludicrous 'partners in labour' movement, where they want to be involved in the birth, in the naming, in absolutely everything. They want to be treated as if they were in control, as if they were the equal of their wives for the entire duration of the pregnancy. <br><br>But they're absolutely not. <br><br>No woman ever chose to give birth to a child. <br><br>Childbirth is an absolute horror created by God and/or Science that women are forced to endure. Just because you're a good partner doesn't mean you get the right to pretend the dynamic isn't built on exploitation. Women don't *choose* to get pregnant, they *choose* to stay pregnant. And then they're forced to push the biggest, most awful thing imaginable out of their vagina. It's a torture that has no equal in human experience. <br><br>And you can?t say that you "gave up beer for a month" as if it was a tit for tat affair. You didn't give up your organs. You didn't give up nearly enough blood to die. You didn't have your vagina destroyed, your bladder turned into a useless sac of fluid, your hips shattered, your teeth falling out of your gums, and your hair falling out in clumps. <br><br>So, yeah, you gave up the beer. But why on earth would you talk about it?