There’s a tremendous overlap between natural childbirth advocates and lactivists. That leads to the central conundrum of natural parenting: IS a healthy baby all that matters or ISN’T it?
Natural childbirth advocates believe they know the answer. According to Milli Hill, writing in 2014, a healthy baby is NOT all that matters:
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Why is the woman who chooses high risk homebirth lauded while the woman who chooses formula feeding denigrated?[/pullquote]
Women matter too. When we tell women that a healthy baby is all that matters we often silence them. We say, or at least we very strongly imply, that their feelings do not matter, and that even though the birth may have left them feeling hurt, shocked or even violated, they should not complain because their baby is healthy and this is the only important thing…
In other words, women’s experience of birth is critical to their health.
Too often women who say they care about the details of their baby’s birth day are accused of wanting an ‘experience’, as if it is selfish to care about how their baby is born, how they feel or how they are treated.
Notably Hill doesn’t question the validity of women’s desires. It is enough for a woman to want a birth experience that differs from the hospital routine in order for her to be entitled to it.
Hill, like most natural childbirth advocates, is passionately committed to the principle that a healthy baby ISN’t all that matters … right up to the moment of birth. After that, Hill is equally passionately committed to principle that when it comes to infant feeding, a healthy baby IS the only thing that matters.
Wait, what?
Shouldn’t Hill’s claims about birth apply equally to breastfeeding? Doesn’t she believe that when we tell women that when it comes to infant feeding a healthy baby is all that matters we often silence them? How can we justify saying, or at least very strongly implying, that their feelings do not matter, and that even though breastfeeding may have them feeling hurt, shocked or even violated, they should not complain because breastfeeding will guarantee their baby is healthy and that is the only important thing?
How does Hill rationalize this hypocrisy? By questioning the validity of women’s desires:
But surely, breast or bottle, it’s all down to personal choice.
Every parent should have the freedom to decide how they feed their baby, and nobody should be judged for the path they take.
Right?
Except, that would discount the persuasive power of marketing.
In other words, the exact same women who wouldn’t and shouldn’t be pressured to knuckle under to the “obstetric industry” with its promotion of technological birth are supposedly dupes for the formula industry.
How ironic is this? Let me count the ways:
It’s a violation of women’s autonomy. A woman’s right to control her own body is not expelled with the placenta. If a woman has the right to refuse to let anyone put fingers in her vagina to measure cervical dilatation, she ought to have the exact same right to refuse to let a lactation consultant grab her breast and shove her nipple into an infant’s mouth.
It’s disrespectful of women. While Hill and her natural childbirth colleagues have no trouble believing that women who make alternate choices for childbirth are “educated” and empowered, Hill and her lactivist colleagues cannot imagine that women who make an alternate choice to breastfeeding are equally educated and empowered.
It is utterly inconsistent. Although a healthy baby is supposedly NOT the only thing that matters when it comes to childbirth, a healthy baby is purportedly the ONLY thing that matters when it comes to infant feeding.
It seems impossible to reconcile these diametrically opposed views of women’s autonomy, ability to make informed decisions, and importance given to a baby’s health.
But not if you look at it from a different angle, an angle that takes the views of natural parenting professionals as central. Their view is in that any conflict between what is good for women and what is good for them, their needs and desires ought to take precedence.
For Milli Hill and her colleagues who profit from promoting natural childbirth, encouraging women to buy their books, products and services is always an unalloyed good. That means that women who choose their experience over the health of the baby must be supported in every way.
For Milli Hill and her colleagues who profit from promoting breastfeeding, encouraging women to buy their books, products and services is always an unalloyed good. That requires that women who choose their experience over the purported health of the baby must be excoriated in every way.
The woman who chooses to ignore medical advice and have a high risk homebirth is to be lauded but the woman who chooses to ignore medical advice and formula-feed must be decried as gullible, uneducated and selfish.
What matters is not the health of the baby but the financial health of Milli Hill and her colleagues.
When you look at it that way, it all makes perfect sense.
