The Skeptical OB

Nothing demonstrates the incredible privilege and mind boggling self-absorption of Western, white natural childbirth advocates than the belief that giving birth at home is an accomplishment. The (undoubtedly privileged) folks at Sammiches & Psych Meds credulously report this mother’s unassisted homebirth, This Home Birth Story Proves Just How F**king Strong Moms Are: [pullquote align=”right” cite=”” […]

It’s time for another year end round up. These were the most popular posts of the year, starting with the most popular: Ten Month Mamas cheer a mother to her baby’s death Homebirth, like most of alternative health, is about two things. Not mother and baby; don’t be silly! It’s about defiance and denial. Homebirth […]

Maternal mortality has been one of the biggest health stories of 2017. A superb and evolving series of articles written by ProPublica in collaboration with NPR has focused a spotlight on the rising US maternal mortality rate. The latest piece is Nearly Dying In Childbirth: Why Preventable Complications Are Growing In U.S. Each year in […]

Becoming a mother is an experience like no other. As Alexandra Sacks, MD wrote in The New York Times: The process of becoming a mother, which anthropologists call “matrescence,” has been largely unexplored in the medical community. Instead of focusing on the woman’s identity transition, more research is focused on how the baby turns out. […]

Why do good mothers feel so bad? Because suffering is integral to contemporary mothering ideology. Yesterday I wrote about hyper-maternalism as a more accurate term than natural mothering or attachment parenting. Natural mothering and attachment parenting are really marketing terms designed to romanticize maternal suffering and hide the true purpose: manipulating women. Hyper-maternalism is a more […]

Why do good mothers feel so bad? It’s not an accident. It is a product of our beliefs about women. While many of us proudly declare ourselves feminists, we have failed to question fundamentally anti-feminist beliefs about motherhood, sacrifice and how the differing needs of women and children ought to be negotiated. We don’t question […]

Once again, the natural parenting crowd rushes to demonstrate what I’ve written. This time they’re demonstrating how cultural constructions of both women and nature are used to promote the misogynist belief that mothers ought to suffer. Both professional lactivist Dr. Jack Newman and artist Natalie Lennard have expropriated the Virgin Mary to make their sexist […]

It’s the largest study of its kind and it was supposed to save lives. According to StatNews: It was supposed to be a breakthrough moment in global health. Atul Gawande, the physician and writer, was applying a simple tool he championed — the checklist — to improve birth outcomes in a rural part of India […]

Most advocates of natural mothering — natural childbirth, breastfeeding, attachment parenting — believe that they have the best interests of children at heart. They don’t understand that they have fallen prey to the Maternal Guilt Industry that seeks to control mothers by generating and manipulating the fear that they will inadvertently harm their children. I’m not […]

The BBC is touting a new study claiming that paying women to breastfeed is effective. What it really shows it that bribing women to breastfeed is a spectacular waste of precious healthcare funds. Offering shopping vouchers to new mothers can encourage them to breastfeed their babies, a study published in JAMA Pediatrics has found. About […]