Skip the guilt, moms
There’s no scientific evidence to justify attachment parenting — the habit of keeping a newly born infant physically attached to his mother day and night. Breast milk is better than formula — but not very much better. C- sections have likely saved more lives than any other medical procedure throughout history.
Oh, and epidurals: “They are the most awesome thing in the universe. We should give that guy the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom — every prize we can pile on,” said Dr. Amy Tuteur, a former obstetrician and gynecologist, longtime blogger and author of what will become the most provocative book to hit the Mommy Wars this year. Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting, was released this week.
“I always say I had two children with epidural and two without, and the only difference was the excruciating pain,” she said.
On her blog, The Skeptical OB, Tuteur challenges many of the assumptions of natural parenting, which has become the pervasive ideology now overwhelming middle- class cultural expectations of childbirth in the developed world.
Natural parenting fetishizes a prehistoric fantasy of child rearing. It preaches that childbirth is safe and natural; that traditional Western medicine and the interventions it offers should be feared and despised, that baby formula is outright dangerous, and that mothers have an obligation to sleep with their children and with their infants all day. At the extreme end, this philosophy recommends home birth, which has a much higher rate of neonatal death than hospital birth.
Parenting this way isn’t necessarily a bad idea, Tuteur insists, if it works for mothers and families — she practised many of these things herself.
The problem is that these philosophies have evolved into a lucrative market of doulas and midwives pushing a childbirth experience, and lactation consultants and expensive books, classes and workshops. Worst of all, women now feel extraordinary guilt if they can’t live up to the new ideals of motherhood.
“When I was practising, I would deliver babies and next morning make the rounds. There would be healthy mothers and healthy babies, and sometimes I’d come across a mom crying saying, ‘ I’m a total failure. I had an epidural or a C- section.’ And I completely did not get it. My whole view was ‘ Weren’t we trying to have a baby, here? Didn’t we accomplish that?’ “
Once this kind of a reaction was rare. Now it’s incredibly common, thanks to the Internet and documentaries like the 2008 film, The Business of Being Born — in which Ricki Lake rails against the mainstream American medical system, then gives birth at home to her second son.
“The Business of Being Born is to childbirth what Andrew Wakefield’s bogus studies on the MMR vaccine is to vaccines and autism. It was a turning point, but it was every bit as much scientific junk as Andrew Wakefield’s study,” Tuteur said.
Much of natural parenting is a backlash to the paternalism of mainstream medicine — and, certainly there’s no shortage of problems in that field. However, the demands of natural parenting are every bit as paternalistic. They’re also inconvenient, onerous and painful.
And the real irony is that while the philosophy is shrouded by feminism and the language of female empowerment, almost all of it traces its roots to the deeply religious and flawed white men who put proscriptions on young mothers just as women were starting to demand more political and economic freedom.
Tuteur’s book charts much of this history.
The notion t hat childbirth should be unmediated, for example, began with the work of Grantly Dick- Read, a eugenicist who feared white women were forgoing child- bearing for fear of pain, thus diluting the white gene pool. He posited that pain was a punishment for “civilized” women and that their “primitive” hypersexualist counterparts felt none.
Attachment parenting? That comes from Dr. William Sears and his wife, fundamentalist Christians who believed God demanded his children be physically attached to their mothers day and night — no work outside the home, then.
As for breastfeeding, that onerous, round- the clock obligation that now produces shame for women who opt for formula, began with the formation of La Leche League, a collection of devout Catholic mothers.
None of these ideas are particularly pro- women. They don’t do much for babies, either, Tuteur said. What they have become is a big industry. Although most of the proponents of these philosophies sincerely believe in them, they prey on young mothers at a fragile moment.
“( The guilt) doesn’t kick in until the time of birth, when women are hormonally very vulnerable. You meet your baby and for many people, it is such an overwhelming powerful feeling of love, you would do anything,” she said. “Then someone comes and says ‘ Oh, you’re not doing what I did? Well I guess you really don’t love your baby as much as I love mine.’ And that is like getting stabbed in the heart.”
And this is where the philosophy is most pernicious. It’s become a kind of “artisanal” parenting. A way for some women to feel smug and superior to others, an instinct that has spawned years of Internet-wide Mommy Wars over everything from breastfeeding to sleep training and daycare.
“Remember in middle school, the girls at the cafeteria who wouldn’t let you sit at the table? Now they’re all down at the playground, telling you you’re a bad mother and your child is destined to be a criminal because you don’t breastfeed,” Tuteur said. “It’s like designer handbags. People get them because they want to broadcast something about themselves.”
Competitive mothering is exhausting and, worse, totally pointless. The impact of these choices in the long run is negligible; being born to a two-parent, economically stable family in a developed country with access to advanced medical care will give any child a good start. Much past that, it’s a crap shoot.
There is no perfect formula to ensure a child reaches his full potential. All parents can do is ensure physical needs are being met and the child is loved and he knows it.
The guilt is useless.
COMPETITIVE MOTHERING IS EXHAUSTING AND, WORSE, TOTALLY POINTLESS. THE IMPACT OF THESE CHOICES IN THE LONG RUN IS NEGLIGIBLE.