Normative drinking
Normative drinking describes how people define both acceptable and unacceptable drinking practices. Acceptable drinking was framed as respectable drinking that was appropriate to one’s age or stage of life and which allowed participants to meet their responsibilities. By contrast, unacceptable drinking was drinking that was inappropriate to one’s age or stage of life and/or prevented one from meeting their responsibilities.
Acceptable and unacceptable drinking practices were defined by numerous factors, including the presence or absence of certain behaviours in public and effects on the drinker. Across the dataset, we consistently found that participants stated that drinkers should neither experience nor display any negative effects of their drinking, such as slurred speech, vomiting, an unsteady gait, or a hangover the next day [
14]. In Ling et al. [
15], participants associated these effects with people who had problems with drinking, or with young drinkers: one participant described “these young teenagers on the streets can’t walk, sort of like collapsed in a heap cos they’ve drank that much” [
15]. Being able to meet work and domestic responsibilities was also frequently mentioned, especially in studies among parents and caregivers [
16,
17]. Another important factor in determining acceptable and unacceptable drinking was that others should not suffer as a consequence of a person’s drinking: thus, drink-driving was always constructed as unacceptable [
15], and responsible parenting required that parents limit alcohol consumption [
16].
The boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable drinking were also described in terms of being appropriate or inappropriate to one’s age and stage of life. For some participants, cosmetic issues such as weight, appearance, and premature ageing [
17,
18] were deemed important in determining appropriate levels of consumption. For example, participants in Lyons et al. [
17] described how their ageing bodies responded to alcohol, such that avoiding the negative effects of drinking required them to consume less and to closely monitor their own bodily response to alcohol. Similarly, some mothers in Killingsworth’s ethnography said that growing older meant that respectable behaviour involved drinking less; they were pleased to discover that a mutual acquaintance was pregnant, since this would force her to drink less and thus better conform to their notion of acceptable and respectable middle-aged parenting behaviour [
19].
Ling et al. [
15] described a way of determining acceptable drinking whereby participants defined a “safe” level of alcohol consumption according to their own experiences, actively rejecting as irrelevant government drinking guidelines and public health messages (apart from messages around drinking and driving). For example, one participant stated, “I’ve seen all the education, I don’t think I drink excessively but if you put me on a scale according to the Government I am off the scale but, I feel fit, healthy …” [
15]. This positioned his experience of
feeling fit and healthy as the authoritative determinant of acceptable drinking, not Government statements. Some participants explicitly described particular drinking behaviours as healthy; they described red wine as being good for the heart and circulation [
14] and men drinking together as good for mental health [
1]. By contrast, Brierley-Jones et al. [
18] reported that drinkers in the traditional pub settings were indifferent about any link between alcohol and health and were likely to “see the relationship between alcohol and future health, in nihilistic terms, as something largely outside of their control,” describing it as being “like a lottery” [
18].
Acceptable drinking further differed depending on location. Brierley-Jones et al. [
18], utilising Bourdieu’s concept of habitus,
1 described how two locations gave rise to differing acceptable practices, distinguishing between the patterns of the “home” and “traditional” habitus of drinking. The former was associated with moderate consumption of wine throughout the week, while the latter was associated with more expansive consumption of beer and/or spirits in pubs on weekends.
Normative drinking was also context-driven: the same behaviour could be acceptable in one context, but unacceptable in another. For example, in Nesvåg and Duckert [
20], work-related drinking featured a transition from formal to informal or social phases of an event, with differences in acceptable drinking practices. Applying informal drinking practices to the formal phase was considered by participants to be a
faux pas, which the authors described as carrying a “risk of being marginalised” [
20].
Gender
Part of what made drinking acceptable or unacceptable in these studies was how drinking patterns adhered to gendered expectations of behaviour. Drinking practices were used as a tool to express and display adherence to and transgression of gender norms. What and where participants drank also mattered. For example, in several studies from the United Kingdom, certain drinks were considered appropriate for women and others for men [
1,
16,
17,
21], and domestic drinking was associated with women, public drinking, with men [
1].
In Holloway et al. [
22], some female participants challenged particular gendered drinking norms but reaffirmed others. For example, respondent Audrey, comfortable going to pubs herself, related that “… I find it a bit odd in this day and age, I know there are still women that I know who wouldn’t meet you in a pub, and certainly wouldn’t go to the bar, and some people locally their husbands always buy the drinks” [
22]. Nonetheless, although challenging the norm that pubs are for men, she was more permissive of male drinking, saying that she felt “less negatively towards a drunk man than I do towards a drunk woman” [
22].
As mentioned earlier, men also experienced constraints on their drinking: whilst men were less scrutinised in how much they drank, they were nonetheless constrained in what and where they could drink. This is not to say that men could not move outside gendered norms of drinking: in Emslie et al. [
1], participants Graham, Ewan, and Hugh drew on the social capital of wine connoisseurship to construct alternate masculinities, and other men stated that drinking outside of the ‘pints in pubs’ model could be done in “exceptional circumstances” such as holidays and special occasions. [
1].
Emslie et al. [
1] also showed how adherence to some gendered norms of drinking allowed the transgression of other gendered norms. They described how men’s adherence to a very masculine model of alcohol consumption of pints at the pub enabled men to do un-masculine “emotional labour” (i.e. talking about feelings) around mental wellbeing [
1]. Here, the un-masculine work of talking about feelings was counterbalanced by the highly masculinised model of drinking.
Identity
In these studies, identity was important for constructions of acceptable and unacceptable drinking. How people drink both contributes to their identity, and is shaped by the identity they have crafted for themselves. For example, Ho [
23] found that the display of alcohol-related knowledge (whilst drinking) for white-collar women in Japan was “useful for enhancing their image as corporate executives in business dealings, in addition to projecting themselves as cosmopolitan individuals” [
23]. Thurnell-Read [
24] further reported that participants in his study “thought of and spoke of themselves as ‘ale drinkers’”, with routines peculiar to the identity of ale drinkers enacted only when ordering and drinking an ale with other members of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA)
2 [
24].
Alcohol consumption was also regarded as a way of reclaiming past identities, or transitioning from one identity to another. In Ling et al. [
15], drinking was described by one male participant as a way of reclaiming his identity before parenting by “[making] you feel like an adult again” [
15]. Women in the same study described drinking as a way of “reliving [their] youth”, observing how particular drinks were associated with earlier identities [
15].
Play
Normative drinking was closely tied to ideas of lay: in many papers, alcohol consumption signalled the cessation of work or responsibilities, and also a social or leisure activity in its own right.
We noted the use of alcohol as a marker of the boundaries of work or responsibility across cultures. Commencing drinking was described as a way of declaring that work or other responsibilities were completed and that recreation and relaxation had begun [
16,
17,
21]. Alcohol was also described as being instrumental in creating the state of post-work relaxation [
22].
Drinking norms specific to social settings can also be seen in the relationship between guest and host. Holloway et al. [
22] described how “complex systems of sociality, hospitality and reciprocity” led participants, even non-drinkers, to feel compelled to keep a variety of alcoholic beverages about the house in order to fulfil the role of host [
14]. Emslie et al. [
16] described the difficulties of maintaining appropriate drinking behaviour in home settings, where acceptable drinking practices can be paradoxical: participants in their study described how a good host ensures that guests’ glasses are constantly topped up, constituting pressure to drink, but (as we highlighted earlier) drinking norms dictate that drinkers avoid obvious signs of drunkenness. Thus, we note that the duty of the guest to consume the constantly refreshing supply, flowing from the largesse of the host, is incompatible with the guest’s duty to exercise self-control. Participants in the 2012 study by Emslie et al. [
16] negotiated this paradox through the provision of suitable excuses to limit or avoid drinking, such as detoxing or being on a diet.
Alcohol consumption was described as a focussed leisure activity by Thurnell-Read [
24]. His study of “Real Ale Enthusiasts” showed that, rather than being a signal of relaxation, the consumption of alcohol and the connoisseurship around it functioned as a recreational activity in its own right [
24]. Participants in the study explicitly contrasted their CAMRA drinking with “normal” drinking, and one described having to “watch yourself sometimes” to ensure that the serious leisure activity of CAMRA connoisseurship did not spill over into social time spent with those who are “into their beers but not like I am” to avoid “feel [ing] like a daft prat” [
24].
Learning to drink
The final theme apparent in these studies is the idea that normative drinking is something that people learn, both from family and culture as well as from knowledge of personal preferences and the effects of alcohol on them. This involved learning the “skill” of non-problematised drinking, as well as learning about alcohol and how to display that knowledge as part of normative drinking behaviours.
Illustrating how drinking patterns could be learned from family heritage and local tradition, Brierley-Jones et al. [
18] demonstrated how the reproduction of traditional drinking habitus established a connection between present-day white-collar drinkers and a blue-collar history of family and community. By drinking in the village pub that used to service the foundry, drinkers in the traditional habitus could align themselves with this blue-collar history “despite the non-physicality of white-collar work” [
18]. Drinkers in both the home and traditional habitus described the importance of their parents’ behaviours in establishing their own drinking behaviours and attitudes. The authors detailed how a taste for particular beverages could be acquired, with one respondent explaining how one would begin to drink as a social act and then “you start liking it” [
18]. Finally, Lyons et al. outlined how participants’ personal limits on alcohol were learned from past experience, with the bodily experience of alcohol consumption becoming “so well-rehearsed that they no longer require conscious intervention or scrutiny” [
17].
Interactions between themes
Gender, identity, play, and learning to drink each help to define normative drinking. In addition, as we explain below, they interact with each another to build a more complex picture of the nature of normative drinking.
It is clear from these studies that gendered norms of drinking affected the mode of play. For example, for men within Lyon’s et al. study, “drinking alcohol provided embodied pleasure as a reward for working hard” [
17]; for women, drinking with friends was an acceptable way to relax and take time away from domestic responsibilities (e.g. housework, childcare) and, for some women, away from paid employment [
17]. In Emslie’s study, however, the separation from responsibility was incomplete as women still “retained the main responsibility for their children” [
21]. For these women, acceptable drinking practices were constrained by “the effect on children if they saw their mothers drinking (excessively),” [
21]. These gendered expectations worked to limit the extent to which women were able to relax.
In other studies, the interaction between gender and normative drinking served not simply to limit, but also to prevent opportunities for play. Holloway et al. [
22] described how participant Doris (a widow) was excluded from some social opportunities due to her gender and age, given perceptions that “it’s not seemly for a woman of [her] age to walk down and go in to the pub on her own” [
22].
The interaction between gender, play, identity, and normative drinking was also evident in the work environment. Female managers in the study of workplace culture by Nesvåg and Duckert [
20] felt constrained by gendered and work-specific drinking norms, with one woman stating that “in company organised parties I feel my way of drinking is a part of the management performance,” a clear contrast to the nature of alcohol consumption as play [
20]. In a study of female managers in Norway by Buvik and Sagvaag [
25], the interaction of these themes served to limit alcohol consumption. Alcohol was so strongly associated with relaxation that the women interviewed were reluctant to drink in the work environment because it could undermine the control that they were expected to maintain, both as women and as managers. Their visible status as managers and women created a restrictive environment that limited acceptable drinking practices. While women could take the opportunities for recreation and relaxation afforded by alcohol consumption, this was either (1) in a home environment, (2) with other managers, or (3) with more restrictive limits on acceptable behaviour than those encountered by male colleagues. Some participants stated that they would rather forgo workplace drinking entirely in order to fulfil gendered care-related duties [
25]. As noted above, Emslie et al. [
21] similarly reported that some women experienced incomplete separation from their domestic duties, which prevented them from fully engaging in recreation and relaxation activities. Ultimately, drinking practices that were otherwise acceptable in the work context were restricted by gendered expectations of the roles of manager and mother. However, the authors described attempts by some women to move beyond these restrictions with nights out, when they escaped “from their work and domestic responsibilities” [
21] and followed new drinking norms that allowed them to resolve “multiple co-existing femininities while keeping a coherent sense of one’s self and identity” [
21].
Just as gendered norms of drinking affected the mode of play, so gendered drinking norms could construct an identity that moved beyond simplistic binaries of gender-appropriate behaviour. A study of playgroup mothers in Australia showed how they consumed and discussed alcohol in ways that skirted the edges of gender expectations without actually transgressing them: the mothers drank, but not too much, or they talked about drinking, rather than actually drinking [
19]. In this way, the women simultaneously reinforced, and resisted, “dominant, relatively traditional notions of (female) gender and motherhood” [
19]. Ho [
23] later described how, in Japan, women in white-collar professional employment participated in the recreational practices of drinking and host clubs (an environment historically restricted to men, and still somewhat gendered) to define themselves as
sarariman (white-collar professional workers). One study participant consumed masculinised drinks such as beer and whisky to redefine her identity: by transgressing gendered drinking norms, she adopted masculinised traits that enhanced her identity as a (female) manager in charge of a male-dominated sales team [
23]. Similarly, Emslie et al. [
21] described how their participant ‘Madeline’ used masculinised drinking practices (“playing the lad”) [
21] when drinking with male colleagues in defiance of gendered drinking norms. The authors hypothesised that Madeline used the counter-balancing resources of her class position to “construct herself as (respectably) feminine” and legitimise her ‘masculine’ drinking.
Participants in various studies used the learned aspects of normative drinking to construct their identity. In Emslie et al. [
1], connoisseurship, namely the display of learned knowledge and appreciation of (in this case) alcoholic beverages, was used as a form of social capital in establishing a cultured identity. By deploying knowledge of wine and malt whisky, participants in two all-male focus groups could “position themselves as ‘accomplished individuals’ in the social hierarchy through this demonstration of taste and discernment” [
1]. By contrast, in Holloway et al. [
14] many respondents negotiated identities through a considered
rejection of connoisseurship. By declaring a preference for mid-range wines and simultaneously repudiating the label of aficionado, respondents successfully navigated around the possibility of being seen as pretentious while still accessing the cultural capital associated with wine consumption [
14].
Group identities were also constructed through how individuals learnt to drink. In Nesvåg and Duckert [
20], the “knowledge and communication” of various characteristics of alcoholic drinks were strongly tied to a continental European cultural ideal valued by the management of an oil company. This company norm and identity then influenced the drinking behaviours of individuals, with contrary behaviours (e.g. obviously succumbing to drunkenness) being minimised and/or denied by individual workers [
20].
Limitations
Most papers we reviewed reported studies carried out in the Anglosphere (predominantly the United Kingdom), possibly because of our inclusion requirement that publications be in English. Thus, our findings may not have captured all research around middle-aged drinking and may be limited in cross-cultural applicability.
Several reviewed papers shared authorship or a data source. We regarded papers from the
Drinking Attitudes in Midlife (DrAM) study [
1,
16,
17,
21] as closely linked to one another due to the common data pool, authorship, methods, and theoretical perspective. Two papers examining the geographies of alcohol featuring common authorship, data, topic, and lens of inquiry [
14,
22] were moderately linked to one another. Another two papers [
15,
18] we regarded as slightly linked to one another due to significant overlap in authorship.