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Men Should Stop Drinking Six Months In Advance If They Plan to Be Fathers

While it’s long been understood that expecting mothers should abstain from alcohol (if not entirely, then at least almost entirely) there is now new data suggesting that dads should probably lay off the booze, too. At least six months before conception, in fact.

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The latest research published in the European Journal of Preventative Cardiology indicates that in order to protect the baby from congenital heart defects, it’s a good idea for would-be fathers to stop pounding back the beers at least six months in advance of attempting to conceive.

In almost 350,000 births taking place between 1991 and 2019, fathers who decided to drink in the 3-month window prior to conception had a 44 percent higher chance of eventually having a child with congenital heart defects. Contrary to what may see as common sense, when mothers instead drank during this window — and even including their first trimester — the increased chance of the same defects rose just 16 percent.

According to Dr. Jiabi Qin, of Xiangya School of Public Health, Central South University, Changsha, China, men who binge drank in advance of conception pushed that percentage up even further, with 52 percent of fathers in this category producing children with some form of heart defect at birth.

“Binge drinking by would-be parents is a high risk and dangerous behavior that not only may increase the chance of their baby being born with a heart defect, but also greatly damages their own health,” Qin said. “We observed a gradually rising risk of congenital heart diseases as parental alcohol consumption increased. The relationship was not statistically significant at the lower quantities.”

Despite the long-standing connection between alcohol consumption and other known birth defects or congenital diseases such as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) many prospective parents still dismiss the idea of laying down the drink for an extended period of time. While FAS and congenital heart disease have been linked for some time, this study is one of the first to examine such a large pool of data in making their findings plain.

That being said, however, Qin is quick to caution readers against placing absolute faith in the results of a single study.

“The underlying mechanisms connecting parental alcohol and congenital heart diseases are uncertain and warrant further research. Although our analysis has limitations — for example the type of alcohol was not recorded — t does indicate that men and women planning a family should give up alcohol,” Qin said.

Much like the time-honored advice for pregnant women to give up smoking, it seems that the next frontier in promoting healthier gestation and birth is for fathers to adopt a healthier lifestyle as well, staying clear of drugs and alcohol of all sorts. If that's a bridge too far — and for many people, it may well be — you might have to put off family planning for a bit.

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Christina Majaski, Khareem Sudlow