Study shows children whose mothers had a glass of wine a day were able to balance as well as those not exposed to alcohol in the womb

Drinking in moderation through pregnancy does not harm a baby's neurodevelopment, according to new research.

Children whose mothers consumed the equivalent of a glass of wine a day were able to balance as well as those who had not been exposed to alcohol in the womb.

Almost 7,000 10-year-olds were asked to take part in balance tests, which are an indicator of prenatal neurodevelopment.

The drinking habits of their mothers had been recorded during and after pregnancy, with those who drank three to seven glasses of alcohol a week classed as moderate drinkers.

But social advantage could be a large factor in the findings, as the research found mothers who were more affluent and better educated were more likely to drink in moderation. Mothers from a working-class background were more likely to abstain from alcohol through pregnancy, to drink heavily or binge drink.

Professor John Macleod, from the University of Bristol's School of Social and Community Medicine, led the study, which has been published by the journal BMJ Open.

"Most of the women in this study either didn't drink at all or if they did drink, they didn't drink very much," he said.

"There weren't many heavy drinkers. We know that heavy drinking during pregnancy has bad effects on a developing foetus.

"The moderate drinkers consumed an equivalent of up to one glass of wine a day.

"When we compared moderate drinkers with women who didn't drink at all we actually found that in relation to a number of different tests of balance the children of moderate drinkers appeared to do better.

"However, we also found that the women who moderately drank compared to women who didn't drink tended to be more middle-class.

"They were more socially advantaged. Having a middle-class mum compared to having a working-class mum is likely to advance a child in a lot of ways.

"They may have better balance, they might do better at school. Having middle-class parents has advantages to a child that are nothing to do with alcohol."

The 10-year-olds were part of the University of Bristol's Avon longitudinal study of parents and children (Alspac).

Alspac has been tracking the long-term health of around 14,000 children born between 1991 and 1992 to women living in the former Avon region of the UK.

Children of women whose alcohol consumption was recorded during pregnancy, at 18 weeks, and after pregnancy, at 47 months, underwent a 20-minute balance assessment at age 10.

The assessment included a number of balance tests such as walking on a beam and standing on one leg for 20 seconds with eyes open and then closed.

Researchers also asked the children's fathers how much alcohol they drank when their partners were three months pregnant.

Over half consumed one or more glasses per week, with one in five drinking one or more glasses a day.

In contrast, 70% of the mothers drank no alcohol while pregnant. One in four drank between one and seven glasses a week.

Just 4.5% drank seven or more glasses a week. Around one in seven of these mothers were classified as binge drinkers, consuming four or more glasses at one time.

The mothers were also assessed four years after the pregnancy and 28% said they did not drink at all, while over half consumed between three and more than seven glasses a week.

Higher total alcohol consumption by mothers before and after pregnancy – and fathers during the first three months of pregnancy – was associated with better performance for the children, particularly for static balance.

MacLeod said: "The way we investigated this further was to look at genes. People who carry a certain gene are far more likely not to drink alcohol on average.

"If it was really true that using a small amount of alcohol during pregnancy benefitted children's balance then we would expect those with mums who had the gene to have worse balance.

"We didn't see any evidence that babies of mothers with this gene had worse outcomes than those who drank.

"There was a weak suggestion that children of mothers with the gene had better balance but our study was too small to show this reliably."

He said results showed that after taking account of influential factors such as age, smoking and previous motherhood, low to moderate alcohol consumption did not seem to interfere with balance.

But better balance was associated with greater levels of affluence and educational attainment.

MacLeod said: "In this group of mothers, moderate alcohol intake was a marker for social advantage which could be a key factor in better balance.

"It could possibly override subtle harmful effects of moderate alcohol use.

"The supposed benefits we saw are not the effects of alcohol, they are effects of middle-classness."

The Royal College of Midwives said expectant mothers should still steer clear of alcohol.

Professional policy adviser Janet Fyle said: "We recognise that this is useful research. However, there is also a large amount of evidence suggesting that the cumulative effects of alcohol consumption during pregnancy can harm the developing foetus.

"Our advice continues to be that for women who are trying to conceive or those that are pregnant it is best to avoid alcohol."

1. Whatever you do on Father’s Day, don’t buy into the fear of ‘men deserts’ | Sarah Ditum
2. Bangladeshi workers taken ill after drinking water at factory

Parents pushing clever offspring into the Channel 4 limelight are uncomfortably close to US TV moms

It must be an inspiration to ambitious parents that the fame of Honey Boo Boo Child, the seven-year-old reality TV star from rural Georgia, has spread to these islands, with her off-screen appearances, as well as her TV show, now regularly documented in places that have not, historically, chronicled the caffeine-fuelled exploits of overweight child beauty contestants.

Even people who have never experienced Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, broadcast here on TLC channel, or its parent show, Toddlers and Tiaras, may well recognise their principal celebrity, who is more often pictured in a state of grubby dishevelment than in her pageant finery; they may even have heard some of her bon mots. "A dollar makes me holler" is one. Her mother's "If a person farts 10–15 times a day then they're healthy, so I guess my girls are healthy" is another line to feature in collections of the family's celebrated table talk.

Possibly it is because the formerly hard-up Boo Boo family are said to make squillions per episode, and will therefore enjoy the last laugh on all its critics, that photographs of a podgy seven-year-old in smeared make-up are already a regular feature in the sort of publications that regularly worry about child welfare in Britain's Got Talent, and about the sinister impact on girl toddlers of pink toys.

In any case, since the programme seems likely to be accepted here, as in the US, as a historic landmark in reality TV depravity, it is, of course, possible to watch in a spirit of strictly scholarly inquiry, to discover what Jodie Foster meant, when she declared, explaining her wish for privacy: "I'm not Honey Boo Boo Child." It is also instructive to see how thoroughly it is permissible to exploit a seven-year-old before the child protection agencies become involved.

The best thing to be said about the Honey Boo Boo programme makers is that at least they don't seem to claim any noble motive for monetising their freak collection. "It's been called everything from a pop culture phenomenon to an indication of the decay of western civilisation," is how the crowing TLC channel has introduced the show over here. "But one thing's for certain, there isn't a family out there like the self-proclaimed 'crazy' Thompsons from Georgia, USA."

There isn't? True, you don't hear many coinages such as Mama Thompson's "beautimous" on Channel 4's latest Child Genius series, given that spelling is one of the many tests in which the winner must excel. On the other hand, the families who have agreed, for whatever unfathomable reason, to subject their children to the genius equivalent of the redneck games, are all about being different, like the "crazy Thompsons".

There can't, for example, even in the outer, unholiest circle of tiger mother weirdness, be another family to rival Hillary's, dominated by her determination that her son, Josh, aged eight, should become the youngest-ever chess grandmaster. In order to fulfil her ambition, she calculates, perhaps having read Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers, the boy must complete 10,000 hours of practice – 50 hours a week for five years – some of it, less prodigiously than the average viewer might expect, under the supervision of a chess tutor.

Hillary's participation in the Channel 4/Mensa competition from which they are about to crash out, is, she says, "the chance to celebrate Josh". But like Honey Boo Boo, Josh is not always in the mood to please expectant voyeurs: he vomits on the way to the event, flounders, gets distressed, wants to go home. Honey Boo Boo's mother, of course, keeps a supply of sugar and Go-Go juice (a cocktail of Red Bull and another caffeine drink) handy for these crises. In Josh's case, Hillary tells him: "I love you for trying and I love you for being here ..." Hold that thought, Hillary, when you find that the 10,000 hour rule has just been convincingly challenged and it might take wee Josh 26 years instead.

No less than the unflinching anthropologists responsible for Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, the makers of Child Genius are also committed to exposing the truth about this minute subset of Britain's unbelievably intelligent community, to suppress episodes of unusual child behaviour that might lead to ridicule or to future regrets. It's not unknown. "I bitterly regret that the headmaster of the school where I was seven pushed me forward for this series," one participant in Michael Apted's acclaimed, Seven-Up series has said, "because every seven years, a little poison pill is injected."

Another pulled out, for a while, following tabloid vilification. "I was absolutely taken aback, genuinely shocked at the level of malice and ill-will." But, mercifully for Apted's subjects, they were exposed before social media intensified the experience, in ways that should only deepen suspicion about Channel 4's use of children and the ethics of a wider culture that tolerates such pimping of minors, whether the contract was sealed in Georgia or in north London.

Inevitably, given its extensive experience in human commodification, (Boys and Girls Alone, Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners etc), Channel 4 could have foreseen that the spectacle of one heartbreakingly unstreetwise child sniffing her books and of others showing off or acting up in the various ways their parents have, incredibly, sanctioned for public viewing, would inspire some mature members of the audience to compete with insulting comments. The children were diagnosed, among other things, as "autistic", "Aspergers", "dicks", "arrogant lil fucks" (sic), and "faggots" worthy of a "punch in the face": a little flavour of how helpful this programme will be in removing the taint of geekishness and singularity that already makes it hard for gifted and studious children to reveal themselves at school.

Since it's unimaginable that the parents weren't warned to expect vilification, they, too, must have accepted as a fair price for their own ambitions, or narcissism, the kind of hostilities that would never be countenanced by a Channel 4 producer for his or her own relations. Or not unless they, like the Thompsons or Kardashians, were richly compensated for their trouble and probable disappointments.

Even before the advent of online malice, those "where are they now?" pieces about child prodigies unfailingly turned up individuals with soaring, Mensa-worthy IQs, whose melancholy life trajectories could have been designed to confirm a) that it's never like a JD Salinger story and therefore b) for young geniuses, the circus is not your friend.

Responding to Sir Michael Wilshaw's concerns about bright pupils, following the abandonment of the gifted and talented programme, Mensa says such children "should be provided with the appropriate resources to learn and achieve their potential". Advice that might have been worth exploring had not this organisation just taken a bunch of clever children and parents and persuaded them do something so stupid that it makes Honey Boo Boo look like Mozart.

1. The Grand Old Party is stuck on stupid | Crystal Wright

All members of the family benefit from the active presence of paternal influence

To the lexicon of man-bags and mankinis, the Centre for Social Justice has added "man deserts". Giving warning of family homes throughout Britain devoid of present and engaged fathers, it talks of a "national emergency", seeing a million children growing up without positive male role models. Many have disputed the Centre's figures and criticised its alarmist language, but at least the right is engaged in this issue. When did a left-leaning thinktank last publish a report about fathers?

I know that fathers matter. My father walked out on my mother and her five children when I was 12. I never saw him again. I have always felt that hole in my life – and I am not alone. By the age of 16, nearly 3 million children in Britain no longer live with their dads and a million others never see theirs.

Absent fatherhood isn't all about fecklessness though – the overwhelming majority of dads want to be involved. Last year, I met Warren at a young fathers' group in a Brixton church. Typical of many young, poor dads, he can find no job and no house. He is left without any money to spend on his children and no place to see them in even if he had. Even dads who are better off than Warren, and are still with their partners, struggle to be there for their children. British fathers work the longest hours in Europe and statistics tell us that more than half have missed a significant event in their children's lives in the past year because of their jobs. Paternity leave is paid at a measly £136 a week – £100 less than a full-time job on minimum wage – and the government's recent shared parental leave is so complicated and filled with loopholes that it is expected that only 4% of dads will take it up.

This is unacceptable – and not only for fathers; 82% of working dads want to spend more time with their children and half of British mums say that, though they are actually the main carer for their children, they do not think that they should be. This anger has built up because Britain combines a 21st-century economy with 19th-century social policy.

Today, women are working longer hours but social policy hasn't caught up, and still assumes that families will have one carer (generally the mum) and one earner (generally the dad). The burdens on women have increased but they are still expected to provide the majority of childcare. My mum had no choice but to take on three jobs because she had been abandoned. Today, many women who want to share childcare with their partners are being pushed into staying at home by our archaic social policy.

Family policy is not a zero-sum game: any gain for dads need not come at the expense of mums. Dads are not a risk to be managed, but a resource to be used for the benefit of the whole family. Sadly, the Labour party has yet to make these arguments unambiguously.

The key public services that families rely on struggle to recruit men in significant numbers. Four out of five primary schools have fewer than three male teachers and even fewer men are active and present in children's centres. This feeds through to the father's experience of these services. Social workers often don't even record a father's name on individual care plans. GPs and schools will often only write correspondence on the child's development to the mother. Life is made difficult for mothers who want their partners to be fully involved.

And life is even more difficult for mums whose partners do not want to be involved – the government now wants to charge them for chasing the fathers of their children. Because we expect too little from dads who don't want to be there and are too hard on dads who do, mothers lose out either way.

A tacit conspiracy builds up on both political extremes that is entirely to the detriment of women. The instinct of many commentators on the right can be to berate mothers who happen not to live with the fathers of their children, even though many will do so because they have been widowed or abandoned. Yet the commentators on the extremes of the liberal left who insist mothers do not need anything more than financial assistance from their partners are just as damaging. All the evidence shows that active dads are good for children. Children, particularly boys, who grow up without fathers are more likely than their peers to be involved in crime, heavy drinking and drug use; have low educational attainment; suffer low self-esteem and anger issues; and, ultimately, become poor parents themselves. Active dads make a positive contribution: they are good for children and they are good for mothers.

Ed Miliband should pledge to make Britain the most father-friendly nation in the world. It is not good enough for us to cede these conversations to those who demonise single mums and deadbeat dads but have nothing to say ourselves.

We need a family policy that is fit for the 21st century and we need a language of love and respect with which to frame it. Without this, it won't just be the Labour party that loses out – it will be the next generation of children who grow up without a father figure in their lives.

1. South Africa: Young Men and Fathers Must Challenge ‘Manhood’
2. Whatever you do on Father’s Day, don’t buy into the fear of ‘men deserts’ | Sarah Ditum

If you examine the figures, this report about children growing up without male role models just doesn't add up

We live in an era of "men deserts", says the Centre for Social Justice. One day my children will look on me with worshipful eyes and say: "Mother, how did we survive the man drought of the early 21st century?" as if I'm some Mad Max of the spunkless years. This Sunday is Father's Day, the traditional time to pay tribute to any man you haven't driven screaming from your fanny ghetto after mating. But what to buy?

Luckily, everyone's got something to sell you for father's day, and some organisations aren't just hawking cufflinks and crap aftershave – they're selling a whole ethos. For example, the Centre for Social Justice is flogging the idea that we have become a nation unmanned. In a press release at the beginning of this week, the CSJ told us: "Lone parents tally heads for two million […] Around one million children grow up with no contact with their father […]some of the poorest parts of the country have become 'men deserts' because so few primary schools have male teachers".

Scary stuff. And fear must be a popular Father's Day gift, because people have been buying it and buying it and buying it. The Today programme bought it. The Telegraph bought it. The Times bought it. Newsnight bought it, in a Monday night report that opened with Paxman accepting the validity of all the CSJ's claims before asking: "Does it matter anyway?" But whoa there, Paxo! Before we assume it's a problem – let's find out if it's even true.

Checking the CSJ's claims was quite tricky at the beginning of the week, because the thinktank didn't release its report until Thursday. But it's here now, so let's do what Paxman didn't and see how those claims stack up. "Lone parents tally heads for 2 million" isn't bad: the Office for National Statistics says there were 1.7 million lone-parent households with dependent children in England and Wales in 2011, an increase from 1.4 million in 2001.

But what about the sad 1 million children who have no contact with their father? That comes from the Fatherhood Institute, which reckons the number is "between 1 and 2 million". The Fatherhood Institute may be a very fine and well-intentioned institute, but since it doesn't show its working, it may also be completely wrong. You can get a rough figure of 1 million using data from the ONS – but only if you take the highest possible figures and discount indirect contact like phone calls and email. It look as if the CSJ has just hoiked out the biggest plausible number and moved on.

Then there's the issue of male primary school teachers. It's true that men are a minority in primary teaching, and 27% of primary schools indeed have no male teachers. You may however notice that therefore 73% of primary schools do have at least one male teacher – and that proportion is increasing as more men join the profession. You might wish that there were more male primary teachers overall, but you can't really say that "so few" schools have them when actually the vast majority do.

And then we come to those vexatious "deserts", which the CSJ seems to have summoned into being by taking the smallest areas in the census (called "Lower Super Output Areas", and no I didn't have a clue what an LSOA was before this week) and conflating the LSOA with the electoral ward it's in. So the LSOA Sheffield 075G (population: 2,373) is presented as representative of the Manor Castle ward (population 21,768).

Then the CSJ excludes households without dependent children (which of course include many men living adjacent to the single mother households), then it gives the percentage of single parents as a proportion of the remainder, and then the reader is supposed to be shocked into reintroducing the married couple's tax allowance or something. Manor Castle has a bunch of issues, but it's not unusually short of men: in fact, 52% of the population is male, putting it slightly up on the Sheffield average and making it a well-irrigated man delta.

And if you find the image of a well-irrigated man delta unpleasant, consider how crude and nasty the CSJ's work is in the press release and report. Of the three headline contentions, only one is true, and the report's underlying claims are more dubious still. The CSJ assumes a direct causal link between single mothers and numerous undesirable social effects, and its proposed fix is that people should marry before they have children. Its solution is as crass as its concept of causation.

Children need more than that one caregiver – hell, they need a whole network, which is one reason why CSJ founder Iain Duncan Smith's suggestion that people just travel around chasing jobs is such a stupid answer to poverty. But those caregivers don't necessarily have to be in a sexual relationship, and fixating on marriage seems to have left the CSJ with some genuinely frightening spots of ignorance.

The report criticises agencies that intervene in cases of domestic abuse for failing to recognise fathers as caregivers, on the grounds that "many perpetrators desire a more positive relationship with their children, and this can be a powerful motivator for change." Here, the CSJ is subordinating the safety of children to the potential self-improvement of abusers. Because this report, with its wobbly stats and its exaggerated claims, isn't actually about what's best for children: it's about the fear that some women and children might be perfectly OK without a masculine hand hanging over the household.

1. South Africa: Young Men and Fathers Must Challenge ‘Manhood’