Weed and kids are a risky mix but Garden Moms are toking up

Motherhood is hard; weed helps: That’s the toxic message from a new group of online influencers — “gardeners,” they like to call themselves — who advocate using cannabis to deal with the stress of parenting small children.A recent article in The Atlantic by Sarah Levy tallied 76,000 videos on TikTok with the “#gardenmom” label.There’s Taylor Mitchem (with 120,000 followers), who had a baby in 2020 and felt responsible for most of the child care because her husband was too nervous to help much.She was a regular weed user before her baby was born to help with her anxiety and ADHD.So she decided to resume her habit, and began smoking again daily when her kid was 2 ½.“Life is hard,” she told Levy.“If you have something that takes the edge off a little bit, why not?”Why not? Because parenting small children while high on drugs is a recipe for disaster.Using marijuana during pregnancy has been linked to low birth weights and pre-term birth, as well as to abnormal neurological development and a higher likelihood that the child will develop ADHD.After a baby is born, the risks of weed use only multiply.First, as anyone who’s ever cared for an infant knows, they need a lot of attention.It’s not just the feeding and burping and changing; it’s also being attuned to small changes — if they spike a fever, for instance — that can require immediate medical attention.Then there are the unsafe sleep habits: Of the more than 5,000 child-maltreatment fatality cases my colleagues and I have collected in our database at Lives Cut Short, more than 700 involved unsafe sleep conditions and more than two-thirds involved parental substance use.Most parents can safely co-sleep with their children, because they will naturally wake up when a child is in distress.If impaired by drugs or alcohol, though, that awareness may not kick in.Many of the “garden moms” decide to smoke pot first thing in the morning, though: “Coffee and coughy,” they like to call...