Maci Bookout has always been a Teen Mom favorite, and for good reason.
She’s a great mother, she’s smart, she’s driven. She’s dealt with a lot with her ex, borderline deadbeat dad Ryan Edwards, and it’s been so wonderful to see her finally get a happy ending with Taylor McKinney.
But although Maci is just so lovely, and although she’s the only Teen Mom OG star who’s never really gone through a dark time, she’s not perfect.
And we don’t mean that she’s not perfect in the way that nobody’s perfect.
We mean she’s not perfect in the way that many, many Teen Mom viewers believe that she may have a drinking problem.
She’s often seen with a beer on the show or on social media — there was a time that you saw her with one more often than not.
The issue (the issue as perceived by fans, that is) was so serious that she was even accused of drinking while pregnant with her third child, Maverick.
In a strange turn of events, Maci claimed that she didn’t find out she was pregnant until she was well into her second trimester, which was honestly a little odd in itself.
After all, she’d been pregnant twice before, she has such a small frame, and when she did share the news, she had a rather large bump. It seems strange that she wouldn’t have known.
But when Teen Mom fans heard about the pregnancy, they immediately pointed out that in previous months, throughout her first trimester, Maci was photographed with booze, and she’d even been seen knocking back beers on the show.
There are a few explanations for this. Maci could have really not known she was pregnant, or she could have kept the news to herself and pretended to drink to keep the rumors at bay.
Even disregarding the drinking while pregnant scandal though, some people think she drinks a little too much.
And in her second memoir, I Wasn’t Born Bulletproof: Lessons I’ve Learned (So You Don’t Have To), she confronts that talk head-on.
In one part of the book, she discusses a specific bit of controversy that came about when Taylor shared a photo of Maci holding baby Jayde and also a beer.
“The reaction that followed was intense,” she wrote. “People accused me of being a horrible, negligent mother; of drinking too much; of putting my newborn in mortal danger.”
“It’s one beer,” she continued, “folks I am an adult, over the legal drinking age, and just because I’m a mom that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy a beer on a Sunday evening with my husband.”
“Newsflash: Mothers Are Human Beings. We are flawed, hard-working, well-intentioned, exhausted individuals; we do our best, we make mistakes, but above all we love our children.”
If you think she’s done, then obviously you don’t know Maci.
“While obviously I don’t condone excessive drinking,” she explained, “having a beer — or even smoking the occasional cigarette — does not warrant a call to Child Services, and it does not make you a bad mother.”
And there you have it.
While a solid amount of Teen Mom sleuths will no doubt continue to theorize about Maci’s drinking habits, the fact remains that she’s obviously a good mother.
And she’s also very, very obviously not bothered by anyone saying otherwise.
