An SNL skit captured everything uncomfortable about 'wine mom' culture

• An SNL skit used ridiculous signs to point out the issues with how we talk about moms and drinking.
• Moms say that there's a lot to be uncomfortable with how society talks about moms and wine.
• Here's how three moms reacted to the skit.

When Irina Gonzalez, a sober mom from Florida, watched the recent Saturday Night Live skit on "wine mom" culture, she felt seen.

In the skit, a group of female friends gather to celebrate a birthday. As the birthday girl opens her first present, she sees it's a cutesy decorative sign. The second is another sign, this one about drinking: "Wine gets better with age. I get better with wine." From there, the signs become more and more problematic, and the birthday girl becomes more and more flustered.

"These are not nice!" the birthday girl, played by Aidy Bryant, exclaims after opening a sign that says, "I put wine bottles in other people's recycling bins so the garbage man won't know how much I go through in a week."

"It's so easy to go from 'Haha, I love a glass of wine at the end of the night' to 'I'm drinking every night and don't realize I can't stop,'" Gonzalez said. "It was honestly pretty accurate."

Gonzalez stopped drinking before her son was born, but even prior to becoming a mother, wine-mom culture - along with those cutesy signs - rubbed her the wrong way.

If moms had adequate support - things like paid family leave, access to childcare, partners who split the household duties evenly - they wouldn't have to escape into drinking, Gonzalez said.

"We shouldn't say to a mom, 'Have a glass of wine because you're exhausted at the end of the day due to working, cleaning, cooking, and taking care of the kids.' What we need to say to a mom is, 'Wine is a fun treat sometimes, but here's some actual support,'" she said.

Making space for moms to have fun

Jessica, a Maryland mom of two who asked to go by only her first name, said the SNL skit captured another problem with "wine mom" culture.

"There's such a mean-spirited, even misogynistic tone to it," she said. "Wine moms are self medicating, or they need 'mommy juice' in a way that's infantilizing."

"The cutesy signs that the skit sends up all basically come down to, 'I'm still a human being with interests outside of my life with kids,'" Jessica said. "The bottom line is that moms need better opportunities to have that adult life instead of being stuck with hanging reminders of carefree days on the wall as they head into a second or third shift."

There's no male equivalent of wine culture, because dads aren't under the same pressure as moms to conform, she said.

"Wine mom culture would have issues anyway, but it might bother me less if we saw something like 'video game dad' culture that put dads on the spot for wanting escapism and relaxation," she says.

Reminders of the dangers of drinking

For Kathleen Porter Kristiansen, a mom in Maine, the jokes about wine culture - like the sign in the skit that simply said "I drink too much" - fell flat. After losing her mom to alcoholism, Porter Kristiansen has been sober herself. After becoming a mom, she struggled to know how to respond to jokes about drinking, because she didn't want to come across as judgmental.

"I didn't want [friends] to think I was mommy-shaming or that I'm not fun. But I don't find it funny to joke about drinking around your children or every night when they go to bed or to get through remote schooling. Alcoholism doesn't discriminate and drinking too much under the guise of being a 'fun mom' is playing with fire," she said.

Research shows that binge drinking among women is on the rise, so being frank about the risks of drinking too much is important, Porter Kristiansen said.

Gonzalez suggests that anyone who sees herself reflected in the SNL skit reevaluate her relationship with alcohol, even if just temporarily.

"Use that time to figure out what it is that alcohol is covering up. Is it that your partner needs to help more at home? Is it that you need a better work/life balance? Whatever it is that you need, ask for that," she said.