”Gummies are great,” says Kelly Stafford, wife of Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford. Speaking on “The Morning After” podcast, the mother of four children under the age of 8, explained that, “Sometimes I feel like gummies make me a better parent. They calm me down. It’s like the glass of wine.”

Stafford’s sentiment is becoming increasingly common, in part because cannabis use is becoming more common. According to a report from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, among adults aged 35-50, past-year use of cannabis was reported by approximately 44% of respondents in 2022, an increase from five years prior (35% in 2017) and 10 years ago (28% in 2012).

According to the report, “Daily marijuana use also reached its highest level reported in 2022 (11%), which was greater than five years (8% in 2017) and 10 years ago (6% in 2012).” Indeed, daily cannabis use is now surpassing daily alcohol use in the age group most likely to be parents.

Is it a problem that parents are now openly admitting to parenting their young children while under the effect of cannabis? Stafford assures the podcast listeners that she’s only taking gummies after her children go to bed. But as anyone with kids under 8 knows, it’s not as if they just go to bed once and then you don’t hear from them for the rest of the evening. Is it safe to be in charge of small children (awake or sleeping) when you’re high?

“I feel a little guilty saying it,” Stafford explained, “and it’s not like I do it every night, but sometimes I’m like, (expletive), it has been a long day. I don’t want to rip my hair out, or their hair out, so I am going to just top it off with a little gummy.’”

Stafford’s comparison of using gummies to drinking a glass of wine probably seems perfectly reasonable to her. After all, “wine moms” have been around for a while. Every tchotchke shop in the country has coasters, tote bags and T-shirts with jokes about how women need to drink in order to deal with their children (and husbands). We can argue about how cannabis is or isn’t different from alcohol. But the rates of drinking among women (and mothers in particular) have been cause for concern among medical professionals. So why would we want to expand that behavior into other substances?

A recent article in the journal Substance Use and Misuse found that about 13% of parents reported cannabis use in the past six months. The authors said that “Parents who endorsed cannabis use reported significantly more negative parenting, ACEs, anxiety, depression, and child emotional/behavioral problems.” (Negative parenting includes measures like hostility, physical discipline and inconsistency.)

In other words, you may think that using cannabis is improving your mood and the way you interact with your children, but chances are it’s not. Moreover, the authors concluded that “Parental cannabis predicted negative parenting, which in turn predicted early childhood emotional/behavioral problems.”

Whether cannabis use actually caused negative parenting behavior remains unclear, but even if negative parenting led to cannabis use and not vice versa, it’s concerning. Cannabis use does not, pace Kelly Stafford, make parenting better.

Perhaps our parenting standards have become so ridiculous that more and more mothers and fathers feel they need to drink or use drugs in order to get through the day. Maybe they lack the support of community and family and feel that childrearing is all on them. Or maybe we demand that parents spend a lot more time micromanaging kids these days, and moms and dads can’t seem to get the break that they would have in previous generations. If, as author Jennifer Senior said, parenting is “all joy and no fun,” it would be easy to see why so many parents are turning to drugs and alcohol to get through the day.

But that should be seen as a problem, not a punchline. When celebrities joke about turning to drugs to handle the difficulties of parenting they are sending a message to parents everywhere about the acceptability of the practice. Instead of speaking out about gummies, they might note that parents need more support or that young children can be exhausting and that mothers who are overwhelmed should not be embarrassed to ask for help. If they get to the end of the day and feel like tearing their hair out or their children’s hair out on a regular basis, that’s a sign that they might need something besides a mind-altering substance.