Lemondrop

Last month, I happened to be driving when I heard a report on the radio about yet another mom hitting the bottle -- and I'm not talking about milk -- before getting into a car loaded with people. But it wasn't a bunch of adults on board. No, 36-year-old Georgette Massi slipped behind the wheel of her Jeep Cherokee with two of her kids in the car and her friend's child. Her blood-alcohol level was 0.39, just under five times the legal limit.

A New Jersey policeman had this to say: "Considering the blood alcohol, which most people would be unconscious at, she could carry on a conversation and talk with the officers." Her husband, Frank Massi, had something even more enlightening to offer: "I know she drank. I didn't know she had this sort of problem. She hid it well. When I am working, I have no control."

Last summer, another 36-year-old mom made a similar bad choice -- except she didn't get the chance to talk with officers. Neither did Diane Schuler's daughter, three nieces, or the three men she killed when she collided with their vehicle on the Taconic State Parkway in New York. Her husband came up with a laundry list of possible causes, including a tooth abscess that "could lead to a brain infection." He also stated that his wife only drank "maybe two piña coladas a year." The autopsy found nothing out of the ordinary, aside from the fact that Schuler had the equivalent of at least 10 shots of alcohol in her system, along with some pot.

These are just two examples of a spike in what, until recently, had seemed to be Moms for Drunk Driving.

Over the past decade, the rate of women across the country arrested for intoxicated cruising has increased 29 percent. Last November, New York state passed Leandra's Law, which makes it a felony to drive drunk with a kid in the car. It was named for 11-year-old Leandra Rosado, who died when an inebriated family friend, Carmen Huertas, crashed the car she was driving packed with seven kids, including Leandra and Huertas' own daughter. The law went into effect not a moment too soon: In January, a mother was arrested and charged when police found she was wasted with her infant son strapped to a car seat.

And, since then, it was reported today, no fewer than 248 people have been arrested for driving drunk with a child under 16 in the car.

Alarming? Yes. Confounding? Yes. Surprising? Yes and no. The idea of over-taxed moms self-medicating is certainly nothing new. It's been going on for decades, as evidenced by the popularity of tranquilizers for mothers in the 1950s. And let's not forget the Rolling Stones ditty "Mother's Little Helper," which hit number eight on the Billboard singles charts in 1966. These days, people are offering up all sorts of theories for the influx. Massi's husband hypothesized that it was postpartum depression. Schuler's husband suggested it was a stroke caused by diabetes. (Schuler had the pregnancy-induced gestational kind, and her daughter was already 2 at the time of the accident. You do the math.) Even Debbie Weir of MADD has been quoted saying, "Generally the stress on women is at an all-time high and is increasing. More women are working, more women are running errands for their family, taking their children, carpooling."

Regardless of what reason any of these mothers (or their husbands) may give, if they're getting into a car sloshed, with their kids in tow, they should be examining more than just their piña colada problem.