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What's driving more women to drink?
Not only is the gap shrinking between men and women who drink, but ISU researchers found variations in the amount and frequency women drink based on age, race, education, marital status and other factors. Susan Stewart, professor of sociology, says the research compared the experiences of women in their 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s to see how life changes and events influence drinking.
Overall, 52 percent of women reported drinking around seven days in the last month and averaged just over two drinks a day. Stewart; Gloria Jones Johnson, University Professor of sociology; and Cassandra Dorius, assistant professor of human development and family studies, analyzed data from The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979. The survey follows thousands of people starting as teens and into adulthood.
While women still drink less than men, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, there is little evidence to explain their increase in consumption. Stress, social acceptance of alcohol and life changes are often cited as potential factors, but Stewart says this is largely anecdotal. By comparing alcohol consumption across social categories, the researchers want to provide a greater understanding of why women drink as well as dispel some myths.
"Some of our findings really break down stereotypes, such as alcohol use is highest among poor women and underrepresented women," Stewart said. "We found that not to be true. White women and women with more education and financial means have much higher rates of alcohol consumption."
[...]
Alcohol is the third-leading preventable cause of death in the U.S., according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Approximately 88,000 people die every year from alcohol-related causes, which is more than opioid overdoses (60,000) and motor vehicle crashes (34,000). ISU researchers point to the physical, mental and emotional health issues associated with alcohol use as important reasons for this work.
"After decades of steady increases, women's life expectancy has leveled off in the last five years partly as a result of increased alcohol consumption," Dorius said. "As the main caretakers of children, aging parents and extended family members, women's alcohol use can have lasting effects on the family."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by legont on Wednesday August 21 2019, @10:54PM (33 children)
Women take men's responsibilities and consequently pay men's prices for them. Anybody expected anything else?
The real question is, once women are equal to men, would they drink more and live less than men? Would they do more or less crime then men? Would they be more or less agressive? My expectation is that women, at least initially, will be worse than men simply because they are new to the game and did not learn to control it just yet.
I really hope I am wrong.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @11:24PM (25 children)
The one thing they will become is unhappy as they deny their female nature.
If as a woman you ARE a man in most ways, why would a man need or want you? Why would you want or need a man?
People stay together because they complement one another.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Magic Oddball on Thursday August 22 2019, @01:04AM (3 children)
Nonsense. Having a job, driving a car, enjoying tech, killing spiders/insects...er...wearing pants? Playing video games? Whatever it is you're thinking of, it doesn't involve "denying" a "female nature." All the women I've known had no problem doing any/all of the above and expressing whatever degree of femininity is natural to them. Most people aren't walking stereotypes of their sex/gender.
Same reasons that anyone else chooses a partner, whether gay or straight: for companionship and/or to meet biological urges. There's no rule that says that partners who complement one another have to match gender stereotypes in the process.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22 2019, @03:00AM
You can get a dog for companionship and/or to meet biological urges.
(Score: 2) by slinches on Thursday August 22 2019, @06:05PM (1 child)
While I agree that enforcing gender stereotypes is problematic, so is the pressure put on both sexes to meet a very limited definition of money/status based success. It's not that women doing more traditionally masculine things is an issue. It's that women are pressured to give up or delay the most fundamental aspect of the human "female nature" ... having children. One of the few things that traditional gender roles got right was that there was a high value placed on nurturing the next generation. That's something we have lost focus on as a society. When we opened up the workforce to women, we could have maintained some balance by simultaneously opening up the home to men. That hasn't happened and right now both women and men are expected to be the provider. That means there is no one is left to be the caregiver for the family, making it more difficult to make the time to have one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @07:18PM
Women are pressured to have children even when they don't want any, and more men and women don't want children than you'd think.
But really, I question the premise here. Having a screeching, shitting, pissing, vomiting, destructive financial disaster that takes up all your time and freedom tends to send your stress levels through the roof. It's not hard to imagine people turning to alcohol under those circumstances. Or, perhaps, they just wallow in stress and mental illness. I don't know, but I really doubt that not having children or delaying children are factors in increased drinking among women.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday August 22 2019, @01:18AM (20 children)
Do, please, define "female nature." I'd supposedly be your case study (since I'm sure you'll say gay women are "trying to be men" or something...ick!), and yet somehow, I have no vices at all except caffeine and that one's more of a necessity to work than anything.
It's always amused, confused, and mystified me how this faux-Platonic, handwaving bullshit ever got off the ground. Some of the worst cases of generalization fallacy I've ever seen, and yet, man after man after man falls for it hook line and sinker without so much as a ripple of critical thought.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22 2019, @01:58AM (5 children)
Hard to make ripples in a torrential river of misogyny. Seriously, blatant sexism has only recently gone out of style. Now we have the "get woke go broke" asshats clinging to their shitty views.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22 2019, @03:51AM (4 children)
I guess the asshats have better things to do than dump money down your throat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22 2019, @11:12PM
Who are these people dumping money on me? Gee I wish I could get some of that sweet sweet liberal conspiracy coin!
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday August 22 2019, @11:30PM (2 children)
Seconding the AC below you. Where do I get some of this money? I am in desperate need of it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @01:23AM (1 child)
Get a job.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday August 23 2019, @12:11PM
Already got one, thanks. Been a pharmacy tech for the better part of a year, which is a nice change from the weird mix of IT and retail I'd been doing before. Would've been nice to find out, oh, 10 years ago that I had a natural talent for this but oh well...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Thursday August 22 2019, @07:12AM (3 children)
Wouldn't you say though that our society epitomizes anti-feminine? Women are rewarded for being more like men, or at least colder, more mechanical?
And things that are 'girly' are trivialized and used for overstimulation?
Then by destroying the ocean, polluting the air, chopping down the forest, sources of feminine mystique and everything fluid and natural is being flattened, turned rigid, impure.
On top of that, the atomization, people are alone and the economics of things is profoundly unromantic, with people barely affording tiny houses much less wedding rings.
Sitting at home alone worrying about money while everything you care about is destroyed and instagram is removing your ability to even count your likes, and yeah, who isn't grabbing a bottle of vodka for 10 bucks on the way out of the store.
But if there are more women out there sitting and drinking alone like I do, then in a way, that means they are out there to find. Sure no one who isn't pro-endless-war is going to have much luck online dating when online dating is operated by the fbi and military, but there was dating before computers.
Serious question though, somewhat unrelated, Would you date someone who told you that due to their activism they were being surveilled?
A friend wants to know.
'the true struggle of our times is overcoming the hopelessness that men [and women and all genders] feel today' - approximately Buckminster Fuller
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22 2019, @05:43PM
the right woman would find that romantic and inspiring and be a good ally to you. never give up. that's what they want you to do.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday August 22 2019, @11:15PM (1 child)
Interesting take on it, though I'd say our society crushes genuine masculinity just as hard in pursuit of the almighty dollar...which after all is genderless, even though all our currency has mens' faces on it! Seems like a giant eating machine that shits out broken people and makes them fight each other.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Friday August 23 2019, @09:29AM
Yes, I agree masculine values are crushed, but not as badly. I think masculine values are more often twisted and misrepresented by people like Trump and Epstein.
Anyone who stands up against tyranny and for the weak is going to be put on a list, even if you're a cop.
Which is to say the thousands of people who aided epstein got away with murder and the people who were pounding their fist on the table, like me, saying why can this injustice stand? Are likely to face future persecution for not being corrupt enough, or having a memory longer than 5 minutes.
Totalitarianism, what we are facing, is the death of ALL human values. A good robot adapts and makes no moral judgements on whether a cop is a corrupt, a political party is a cult, or a religion is a mafia. To capitalism, anything that cannot be counted in money form is an externality, it is not even part of the system, it doesn't exist, like the finger of a miner lost in the mine, no pics or it didn't happen, good luck dealing with our 'legal' department.
In my case though, my activism which started out against the drug war, resulted in literally a dozen undercovers and informants coming to the *first* meeting. I only put this together later after I studied all of those people over more than ten years. An undercover was actually *running* a marijuana legalization festival in Joplin, MO, in 2001, it eventually turned out. Creepy guys came too, with rifles in the trunk of their car and in some relationship with a woman who had pscyhological problems and a small child.
So for me, I started out willing to be stand up for something but then for a time I gave up because I thought that only meant I had to wade through asocial kooks, not realizing that the first sign of opposition the system sends a dozen people your way who are specifically chosen to drive everyone else away and burden the leadership dealing with clowns.
And this is how I learned about social engineering the hard way, and this is why I invented the term Reverse Social Engineering, so that even if it takes years, I figure out why things happened the way they did.
Pass it on. Check out the memes on my webpage and Important Definitions. Also anyone who claims to be masculine or just but is not boycotting Victoria's Secret and driving discussion of Israeli spy operations in the united states, is either dumb or a big part of the problem, which is nearly the entire mass media who are running an elaborate smoke screen. Many people like myself have been screaming for years the Epstein thing and things like it are happening, now we see the proof of it and we are supposed to just forget it while the president chides everyone for not being loyal enough to a foreign country. It is a cultural hegemony barring its teeth and trying to hide its true nature.
sorry im typing a lot because well, much learning has made me mad.
supercreepy.org
weknowthesecret.net d
decultification.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22 2019, @10:47AM (1 child)
so there is no difeerence then?
just curious...
-zug
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday August 22 2019, @11:25PM
Oh, plenty, just not the ones our resident bitter manchildren like to think :)
Why, though, do so many people think the only positions anyone holds are either 18th-century patriarchialism or some sort of postmodern strawman idea that there are no differences whatsoever between the sexes? What happened to observation and nuance?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22 2019, @01:42PM (5 children)
I was wondering how long it would take for our resident angry lesbian to join in this conversation.
"Generalization fallacy"? As in, I can't say anything about anything if there is even one counterexample to what I said?
So I can't tell people that summers in the southeast are hot and humid because there once was a string of cold days in the middle of summer?
Look, gays make up about 3% of the population. Just for the sake of argument, let's say they're even a little more than that. Let's make it an even 5%.
When I make statements about women, assuming they're statements about heterosexual women, I am covering 95% of the sexuality cases. That's not bad, and certainly good enough for a basis of generalization. You have been logically OWNED. I hope you have learned the basis of generalization now.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday August 22 2019, @11:02PM (4 children)
...do...do you actually like, preview your posts before you hit Submit? Like ever? Because that was a whole lotta nothing right there, topped off with a junior high locker room denizen's idea of "logic" and "owned." What were you even trying to do there?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @02:01AM (3 children)
I explained in detail what a generalization is and demonstrated how it allows one to draw conclusions with a very high likelihood of them being true the great majority of the time.
We all use this sort of reasoning all the time or else we would literally be unable to make any decisions at all, or even reason about things. Small exceptions to a rule do not make a rule invalid.
But you know this; you are just arguing in bad faith.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @06:41AM
All while providing zero evidence that would justify the use of said generalizations. So, just make a bunch of unsubstantiated generalizations and claims, and then get modded insightful. Truly phenomenal.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday August 23 2019, @12:04PM (1 child)
Small exceptions can make a rule invalid if they're fundamental enough. It only takes one outlier to destroy a blanket statement of the form "All X are Y," too.
You sound a bit chastened. Did getting called out for acting like a hormonal little teenager with more zits than beard hairs strike a nerve? I sure as hell hope so.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @02:33AM
You can't argue logical points, nor respond to those that the other person makes. Your tactic is just to call names.
What a waste of a discussion board you are, Azuma.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22 2019, @04:18PM (1 child)
You see it in kids. Girls will look to others to see if it's ok to climb to the top of the playground. Boys will do it despite whatever looks they get. Females tend toward collective agreement while males are more independent. I'd assume at work, it'll be more stressful for women to push though new changes or ideas than it is for men. Sitting in a factory, there aren't any changes to push through. Modern workplaces aren't like that. Things are constantly changing now and the higher you go in the company the more you have to make larger decisions on your own.
Males take more risks because the payoffs are significantly higher when they win. Females take less risks because their payoff isn't worth it. A risk taking male can have over 21535 kids (1 per day) while a female can manage only up to around 50 (1 per year) in their lifetimes no matter if she takes a lot of risks or not. Thus evolution has slowly pushed males to be higher risk takers. There are more males at the top and bottom of the entire human society and females are more closely grouped in the middle.
Both of those things are backed by research. Go look them up.
Plus around 80% of women in USA have used hormonal contraceptives (and everybody gets a little through our drinking water), drenching their body in additional hormones which skews them off default. I wonder if our society would have turned out a little differently if we perfected physical contraceptives instead of developing hormonal ones.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday August 22 2019, @11:22PM
Sounds like mens' evolution is suddenly becoming maladaptive in regards to the societies, rules, and laws that, let's be entirely real here, have been built almost completely by men. Hmm. Hmm, hmm, hmm...makes you think. Or it should. Somehow I doubt it will.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Touché) by Rupert Pupnick on Wednesday August 21 2019, @11:41PM (1 child)
Does this mean we can expect women to pick up the bar tab more often?
(Score: 2) by legont on Thursday August 22 2019, @12:16AM
Well, come to think about it, bosses at the office are mostly women now and they do pay for us at bars. No scotch shots as it used to be with men, but no complains as beer and wine flows just fine. In addition, they pay for ice cream.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday August 22 2019, @10:52AM (4 children)
When women will have mastered the game, the pendulum will swing towards repression of women again, and with the same elites directing the change. The liberalization/repression cycle is meant to break individuals. Here, this is my dystopian take. I told you so you can feel more of an optimist than before. Have a nice day.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday August 22 2019, @11:10PM (3 children)
And you're just wetting yourself in gleeful anticipation waiting for that to happen ain'tcha Opus Dei?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday August 23 2019, @08:15AM (2 children)
Not gonna happen soon, don't worry.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday August 23 2019, @12:13PM (1 child)
And yet it doesn't stop you from disasturbating over the idea, does it? You want it to happen, regardless of how much suffering and death has to take place both before and after, because you're a fanatic. Do you really think sane people can't see what you're all about?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday August 24 2019, @08:01PM
Me? I don't like social experiments on planetary scale. Especially when sign up is not voluntary.
Account abandoned.