Beer-drinking fathers, lightweight babies link?

Press, 28 July 1986, Page 35

Beer-drinking fathers, lightweight babies link?

NZPA-Reuter Boston

A study indicates that men who drink the equivalent of two beers each day tend to father children who are underweight at birth. The study, reported in the "New England Journal of Medicine” in preliminary form by two United States medical researchers, comes when pregnant women are being advised to stay away from alcohol for fear it could' harm a foetus.

No such recommendation has ever been given to men because they do Jot directly influence the

growth of the foetus once pregnancy has begun. But according to the new study, by Ruth Little, of the University of Washington in Seattle, and Charles Sing, of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, “the father’s drinking was strongly related to the Infant’s birth weight” Specifically, men who drank 30 millilitres (0.9 ounces) of alcohol each day or 75 millilitres (2.25 ounces) of alcohol once a month fathered newborns that on average, weighed six ounces (168 g less than babies of occasional drinkers. Thirty millilitres is

equivalent to either two beers, two glasses of wine or two shots of 100-proof whisky.

The researchers emphasised that their study of 377 pregnant women could not directly prove a father’s drinking habits cause lower birthweights in infants. Something else related to those drinking habits might be causing the phenomenon, they said.

Dr Little and Dr Sing, though, said animal studies have shown that males exposed to alcohol before mating “sire fewer offspring, and the survivors are smaller and have decreased viability.”