In the scene where Mark and Joanna were in the hotel after their car caught on fire and he brought food back to the room, Joanna was drinking what looked like wine. But, it had been established that she was pregnant. Surely they knew that alcohol was potentially harmful to fetuses back then, right?
sharenot back then, no, women used to smoke cigarettes and drink while pregnant...sadly
shareIn the 60's some people, especially Europeans drank for medcinal purposes. So they probably felt it could do some good for the fetus.
sharePlease, Please park your political correctness at the door. In many movies made in the 30's, there was smoking and drinking in virtually every scene. Also, like most medical warnings, the effect of alcohol on a fetus is still up in the air. There is almost no doubt in most doctors minds that a couple of drinks a day will do no harm to the fetus. You know what I really hate: are people who want to ban smoking in bars and make everyone feel guilty about drinking and having fun. Re doctors and alcohol, they are afraid to speak out what they really believe about smoking and alcohol (and pain medication for that matter) for fear of being bombarded by the witches and warlocks of political correctness. My family dr is also a good friend and very reasonable. He has talked to me about suppressed studies that show that moderate drinking does NOT affect the fetus negatively. Our society wants to ban most "vices," except the biggest vice of all: not thinking clearly.
shareYou are absolutely right!. Doctors even recommend one glass of wine a day during pregnancy . I don't know why nowadays there is such terror about drinking. The problem is that not everybody has alcoholic culture, and because of the bombardment of the media most people become intoxicated with so much talk, which may be much more dangerous to their minds than drinking a good glass of wine. There's sitll so much to learn!.
shareWhen I was expecting, 29 yrs ago, the books commonly recommended a drink a day to relax the mother. And after giving birth, I was given wine in the hospital, even tho I planned to nurse. It was a different world, and as another poster stated, pregnant women commonly smoked and drank in the 50s and 60s. Their kids are grown and grandparents themselves. Most of us didn't suffer from it. I think a little drink now and then won't hurt, but the smoking should be out.
Re the movie, I'm watching it now and trying to deal w/Eleanor Bron. I generally like her, but she's really grating on me.
clotblaster ^
Wow! Great post!
Although there was no way that I would smoke or drink while pregnant (for one thing, I had horrible morning sickness and just the thought of doing either would make me severely ralph), I salute your comments regarding 'parking' political correctness (like.....enough already!) and would also be interested to read those 'suppressesd' studies or to hear more about them.
I love this quote from another great movie, Glengary Glen Ross:
Ricky Roma: "I subscribe to the law of contrary public opinion... If everyone thinks one thing, then I say, bet the other way..."
:)
"I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than..a rude remark or a vulgar action" Blanche DuBois
To say that drinking causes no problems to fetuses and that those who were fetuses in the 50's and 60's are all well and fine is awfully naive, I think. My older brother was born addicted to phenobarbitol and alcohol because they treated my pregnant mother with those to prevent premature labor. He had to go through withdrawl as a newborn baby and still has some leftover difficulties because of it. Science has since improved and we now know better - yes, it is dangerous to drink while pregnant. My brother is a poster child for exactly why. Not that all babies will be born addicts if you take one drink, but there are a million and one other ways that alcohol may seriously hurt your baby - some we know, and some we may never know - so why take the risk? Is that drink really worth the chance that you could be hurting your child? To say that just because society has been doing it for ages isn't a logical reason to keep on doing it, especially now that science has given us many compelling concrete reasons why we should avoid drinking and smoking while pregnant.
shareThey didn't know that smoking and drinking was as harmful to fetuses as they later discovered. My mother smoked when she was pregnant with me; low birth weight was the result. The problem with drinking is that your child could be born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
From the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention: When a pregnant woman drinks alcohol, so does her unborn baby. There is no known safe amount of alcohol to drink while pregnant and there also does not appear to be a safe time to drink during pregnancy either. Therefore, it is recommended that women abstain from drinking alcohol at any time during pregnancy. Women who are sexually active and do not use effective birth control should also refrain from drinking because they could become pregnant and not know for several weeks or more.
And there's this:
Prenatal exposure to alcohol can cause a range of disorders, known as fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs). One of the most severe effects of drinking during pregnancy is fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS). FAS is one of the leading known preventable causes of mental retardation and birth defects. If a woman drinks alcohol during her pregnancy, her baby can be born with FAS, a lifelong condition that causes physical and mental disabilities. FAS is characterized by abnormal facial features, growth deficiencies, and central nervous system (CNS) problems. People with FAS might have problems with learning, memory, attention span, communication, vision, hearing, or a combination of these. These problems often lead to difficulties in school and problems getting along with others. FAS is a permanent condition. It affects every aspect of an individual’s life and the lives of his or her family.
Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs) is an umbrella term describing the range of effects that can occur in an individual whose mother drank alcohol during pregnancy. These effects include physical, mental, behavioral, and/or learning disabilities with possible lifelong implications. The term FASDs is not intended for use as a clinical diagnosis.
although they may well have, most people did it anyway.
hmm... I suppose all this explains why there are so many retarded baby boomers
shareMy grandmother smoked and drank throughout all three of her pregnancies. Also, in those days pregnant women were told not to gain too much weight. C-sections weren't common and 6 lb babies were ideal. Different times.
shareAs I said in a previous post, I never smoked or drank when pregnant.
However, my mother smoked like a chimney while pregnant, and all of us turned out just fine and with higher-than-average IQ's, thank you.
Additionally, she smoked around us ALL THE TIME, including in the car with windows rolled up (which, I must say, was not the most comfortable ride!) Nowadays, they attribute SO MUCH to second-hand smoke around kids: studies supposedly show that these children are at greater risk for asthma, upper-respiratory difficulties -- even a higher frequency of broken bones.
We had none of these. In fact, we were one of a few families on my street where none of the children ever broke anything! No asthma, etc. And, we are all still alive and kicking today.
If smoking were THAT bad, why not make it illegal? Answer: Because the govt benefits more by saying how bad it is to be able to levy more and more taxation on a targeted group of people -- if they banned it outright, whoops, no tax revenues. Basically, the govt makes money this way.
Now, they are targeting 'obesity' (for which the benchmarks keep getting moved back so what was not obese decades ago is now considered obese) and are trying to target food and drink to do what they have tried to do for years: heavy taxation of these items (I would hope that some wise citizens would get a clue that the baby boomers are aging, which in turn generally leads to more weight gain as a population in addition to more health problems due to aging, etc., and to roll those statistics into all the others is lying with data).
And, now, they are now going after the very air that we breathe (or, should I say, exhale).
In any event, yes, this IS just a movie….
"I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than..a rude remark or a vulgar action" Blanche DuBois
"If smoking were THAT bad, why not make it illegal? Answer: Because the govt benefits more by saying how bad it is to be able to levy more and more taxation on a targeted group of people -- if they banned it outright, whoops, no tax revenues. Basically, the govt makes money this way.
In reality, governments don't ban it because millions of freaked out addicts would at best vote them out of office and at worst start an uprising when they had gone too long without their fix.
"My name is Paikea Apirana, and I come from a long line of chiefs stretching all the way back to the Whale Rider."
People drank and smoked while pregnant back then. She had a glass of wine. I don't think the character was a boozer. I am sure they knew, but if you ask women if they had at least a drink, champagne, wine, during the course of pregnancy, I bet 95% have.
shareThis is sad, questions like these.
People used to live free wheeling lives and strangers minded their own business.
Hygiene/health matters are what we have now rather than religious constriction.
People in the future will, I pray, find everything about entertainment or intellection in the West after about 1975 was the output of the poorly educated and hygiene mad.
LL