Many would-be mothers have believed one glass of wine won't hurt but a leading world authority on children with complex learning difficulties says there should be a clear line to stop pregnant women drinking.
Professor Barry Carpenter was in Tauranga this week to speak at a NZ Educational Administration and Leadership Conference and also spoke at a separate conference in Hamilton last week.
Professor Carpenter is considered by his peers a leading world authority and expert on children with complex learning difficulties, many of which have stemmed from mothers drinking while pregnant. His career spans 30 years and he is a Fellow of Oxford University.
He said pregnant women who believed a single drink periodically would not harm their baby were rolling a dice.
"They are gambling. Yes, they could be right because you could roll the dice and get a six, but you could roll the dice and get a one - the one glass of wine could be drunk on the wrong day at the wrong time," he said.
With devastating effects.
"When a woman drinks alcohol it's more dangerous than drugs or smoking because the alcohol goes immediately into the blood stream," Professor Carpenter said.
"Basically what the mother drinks is what baby drinks. You have a liver with enzymes that de-toxifies. That wee baby in the first trimester doesn't have a liver. It can't de-tox itself. So how do they protect themselves? They can't."
The result was babies born with Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), a disorder affecting brain function, behaviour and physical appearance.
Professor Carpenter said many women did not necessarily know they were pregnant until after the first 12 weeks. Drinking excessive amounts of alcohol often disrupted a woman's menstrual cycle.
The ripple effect from this was huge, Professor Carpenter said.
"In New Zealand this year many children will be born with FASD. This is more than the combined total amount of children born with down syndrome, cerebral palsy and cystic fibrosis," he said.
"Put them all together and it's still not more than children with FASD."
Professor Carpenter said many people would already be familiar with the three disabilities mentioned but not necessarily FASD, which needed to change, he said.
"This is the largest group of children with mis-shapen faces. The eyes are wider apart. The philtrum [area between lips and nose] in these kids is usually flat and the upper lip is thin but also the function of these children's brains ... lots of these children have ADHD.
"They have behavioral problems. They have emotional problems. Children with these disabilities are the largest percentage of children going in to the criminal justice system."
Professor Carpenter said society failed FASD children because teachers were not taught how best to deal with them in the classroom, so they grew up with little education and were doomed to fail.
"Children are now paying the price for our abuse of alcohol. These disabilities are 100 per cent preventable and 100 per cent irreversible," Professor Carpenter said.
Ninety per cent of adults with FASD had mental health problems and only 10 per cent were actually able to work.