Mum's the word

The lazy trope of the sad, scorned wine mum is dying a death. All hail the new breed of powerful wine mums, writes Anna Richards

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Anna Richards
Illustration: Sang Pak

Wednesday 17 June 2026

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This article is from

Vin de France

issue 63

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Why did wine mums get so demonised? Why are women in their 30s and 40s who enjoy a glass of wine portrayed as tragic, depressed and out-of-control? Seeking solace at the bottom of a bottle? Men of the same age don’t get the same treatment—because whoever heard of a wine dad.

The ‘wine mom’ now has its own Wikipedia page, defining them as “typically upper middle class mother, often with young children, who turns to alcoholic drinks to cope with being over-worked or fatigued from parenting”. There’s no equivalent page for dads, because we don’t see wine dads portrayed in the media. A man in his 30s or 40s who enjoys a glass of wine at the end of the day is more likely to be portrayed as a suave bachelor. He’s sexy and he earns well, like Christian Grey from Fifty Shades of Grey. Urban Dictionary describes a wine mum as “a Karen with alcohol” while a wine dad is “laidback and full of mirth.” One is the Grinch, the other is Santa Claus.

The unhappy, alcoholic wife trope is so omnipresent that it’s exploited by comedians. Delaney Rowe, a US Tiktok star who makes parody reels of movie character stereotypes, does skits of the movie wine mum drowning her sorrows as her cheating husband bangs his secretary, and British comedian Daniel Foxx uses the wine mum as the main character in his ‘bedtime stories for privileged children’ sketches, playing the part of a mother with an overfull wine glass reading sardonic stories to her spoilt kids. It’s relatable—of course it is—because these are exactly the portrayals of wine mums that the media feeds us.

As a woman in my 30s, this feels pointed. Statistics show that alcoholism rates are much higher among men, some 20% of men abuse alcohol as opposed to 5-6% of women, but even so, gin has been labelled mother’s ruin since the 18th century. Nothing is labelled as ‘father’s ruin’, the idea being that women drink because they’re unhappy, whereas men do it to socialise.

Nothing is labelled as ‘father’s ruin’, the idea being that women drink because they’re unhappy, whereas men do it to socialise

I could pull up more examples of troubled TV wine mums than I could name grape varieties. Bree Van de Kamp in Desperate Housewives starts drinking when she believes her husband Rex is cheating on her, and after her husband’s death, descends into full-blown alcoholism. Miranda Hobbes in Sex and the City starts ordering wine at midday to cope with the pressures of taking care of her husband… before sleeping with Carrie’s boss. Celeste Wright in Big Little Lies knocks back wine in response to the trauma of having an abusive husband. They’re also all redheads, but I’m not sure there’s a correlation between being redheaded and being a messy wine mum.

Childless women aren’t exempt from the stereotype either. Rachel Watson in The Girl on the Train is an extreme example. Her fertility issues lead to full-blown alcoholism, which her ex partner then uses to manipulate and gaslight her, making her believe she’s done things that never actually happened. On the other end of the spectrum is the seemingly harmless but still toxic portrayal of scorned women, like Bridget Jones. In one scene, she’s seen drinking alone, singing ‘all by myself’ into her empty wine bottle, obsessing that her (BMI 22.1 weight) means she’s roughly as heavy as a killer whale. Once past the ‘mum’ age, drinking wine seems to become acceptable again, though. Absolutely Fabulous’s Eddie and Patsy and Schitt’s Creek’s Moira Rose certainly aren’t characters to be pitied.

Just recently, wine mums got their moment. The foundation was there in power characters like Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones and Georgia Muller in Ginny and Georgia. Both are conniving and calculating, and Cersei is one of the biggest villains in the series, but they don’t have to be likeable to give a totally different image of the wine mum. These are women who move other characters as though they were pawns on a chessboard, always with a glass of wine in hand, but they’re never out of control or hysterical.

The hero of the TV wine mum scene that we didn’t know we needed, though, is Stranger Things’ Karen Wheeler (look away now if you’re yet to watch Season Five). Nancy, Mike and Holly’s mother, previously a sidelined character and (dare I say it) a stereotypically messy wine mum, has her moment of heroism. When a demogorgon tries to abduct her youngest child Holly, she smashes a wine bottle to turn it into a weapon and attacks the demogorgon. Holly is abducted anyway, and when we leave Karen Wheeler it’s in intensive care, her larynx so badly damaged that she’s unable to speak, but that’s beside the point. Here’s a bad-ass mum that uses wine to protect her daughter… and she’s a Karen. Let’s have more of these wine mums please.

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