Survey: One in Four Women Surveyed in Romania Says She Consumed Alcohol During Pregnancy

One in four women who took part in a survey conducted in Romania says she consumed alcohol during pregnancy, either regularly or occasionally, while 55% say they did not discuss the risks associated with alcohol consumption with the doctor monitoring their pregnancy.

The data come from a survey conducted by iVOX Research at the request of the Spirits Romania employers’ association and released as part of the “Pregnancy or alcohol. You choose!” campaign.

The online survey was carried out between July 16 and August 14, 2026, and included 1,132 women in Romania aged over 18.

15% of respondents say their doctor allowed occasional alcohol consumption

One of the findings that draws attention concerns the information women received during pregnancy monitoring. According to the survey, 15% of participants say their doctor told them occasional consumption of small amounts of alcohol during pregnancy was acceptable.

At the same time, more than half of respondents – 55% – say they did not discuss the risks associated with alcohol at all with the doctor monitoring their pregnancy.

The influence of information received from family and friends also appears in the survey results. Some 56% of the women surveyed say they had heard from mothers, relatives, or friends about women who consumed alcohol during pregnancy without the child, according to those accounts, being affected.

Among participants who said they consumed alcohol during pregnancy, 22% said their decision was influenced by the fact that their doctor had not explicitly forbidden alcohol, while 16% cited the experience of relatives or friends who had consumed alcohol during pregnancy.

“A little alcohol can’t hurt” remains a circulating idea

The survey also examined the reactions women received from others when they chose not to drink alcohol at all during pregnancy.

Among them, 82.56% said nobody commented on their decision, 11.05% said they occasionally received suggestions that they were being too restrictive, while 6.40% frequently heard claims that they were exaggerating and that “a little alcohol can’t hurt”.

Regarding fetal risks, 56.38% of respondents know that prenatal exposure to alcohol can cause serious and permanent conditions. By contrast, 35.50% believe the danger arises only with excessive consumption or in the presence of other risk factors, while more than 8% say they had not heard about fetal conditions associated with alcohol exposure.

Almost one in five participants believes that beverages with a lower alcohol concentration or diluted alcoholic drinks are less harmful to the fetus. More than 10% still believe claims such as beer stimulating lactation or red wine lowering blood pressure during pregnancy.

Three quarters of the women surveyed believe that alcohol consumption during pregnancy is not discussed enough in public debate.

The survey is part of the “Pregnancy or alcohol. You choose!” campaign

The research was commissioned by Spirits Romania, an employers’ association representing producers and importers of spirits, and is part of the “Pregnancy or alcohol. You choose!” campaign, carried out with the support of Spirits Europe.

The organizers have also prepared an informational resource on alcohol consumption during pregnancy, which is to be distributed online until the end of the project, scheduled for November.

The findings should be interpreted in light of the study methodology: this was an online survey based on self-reported responses, not an epidemiological study measuring the prevalence of alcohol use across all pregnancies in Romania. Therefore, the figure of one in four describes the women who participated in the survey and should not automatically be interpreted as the prevalence in the entire population.

What does medicine say about alcohol consumption during pregnancy?

Current medical advice is to avoid alcohol during pregnancy. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that no amount of alcohol has been established as safe during pregnancy, there is no known safe time during pregnancy to drink alcohol, and no type of alcoholic beverage – wine, beer, or spirits – can be considered risk-free.

Alcohol in the mother’s bloodstream reaches the fetus, whose brain develops throughout pregnancy. The effects of prenatal exposure vary from one child to another, and the fact that one alcohol-exposed pregnancy resulted in no obvious problems does not allow the outcome of another pregnancy to be predicted.

The absence of a known safe threshold does not mean that every exposure inevitably causes fetal harm. It means that the available evidence does not allow researchers to identify an amount below which risk can be guaranteed to be absent. For this reason, the preventive recommendation is abstinence throughout pregnancy.

Alcohol consumption during pregnancy and miscarriage risk

A systematic review and meta-analysis on alcohol and miscarriage risk analyzed 24 studies and data from 231,808 pregnant women.

In the pooled analysis, alcohol consumption during pregnancy was associated with a higher risk of miscarriage compared with abstinence, with an odds ratio of 1.19. Researchers also identified a dose-response relationship: at levels of up to five alcoholic drinks per week, each additional drink per week was associated with an approximately 6% increase in the odds of miscarriage.

The authors nevertheless highlight limitations inherent to observational studies, including the difficulty of accurately measuring the amount of alcohol consumed and exposure during the earliest weeks of pregnancy.

Prenatal alcohol exposure can affect child development

A systematic review and meta-analysis published in 2024 brought together 306 studies evaluating the relationship between prenatal alcohol exposure and physical development, morphological features, neurodevelopment, and brain structure.

The analysis identified a dose-response relationship between prenatal alcohol exposure and head circumference, as well as other measures of body size, particularly at birth. Higher exposure levels were also associated with certain characteristic facial features and a range of neurodevelopmental changes.

Another systematic review focusing on studies designed to strengthen causal inference found evidence supporting a likely causal adverse effect of prenatal alcohol exposure on some cognitive outcomes, as well as weaker evidence regarding low birth weight.

What are fetal alcohol spectrum disorders?

Prenatal alcohol exposure can cause a group of conditions collectively known as fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, or FASD. These may involve different combinations of problems affecting physical development, behavior, learning, attention, memory, language, impulse control, and everyday functioning.

Fetal alcohol syndrome is one of the most severe forms of harm caused by prenatal alcohol exposure, but not all affected children show the full clinical picture of this syndrome.

A systematic review of 30 longitudinal studies showed that findings on neurodevelopment differ depending on the domain assessed and the level of exposure. Associations were identified with changes in motor skills, cognition, language, academic performance, attention, emotional regulation, and adaptive behavior, while evidence for other domains was less consistent.

Is there a trimester in which one glass of alcohol is safe?

No such period has been identified. Different structures and systems in the fetal body develop at different times, while nervous system development continues throughout pregnancy.

For this reason, medical advice is not “alcohol only after the first trimester” or “only occasionally”, but rather avoidance of alcohol throughout pregnancy.

The alcohol concentration of the beverage does not change the nature of the risk. Beer and wine contain the same ethyl alcohol as spirits; the difference lies in the amount of ethanol contained in a particular serving.

What if a woman drank alcohol before she knew she was pregnant?

This situation is common and should not automatically be interpreted as meaning that the fetus has been harmed. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) states that in the case of a small amount of alcohol consumed before a woman knew she was pregnant, serious harm is unlikely.

The recommendation is to stop drinking alcohol after pregnancy is confirmed and to continue routine prenatal care. If the exposure was substantial, repeated, or there are concerns, these should be discussed openly with the doctor monitoring the pregnancy.

The medical message is therefore not one of blaming women who consumed alcohol before knowing they were pregnant, but one of prevention: because no amount has been demonstrated to be safe, the safest choice during pregnancy is to avoid alcohol.