There have been many highlights in my professional life, but rarely has one filled me with as much glee as this one: Modern Alternative Mama, Katie Tietje, hate reviewed my book!
She and her followers are trying to drive down the ratings for PUSH BACK: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting.
And the best part is that Tietje didn’t even bother to read it, just like she never reads the scientific literature.
Behold!
Wow. I really don’t even know where to begin with this.
“Dr” Amy has taken something — the ‘natural’ parenting movement — that she never understood, never bothered or cared to understand, and twisted it into something so far from what it actually is, it’s unrecognizable.
I don’t know a single mother who cares more about her “experience” in birth than her baby’s safety. Nor any who would refuse truly needed medical interventions. “Dr” Amy shares anecdotes of mothers who have supposedly done this, to their baby’s detriment. Mothers I know are grateful for interventions where necessary — but I also know many who have had interventions pushed upon them without medical reason. Many felt bullied, and ended up with postpartum depression, or even PTSD. That’s a problem.
“Dr” Amy paints a beautiful picture of a sharply reduced maternal and perinatal mortality rate. What she fails to mention is that these rates were at an all-time low in the 1980s, but as birth has become more medicalized, they have risen — actually, have tripled — in the last 30 years. There’s a point where intervention is too much! And yes, we are overusing it now, and the results are sometimes tragic for mom and baby. “Dr” Amy conveniently ignores this, because it doesn’t fit her narrative.
Even more insulting is “Dr” Amy’s insistence that the entire natural child birth and natural parenting movement is driven solely by white men and money. Wow! Actually, modern obstetrics were driven largely by white men. There’s also not much money to be had by midwives, doulas, lactation consultants, etc. These people aren’t rich. Their salaries sure don’t compare to the salaries of obstetricians. Neither do the amounts women pay for birth pools and other supplies compare to what they pay for a simple dose of Tylenol in the hospital. The real money is clearly in the ‘mainstream’ system. (I personally paid less out of pocket for an out-of-hospital birth than I did for a hospital birth, even with good insurance. Although money wasn’t the motivator either way.)
Then “Dr.” Amy attacks natural because it’s really all about “privilege.” (It’s honestly dizzying how many random objections she comes up with. It sounds like the same tirade that the ‘natural’ people launch against the mainstream, simply turned around. It sounds more like butthurt than legitimate objections.)
And then “Dr.” Amy talks about how women are trapped in motherhood and men are pushed out, and women’s choices aren’t respected. This is so blatantly false — it just proves she’s never bothered to talk to anyone outside her tiny little world and try to understand who they are and what they want.
Plus, although “Dr” Amy rants and raves about the necessity of women having options and respecting women’s choices, she does not follow her own advice. She attacks women who don’t choose as she feels is necessary in this book. And, she commonly goes around the internet and trolls natural child birth groups. She maintains a blog called “Hurt by Home Birth” to highlight stories of babies who were injured or died during home births (regardless of cause). She has a group called “Fed Up with Natural Childbirth” where she and other women take screenshots of posts in ‘natural’ groups and mock the women, or even seek their personal information and call the police or children’s services on these women, often over nothing much. Recently, she used fake Facebook profiles to pretend to be a natural birth advocate, become an admin in a large natural parenting group, and dismantle the group entirely.
“Dr” Amy is someone who is closed-minded, refuses to understand a world outside her own, and will stop at nothing to belittle, demean, attack, and punish anyone who dares to stand up to her. She is a bully of the worst kind. This book is just one more step in her infantile tirade against a group of people she doesn’t understand. It’s just pathetic at this point.
When it comes to professional accomplishments, it doesn’t get much better than this!
