The central conceit of natural parenting is that we can and should recapitulate the practices of our ancient forebears. Why? Because that’s what brings us closest to nature and nature has, though evolution, optimized animals for perfection in parenting.
Consider this supremely stupid parenting meme posted by the geniuses at Occupy Breastfeeding:
“Breastfeeding is too hard.” — Said no cavewoman ever
Many of the difficulties of breastfeeding are due to modern beliefs and fears, which have come from living in a bottle feeding society.
#fedgoeswithoutsaying
#normaliseit
Or this piece of mindboggling idiocy from UK midwife Sheena Byrom the poster child for the moral bankruptcy of UK midwifery and well known for her vicious harassment and trolling of a loss parent.
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Mothering like an animal leads to dead babies.[/pullquote]
… In her talk at Derby Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust last month, Mrs Byrom said: ‘Do we really believe that women’s bodies are so faulty that less than 40 per cent will give birth without intervention?’
Or the classic homebirth fatuousness of Ina May Gaskin:
Human female bodies have the same potential to give birth well as aardvarks, lions, rhinoceri, elephants, moose, and water buffalo.
The bedrock assumption of these deep thinkers is that parenting in nature is perfect, and it is only humans who encounter difficulties in birth and lactation.
The truth is very different; parenting among animals has astronomical mortality rates, even higher than the mortality rates of ancient humans. This chart derived from published data on animal mortality makes it crystal clear.
Early neonatal mortality (up to age one week) among mammals is appalling, ranging from 16.3% among the apes, our closest animal relatives, to 28.5% in small primates and slightly more among carnivores. The estimated ancient human neonatal mortality rates are only a fraction the size.
What does that tell us?
It tells us that birth is not benign and establishing lactation is fraught with problems.
Infant mortality is far higher still: 25.3% of apes, 38.6% of small primates, and 43.2% of carnivores don’t make it to their first birthday. In the case of small primates and carnivores, a significant fraction of the deaths are probably due to predation, but that doesn’t account for so many deaths among ape infants. Apparently, maintaining lactation isn’t easy after all.
We shouldn’t be surprised. In Harry Harlow’s experiments with monkeys, he found that baby monkeys fed with formula did far better than those nursed by their mothers.
We had separated more than 60 of these animals from their mothers 6 to 12 hours after birth and suckled them on tiny bottles. The infant mortality was only a small fraction of what would have obtained had we let the monkey mothers raise their infants. Our bottle- fed babies were healthier and heavier than monkey-mother-reared infants … thanks to synthetic diets, vitamins, iron extracts, penicillin, chloromycetin, 5% glucose, and constant, tender, loving care.
Perhaps most unexpected is the high mortality rates among infant kangaroos. There is no possibility of birth injuries because they are born tiny and are then protected within the mother’s pouch while continuously attached to a teat. Nonetheless, 16.4% don’t survive the first week and 23.8% don’t survive the first year.
What are we to make of this?
Obviously, parenting in nature is very far from perfect. High deaths rates are the norm and the population grows because parents have future children to replace the ones that died. Birth is dangerous; early infancy is dangerous; indeed the entire first year is dangerous. The same is true for human birth and infancy, and it isn’t culture that’s to blame, it is nature itself.
If more than 16% of kangaroo mothers can’t successfully suckle a baby through its first week after birth, why do the folks at Occupy Breastfeeding fantasize that 100% of “cavewomen” could successfully nurse a baby through its first week?
If large numbers of animals can’t survive the first week after birth, why would Sheena Byrom imagine that substantial numbers of human babies would survive without interventions?
And no doubt, Ina May Gaskin never bothered to determine the perinatal death rates of aardvarks, lions, rhinoceri, elephants, moose, and water buffalo before offering them as examples that human mothers can and should emulate.
It is an article of faith among both natural childbirth advocates and lactivists that the past was better, that emulating animals is best and that both childbirth interventions and formula are the result of cultural fears and taboos.
The truth is the opposite. Childbirth and breastfeeding in nature are routinely deadly both for humans and for animals. The past wasn’t better; it was hideous. And it is natural childbirth and lactivism itself that reflect cultural fears and taboos, not modern obstetrics or the use of formula.
Mothering like an animal leads to dead babies. Both modern obstetrics and the use of formula are responses to that reality and both have been phenomenally effective at reducing death rates. Natural childbirth and lactivism are cultural conceits fabricated to justify the irrational worship of nature, the industries of natural childbirth and breastfeeding, and the self-esteem of their practitioners.
It’s not an accident that the veneration of natural childbirth in the UK has led to a plethora of preventable infant deaths. It is not an accident that lactivism has led to preventable infant brain damage and death in industrialized countries. The idea that both unmedicated vaginal birth and breastfeeding are best for all babies is merely a cultural construct. The injuries and deaths that result are — ironically — only natural.
