We need a term for the subtle and not so subtle put downs favored by lactivists and natural childbirth advocates to assert their superiority over other mothers.
I suggest ad mominem.
Ad mominems are hateful, hurtful and potential deadly claims made by individual mothers, mommy bloggers and, unfortunately, professionals such as midwives and lactation consultants, as well as the organizations that represent them.
Classic ad mominems wielded by individuals include:
Infant formula is poison.
Epidurals cause babies to be drugged.
Women who have C-sections can’t bond to their babies, and haven’t given birth in any case.
Apparently, the current ad mominem of choice is to give the side-eye to women bottle feeding their babies or, better yet, approach them to evangelize on the benefits of breastfeeding.
Although these are outrageous, and deeply upsetting in the moment, most of us recognize that while they are hateful and hurtful, they reflect the insecurity of the women uttering them. Those who casually drop ad mominems are deeply insecure about their own parenting and make themselves feel better by disparaging others.
What about mommy bloggers?
It takes a special kind of narcissism to imagine that the world is waiting for your advice on parenting, and that you should set up a website where you display your children, violate their privacy, and dispense your special brand of wisdom. Mommy bloggers are virtuosos of the ad mominem.
Consider:
I am brave (foolish) enough to admit that while I totally and completely support any woman’s right and choice to feed her babies however she needs to, I still, deep down in a place I don’t like to admit, don’t really “get” it when a woman chooses, without any medical or social barrier, not to breastfeed. To me it’s sorta like deciding not to take prenatal vitamins because you just don’t wanna, without recognizing that they do help build a healthier baby. I will NOT be all sanctimonious about it, I’m just saying I’m human and that one’s a head scratcher for me. We have lactating boobs for a reason: to feed the babies we make.
The Feminist Breeder is a rank amateur when compared to The Alpha Parent, master of the graphic ad mominem:
Blogger Mama Birth is master of my favorite form, the meta ad mominem, where the blogger attempts to blame women for feeling bad after she shames them. A shining example is I Can’t Make You Feel Ashamed of Your Birth (Unless You Really Are Ashamed of It):
Shaming is a hot topic in the birth world though, isn’t it? If you are dumb enough to have an opinion and share it then you are undoubtedly going to be accused of shaming somebody who did otherwise. If you state that formula is a poor substitute for breast-milk or mention that the cesarean section is a perverse form of birth control … or (gasp) talk about how much you loved your natural birth, then stand back. Because what happens next is you will be accused of shaming people.
Many mommy bloggers are bullies and like most bullies, they have extremely fragile egos. That’s why most have to delete and ban anyone who disagrees with their ad mominems and then, in a feat of magic worthy of Houdini, claim that everyone else is bullying them.
But the greatest damage, pain and suffering occurs at the hands of the professionals who casually drop ad mominems to fragile new mothers, and the organizations that represent them, which use ad mominems to market themselves.
Emily Wax-Thibodeux, who survived breast cancer and endured a double mastectomy, was subjected to ignorance and cruelty for bottle feeding her newborn son:
“You really should breast-feed,” the hospital’s lactation consultants, a.k.a. “lactivists,” said.
When I simply said, “I’m going to do formula,” they didn’t want to leave it at that.
So holding my day-old newborn on what was one of the most blissful days of my life, I had to tell the aggressive band of well-intentioned strangers my whole cancer saga…
“Just try,” they advised. “Let’s hope you get some milk.”
“It may come out anyway, or through your armpits,” another advised later …
The RCM’s Campaign for Normal Birth is unprofessional, unethical and unsafe. It relies on the ultimate ad mominem, that unmedicated vaginal birth is safest for babies (it isn’t). It has given British midwives license to bully women out of effective pain relief, and life saving interventions.
“Most women, in every country across the world, would prefer to give birth as physiologically as possible. For most women and babies, this is also the safest way to give birth, and to be born, wherever the birth setting. If routine interventions are eliminated for healthy women and babies, resources will be freed up for the extra staff, treatments and interventions that are needed when a laboring woman and her baby actually need help. This will ensure optimal outcomes for all women and babies, and sustainable maternity care provision overall.”
No, most women would NOT prefer to give birth without technology interventions. Most MIDWIVES would prefer it, because that allows them to maintain control over patients.
It is NOT the safest way to give birth, as the deaths of 11 babies and one mother on the altar of natural childbirth at Morecambe Bay demonstrate.
Resources are NOT “freed up” for when they are needed; they are DENIED to babies and women when they are needed.
This does NOT ensure optimal outcomes for women and babies. It ensures optimal outcomes for MIDWIVES.
The RCM Campaign for Normal Birth is an abomination. It kills babies; it kills mothers and it has become an all purpose excuse for midwives to bully patients. It should be disavowed immediately.
The Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative
Even its name is not so subtle ad mominem, but if there’s a bigger oxymoron in contemporary health care, I’m not aware of it. This campaign to promote breastfeeding (and, not coincidentally, lactation consultants) is not friendly to babies, and is cruel to mothers. There is nothing baby friendly about efforts to promote breastfeeding to the exclusion of a mother and baby’s actual needs. There is not, and there can never be, anything “baby friendly” about destroying the confidence of new mothers and making them feel guilty about a decision with trivial consequences.
And it is literally deadly, as detailed in the paper Deaths and near deaths of healthy newborn infants while bed sharing on maternity wards:
Although bed sharing with infants is well known to be hazardous, deaths and near deaths of newborn infants while bed sharing in hospitals in the United States have received little attention … These events occurred within the first 24 h of birth during ‘skin-to-skin’ contact between mother and infant, a practice promoted by the ‘Baby Friendly’ (BF) initiative … We report 15 deaths and 3 near deaths of healthy infants occurring during skin-to-skin contact or while bed sharing on maternity wards in the United States. Our findings suggest that such incidents are underreported in the United States and are preventable…
Ad mominems are hateful, hurtful and deadly.
It’s time to put an end to them.
