Back in the 1950s and ’60s, cocktail hour was very popular. This was an era when many men were the breadwinners and many mothers stayed home with the children.

When Dad arrived home from work he was often handed an alcoholic drink while awaiting supper. Cocktail parties were also popular social events. When I was a young mother in the 1980s and ’90s, I don’t remember this being the case.

Alcohol use has also always been a part of college life. In fact, many college students can be classified as binge drinkers, which for women is four-plus drinks in a sitting or five-plus drinks in a two- to three-hour period for men.

As I sit here writing this article I am watching the soup ad on TV where the mother is stocking up on tomato soup before a snowstorm and has two children in the cart. As the news broadcast states that the schools will be closed for three days, she grabs a bottle of wine off the shelf and the narrator says, “Our soup goes well with the cold and a good red; for real, real life.” The message is Mom needs this wine to get through three days with her children.

Every day someone on my Facebook feed comments on their need for a drink when they get home. One friend told me her friend posted a picture of a woman holding her two children while drinking straight from a bottle of wine, saying this is how she gets through a day at home with the kids.

The Centers for Disease Control actually has guidelines on what constitutes excessive use of alcohol, and parents would be well advised to see if they fall into any of these categories: for men this is 15-plus drinks in a week’s time and for women this is 8-plus drinks in a week’s time. If one of your regular drinks includes two to three shots of alcohol, this is not one drink. It’s actually two to three drinks.

Any alcohol use by a pregnant woman or by someone under 21 is considered alcohol abuse by the CDC. I do wonder what they think of breast-feeding women drinking while still breast feeding.

When I was a young mother, we were told not to drink or else throw out the first breast milk pumped after an alcoholic drink.

According to the La Leche League, alcohol freely passes into breast milk and is at peak levels at 30 to 60 minutes after ingestion and takes two to three hours to clear from the breast milk. Most babies feed every two to three hours, so that means a mother must have her drink immediately after breast feeding so it will clear by the next feed. What if the baby wants to eat in one hour and is exclusively breast fed? Then the baby is having a “drink” also.

The last thing to consider is that alcohol is a depressant substance. If anxious or depressed parents are drinking to “feel better,” they are actually aggravating their problem. This can never result in good parenting. If someone is that stressed they should be speaking to their health care provider about their stress and healthy ways to deal with it.

We all know that alcohol overuse causes problems within a family, and I have even had to report families for abuse in cases of an alcoholic parent. So the take-home message is that the CDC recommends reasonable alcohol use to be one drink per day for women and two drinks per day for men.

Everyone should examine their alcohol use and then decide if they are using alcohol in a healthy way or in a problematic way. If it’s the latter, get help.

(Dr. Patricia Edwards of Bow is a pediatrician and president of Concord Pediatrics in Concord.)