Whenever I write about the history of natural childbirth, a cultural construct created by men to control women’s bodies, someone (or several someones) inevitably drop in to comment that natural childbirth is nothing more than childbirth in nature. They probably even believe it.

But the truth is that natural childbirth is a form of play acting. It bears as much relationship to childbirth as Civil War reenactments bear to the actual war. Merely dressing up to superficially resemble the soldiers in a battle does not recapitulate the death, destruction and suffering of the battle let alone the long war.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]As with contemporary marathons, a decision has been made to substitute something different for the original while continuing to call it by the same name.[/pullquote]

But wait, I hear you say, natural childbirth is much more than dressing up as if you were giving birth in nature. In natural childbirth, you are actually giving birth. True, so Civil War enactments aren’t quite the correct analogy. It seems to me that natural childbirth bears as much relationship to childbirth in nature as a contemporary marathon bears to the original Greek marathon.

Contemporary marathons reference the original run to Marathon that took place in Greece.

In 490 B.C., the Athenian army defeated the invading Persian army in a battle in the plain of Marathon, located roughly 26 miles north of Athens. According to legend, the Athenians then ordered the messenger Pheidippides to run ahead to Athens and announce the victory to the city.

Pheidippides raced back to the city in intense late summer heat. Upon reaching the Athenian agora, he exclaimed “Nike!” (“Victory!”) or “Rejoice! We Conquer” and then collapsed dead from exhaustion.

Contemporary marathoners copy the original in that they do run 26.2 miles just as Pheidippides ran from Marathon to Athens. But in all other respects, they are strikingly different. How? Let me count the ways.

1. The original marathon was not a competition, it was a military order. Pheidippides was a soldier; he had no choice in the matter. He didn’t decide to run to Athens in order to self-actualize.

2. He didn’t run on smooth roads; he ran on unprepared ground.

3. He probably didn’t wear shoes. His feet were undoubtedly torn apart by the run.

4. The route wasn’t laid out; he had to find it.

5. There were no refreshment stations along the way.

6. There was no medical tent filled with doctors, nurses, IVs and other medical equipment.

7. He dropped dead at the end.

These changes are deliberate in order to make marathons easier and safer than the original. It’s not that Pheidippides’  run from Marathon to Athens couldn’t be copied; it could be. It’s that a decision has been made to substitute something different for the original while continuing to call it by the same name. The only thing the two have in common is that they both involve running the same distance.

Contemporary natural childbirth resembles childbirth in nature as much as contemporary marathons represent the original. The only thing natural childbirth has in common with childbirth in nature is that they both involve women giving birth. The similarity ends there. How are they different? Let me count the ways.

1. Contemporary natural childbirth is at its heart a choice to forgo medical and comfort interventions that are available. You have to have easy access to these interventions in order to give meaning to refusing them. In contrast childbirth in nature does not allow for any choice at all.

2. Natural childbirth includes all sorts of unnatural components. There’s nothing natural about giving birth on a bed or in a plastic kiddie pool, in a home or hospital complete with heating and air conditioning.

3. Natural childbirth requires “educating yourself” by taking classes and reading books, websites and Facebook pages, none of which exist in nature.

4. Natural childbirth almost always involves a support person.

5. Contemporary natural childbirth always involves easy access to medical intervention. It’s always possible for a woman to call an end to her natural birth and ask for an epidural. That changes the dynamic dramatically from knowing that there is no alternative to enduring from beginning to end.

6. Although death of the mother is routine in childbirth in nature; it is neither expected or countenanced in natural childbirth.

So natural childbirth bears only the slightest resemblance to childbirth in nature. Just as in contemporary marathons, everything is made easier and safer and it is entirely a matter of choice, not necessity.

But marathons are closer to the original marathon for the simple reason that running 26.2 miles is still an achievement; very few people can do it no matter how hard they train for it. In contrast, natural childbirth is not an achievement since any woman can do it and most women who have ever existed have already done it. The value attributed to giving birth without pain medication is entirely culturally constructed and has nothing to do with reality.

Natural childbirth is a form of play acting in which adults pretend to themselves and each other that they are recapitulating childbirth in nature. It’s like imagining that dressing up as a soldier at the Battle of Antietam makes you a Civil War hero; it’s nothing more than make believe.

I breastfed my four children and I enjoyed it. I had the usual relatively minor difficulties including pain and multiple bouts of mastitis. It wasn’t convenient, particularly when my first child was born and I was working 70 hours a week as a chief resident, but I had a booming milk supply, a private office in which to pump, and fat, happy babies who were thriving.

Even so, I’ve never been on a breastfeeding journey and neither has anyone else of my generation. That’s because breastfeeding “journeys” didn’t exist then. We didn’t go on breathing journeys, digestion journeys or menstruation journeys, either. We approached bodily functions as just that — bodily functions — not as opportunities to pressure women into approved behavior.

Of course that was before the advent of breastfeeding propaganda. It was before the breastfeeding industry’s attempt to euphemize the pain, frustration, inconvenience and serious complications of breastfeeding by romanticizing them as a journey. Women who are on breastfeeding journeys are unwitting victims of propaganda.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Women who are on breastfeeding journeys are unwitting victims of propaganda.[/pullquote]

As Wikipedia explains:

Propaganda is information that is not objective and is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, often by presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is presented…

Why is it used?

The propagandist seeks to change the way people understand an issue or situation for the purpose of changing their actions and expectations in ways that are desirable to the interest group… [It] serves as a corollary to censorship in which the same purpose is achieved, not by filling people’s minds with approved information, but by preventing people from being confronted with opposing points of view… The leaders of an organization know the information to be one sided or untrue, but this may not be true for the rank and file members who help to disseminate the propaganda.

That accurately sums up the tactics of lactivists:

• Cherry pick data
• Lie about scientific evidence
• Censor information that doesn’t conform
• Demonize anyone who seeks to provide uncensored information
• Justify deception by claiming that the ends justify the means
• Keep rank and file members in the dark
• Use loaded language to produce an emotional rather than rational response

I (and others) have written extensively about the ways in which the benefits of breastfeeding have been grossly exaggerated and the risks expunged from the medical canon. It’s clear that the breastfeeding industry censors information and demonizes anyone who seeks to provide uncensored information (eg the Fed Is Best Foundation or, for that matter, me). It’s pretty clear that some lactivist physicians justify their deceptions (particularly deceptions about breastfeeding complications) by insisting that the ends justify the means. It’s also crystal clear that the rank and file — lactation consultants and lactivists — have no idea that they are spreading propaganda instead of accurate information.

It’s hard for laypeople to differentiate between those who are trying to inform them and those who are trying to pressure them. There is one critical “tell,” however. Those who deploy emotional language are trying to manipulate women and the breastfeeding “journey” is part of that manipulative language.

Who goes on a breastfeeding journey? It’s not women like me who had relatively little difficulty. We don’t go on breastfeeding journeys for the same reason we don’t go on digestion journeys; we just do it. We latch on our babies, feed them and get on with the rest of our lives.

A breastfeeding journey is reserved for women who suffer with serious problems like insufficient supply, poor latch, excruciating pain, etc. In some cases, the women who are on breastfeeding “journeys” are actually putting their babies lives at risk from dehydration, hypoglycemia and jaundice.

Let me be ultra-clear even if lactivists lie about this:

There is no benefit of breastfeeding term babies that makes a breastfeeding “journey” worthwhile.

There is no medical reason to subject yourself to a slavish pumping schedule, no medical reason to struggle with the use of supplementary nursing system and no medical reason to resort to ingesting off label GI medications like domperidone in order to avoid formula. There is nothing wrong with formula besides the fact that the breastfeeding industry can’t charge for it.

Every minute that you spend pumping or cleaning SNS supplies or scouring the internet for a source of domperidone is a minute that you and your baby aren’t enjoying each other. As the Harlow monkey experiments with wire and cloth mother substitutes demonstrated, babies crave warmth and comfort more than they crave food.

So if babies aren’t benefitting from breastfeeding journeys, who is? The breastfeeding industry benefits. They are the ones who supply the pumps, the SNS systems, and the “support.” They profit on every leg of the breastfeeding “journey” while mothers and babies suffer.

The only reason to go on a breastfeeding journey is if it is personally important to you; it certainly isn’t important for your baby. It’s like runnning a marathon; sure it’s a nice achievement, but it doesn’t improve anyone’s health.

There’s no need to pump to augment supply; just give your baby formula and spend the extra time cuddling and interacting with your baby.

There’s no need to struggle with using and then cleaning an SNS. Put your breastmilk or formula into a bottle and spend the extra time cuddling and interacting with your baby.

There’s no reason to risk your health with potentially dangerous off label medication to boost your supply. Your baby needs YOU far more than he or she needs breastmilk.

Calling breastfeeding a journey is nothing more than an effort to romanticize breastfeeding difficulties. If it’s not working or it’s not convenient, just stop. The only thing that will be hurt are the profits of the breastfeeding industry.

Anyone whose read the Skeptical OB for any length of time knows that I am a proud liberal.

I strongly believe in equal rights for all, justice for the downtrodden and hold the conviction that the future is usually better than the past. Most liberals seem to share those views, with one important exception: many liberals imagine that nature is better than technology, hence they oppose vaccination, are terrified by “toxins,” and unthinkingly promote natural childbirth and lactivism.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]They’ve been manipulated by charlatans who play on their fears to convince them that the past was better than the present.[/pullquote]

What’s going on here?

Appeals to nature are inherently conservative. They look back to a glorious (often mythical) past, lament the technological present and fear the future. It’s not hard to understand why conservatives are backward looking. Religious conservatives in particular view nature as the product of the divine and loving wisdom of a God who created the world especially for human beings. It stands to reason that the state of nature (“Garden of Eden”) is the state that God intended for us. We screwed up and we were banished. It’s not surprising that conservatives want to go back to that perfect past (even if it never actually existed).

But why would liberals desire a conservative past? I suspect that in most cases they don’t. They’ve been manipulated by hucksters and charlatans who play on people’s fears to convince them that the past was better than the present.

Take anti-vaxxers. They are buffoons with a perfect record. In the entire 200 year history of anti-vaccination advocacy, they’ve never been right even once. They are the Donald Trumps of the scientific world: ignorant, pathological liars who perpetually rewrite the past — vaccine preventable diseases weren’t that bad; they were disappearing before the advent of vaccines; vaccines cause autism — in order to manipulate people’s behavior in the present. Anti-vax advocacy is the scientific equivalent of the Republican tax plan: it promises improvements and it brings only misery. And just like Republican donors are the only ones who benefit from Republican tax legislation, professional anti-vaxxers are the only ones who benefit from anti-vax; they get rich while the people they conned get sick.

The food phobes are no different. They, too, imagine a glorious past where Paleolithic peoples cavorted amid food pyramids — no famines, no vitamin deficiencies, no food borne illnesses — and lived forever. The truth is that Paleolithic peoples died young in droves; some of them, the Neanderthals, actually became extinct. A graphic of world population growth makes the argument in no uncertain terms. It demonstrates that those who promote back to nature conservatism because we were limited to nature for tens of thousands of years and “we are still here” are ignorant, illogical or both.

Who benefits from food phobia and toxin phobia? The only people who benefit are those who bleat about “toxins” so they can profit from quack “detoxes,” books and TV shows. There’s no evidence that even a single person’s health has been improved (let alone entire populations) by “detoxing.”

Natural childbirth advocacy and lactivism also hark back to a past that never existed. Advocates either don’t know or don’t care that childbirth in nature is deadly, a leading cause of death of young women and the leading cause of death of children. They either don’t know or don’t care that breastfeeding has a high failure rate leading to infant brain damage and death.

Indeed, natural childbirth and lactivism are even more conservative than anti-vax and toxicophobia. That’s because both recapitulate the sexism and misogyny which has been a feature of all human societies until relatively recently. Biological essentialism has always been the standard justification for misogyny: women are weaker and designed only for reproduction; therefore they can and should be excluded from everything else. Both natural childbirth advocacy and lactivism rest on the principle that women are designed for reproduction; they must be controlled by their bodies and should never be allowed to control those bodies.

It’s hardly surprising that many religious conservatives (e.g. Bill and Martha Sears of attachment parenting) teach that biology is destiny for women. What’s surprising is that many women who claim to be feminists are susceptible to that old canard. Paleolithic times were most certainly not a paradise for women; they were hell, with widespread death of women and their children, widespread sexual violation and widespread and profound oppression. What’s feminist about that?

Appeals to nature are inherently conservative. So explain it to me, liberals: why have so many of you fallen for the conservative nonsense of anti-vax, toxicophobia, natural childbirth and lactivism?

It’s hardly news to point out that advertising often involves women’s bodies. According to sociologist Stephanie Baran:

…[M]ost advertisers rely on the old adage, ‘sex sells.’

Nothing “sells” quite like a woman’s body, particularly her breasts.

…[I]n patriarchal culture women are meat and are to be consumed in a variety of ways. Therefore, advertising is, in a sense, visualized patriarchy—the actual visualization of patriarchal ideas and social norms.

Baran approvingly offers this quote from a colleague:

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Women’s bodies exist to be consumed by others, either as sexualized for the pleasure of men or as “designed” for the nurture of children.[/pullquote]

“…[D]ominant gender ideologies, as exemplified by the media, consistently paint women as sexual objects, highlighting their bodies as being mainly for the pleasure of men instead of as multidimensional (i.e., including both reproductive and sexual functions).”

It seems to me that Baran got it only half right. Here’s what I would say:

Women’s bodies exist to be consumed by others, either as sexualized for the pleasure of men or as “designed” for the nurture of children. Women have no right to make choices about their own bodies since their bodies exist for others’ enjoyment.

This is the up to the minute iteration of the madonna-whore dichotomy.

The women’s movement has made us more sensitive to the deliberate sexualization of women for the enjoyment of others. We are currently experiencing a watershed moment in our recogniztion of such sexualization and the damage that it does to women.

The recent revelations that powerful men such as Harvey Weinstein, Bill O’Reilly, Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer thought that women’s bodies were there for the taking has dominated the media despite the fact that there is nothing new about this behavior; indeed the behavior of many of these men has been an open secret for decades. What’s new is that women’s claims are finally being taken seriously; they are no longer being gaslighted (told it didn’t happen), no longer being counseled to simply accept it as the price of having a job, no longer having their concerns dismissed as the “normal” behavior of men.

Are we finally willing to accept that women’s bodies belong to themselves, for the enjoyment of themselves and for them to protect from being used by others? Hardly.

The dominant paradigm for mothering today, natural or “attachment” mothering, rests on the foundational belief that women’s bodies exist for the enjoyment and nurture of children.

Women are pressured to endure the excruciating pain of childbirth for the “benefit” of the baby. Women are pressured to breastfeed for a year or more for the “benefit” of the baby. Women are encouraged to forgo employment because they must stay in close physical proximity to their babies 24/7/365 for the “benefit” of those babies. When they express unhappiness they are gaslighted, counseled to simply accept it as the price of having children, or told that nature “designed” them for this task.

What about the benefits of the mother? Surely you are joking. Any woman who dares imagine that she has a right to avoid pain, a right to control her own breasts, a right to consider her own needs is pathologized as weak, lazy and selfish, the epitome of the bad mother.

The belief that a woman’s body belongs her children and not herself is rationalized by an appeal to nature. This is supposedly what women are “designed” to do. It’s further rationalized by ideology dressed up as science; but natural mothering is a subversion of science, cherry picking scientific findings to justify the pre-existing ideology that women’s bodies belong to others.

Breasts offer the archetypical examples for the way in which women’s bodies are supposed to exist for the benefit of men and children, but not for women themselves. Indeed, the issue of public breastfeeding is represented as a conflict between the needs of men and the needs of children.

Lactivists howl that breasts aren’t sexual; they don’t exist for the benefit of men (who supposedly sexualized them) but for the benefit of children. Disapproving busybodies insist that breasts exist for the titillation and enjoyment of men and therefore they should be hidden in polite society.

The idea that women might not want their breasts to be viewed the property of men to be ogled at will and to be groped by harassers is never considered. The idea that women might not want their breasts to be used as milk dispensers by babies is never considered. For most people the assumption that women’s breasts exist for the benefit of others is never even questioned. The only issue is who is entitled to benefit more, men or children. In other words, the only thing we need to know about a woman is whether she is a madonna or a whore.

But the madonna-whore dichotomy is a false dichotomy, not simply because there is no need to choose between the two, but because neither is accurate. A women is a PERSON and she is the ONLY one entitled to determine how her body is used. Women have the right to use their bodies for themselves and we must stop shaming women for simply treating their bodies as their own.

Psychologist Susan Franzblau is even more scathing in her indictment of the inherent misogyny of natural parenting than I am.

I recently came upon her chapter Deconstructing Attachment Theory: Naturalizing the Politics of Motherhood included in the 2002 book Charting a New Course for Feminist Psychology.

Although Franzblau is refers to attachment theory, it seems to me that she is criticizing natural/attachment mothering.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Natural mothering is “a coercive theory that legitimizes and naturalizes the control of women.”[/pullquote]

She wastes no time in setting out her thesis:

In this chapter, I deconstruct attachment theory and argue that it is a coercive theory that legitimizes and naturalizes the control of women and contributes to divisions among women by social class, race and sexual orientation.

How?

First, attachment theory steers women into accepting motherhood as the dominant condition of their lives, by characterizing and then romanticizing women as mother. Second, attachment theory promotes women’s labor within the confines of maternity by narrowing, reducing, and mandating women’s primary role as that of heterosexual mother. Third, attachment theory acts as the overarching paradigm with which to scrutinize women to see if their behavior meets the definition of “good mother.” Finally, if a woman resists the work of motherhood, either in thought or deed, attachment theory pathologizes her resistance.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. As I’ve written:

• Natural mothering reflects biological essentialism.
• It is about controlling women.
• It has nothing to do with mothering in nature.
• It pathologizes women who refuse to conform.

Franzblau traces the history of restrictive ideals of mothering:

The idea that women are evolutionarily prepared to mother … is consistent with a long historical tradition of using essentialist discourse to predetermine and control women’s reproductive tasks and children’s rearing needs. Evolutionary and biological theories have been embedded in a history of misogynist discourse… Women’s “natural” function … is to reproduce and provide continual care for infants and young children. If the treatment of women differs from the treatment of men, such treatment could be justified in terms of its biological and evolutionary purposes. Essentialism, therefore, is problematic for women who have challenged the idea that motherhood defines them …

Natural mothering elides its misogynist origins by insisting that it has the imprimatur of science. Franzblau describes it as “ideology configured as science.” And it’s not particularly good science because it takes animals, particularly higher order mammals and primates, as a starting point for determining normative behavior for women. In doing so it assumes inequality, male dominance and female nurturance of infants. In other words, the only thing natural about natural mothering is the gender stereotyping.

The ideology of natural mothering conveniently intersects with societal and political efforts to marginalize women. This is not the first time that mothering has been romanticized. It also occurred in the Victorian era and the immediate aftermath of World War II. In both cases, structural issues (the Industrial Revolution, the return of men from the military) made it attractive to pressure women back into the home, reserving employment for men. This was justified by ignoring women’s needs in favor of restricting them to their biological functions.

However, the choice was never women’s. The needs of children as defined by various experts, and the fact that women were positioned as exclusively responsible for those needs were translated into the fixed properties of mothers and valorized, unproblematized, and essentialized.

It the 21st Century, these so called experts are midwives, doulas, lactation consultants and attachment parenting advocates. Women’s needs are ignored and women who don’t want to give birth without pain medication, don’t want to breastfeed, and dare to have careers outside the home are pathologized as weak, lazy and selfish.

In the US, the ideology of natural mothering was elaborated by religious fundamentalists.

Organizations such as the Christian Family Movement (established by the Catholic laity …) became the founders of the La Leche League in 1956… According to one natural childbirth advocate of the time, “childbirth is fundamentally a spiritual as well as a physical achievement …” Breastfeeding was heralded as an extension of this spiritual connection. Out of concern that recently instituted bottle-feeding and drug-assisted births would break family bonds, these religious advocates of breastfeeding prescribed a regimen that included suckling on demand day and night with no pacifier substitute … Any work that competed with the infant’s need for continuity of maternal care was out of the question. One La La Leche League International group leader said that she was “pretty negative to people who just want to dump their kids of and go to work eight hours a day.”

Sound familiar?

The bottom line is that natural mothering has never been about what’s best for babies; it’s always been about manipulating women into pre-approved choices by disguising ideology as science. Unmedicated vaginal birth isn’t best for babies and it certainly isn’t best for women who don’t choose it voluntarily. Breastfeeding isn’t best for babies and it certainly isn’t best for women who can’t or don’t want to breastfeed. Attachment parenting isn’t best for babies and it certainly isn’t best for women who want to or need to work. The only people for whom it is best is those so called experts in natural childbirth, breastfeeding, and attachment parenting who profit from it and the misogynists who benefit from it.

Franzblau’s assessment of natural mothering is scathing and I couldn’t agree more.

I’ve often noted with surprise that no sooner do I write about a topic than natural mothering advocates rush to illustrate my claims. This time though, I’ve been preempted. I had already planned this post when New Zealand lactivists serendipitously came to my aid with the perfect quote to lead it.

Access to infant milk formula should be restricted “more like prescription drugs”, a maternity group says.

Hospitals were right to require new mums to sign a consent form if they want their babies fed formula, said Brenda Hinton, a spokeswoman for the Maternity Services Consumer Council…

“I do think as a society it would be a good idea if formula was treated more like a prescription drug, something that you use if you are unable to breastfeed.”

It’s the perfect quote to illustrate the central premise of this post: Natural mothering doesn’t just ignore women’s needs and desires apart from mothering. It seeks to shame women for even considering them.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]The only thing natural about natural mothering is the sexism.[/pullquote]

Why? Because natural mothering is not about parenting in nature; it bears little resemblance to that. Natural mothering is about recapitulating the rigid gender stereotyping in nature.

It’s hardly a secret. Natural parenting — natural childbirth, lactivism and attachment parenting — were all created by religious fundamentalists who believed that women belong in the home and must be pressured to return to it.

Grantly Dick-Read, the father of natural childbirth, famously said: “Woman fails when she ceases to desire the children for which she was primarily made. Her true emancipation lies in freedom to fulfil her biological purposes …”

The founders of La Leche League wished to convince mothers of small children that they should not work. Promoting breastfeeding seemed the ideal way to pressure them to stay home.

And Bill and Martha Sears wrote: “We have a deep personal conviction that this is the way God wants His children parented.” And just in case you didn’t get the point: “Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything …”

The only thing natural about natural parenting is the sexism: the deep, abiding belief that women exist only for the benefit of children and men. They shouldn’t merely ignore their own needs — for intellectual engagement, political and economic power and personal fulfillment — they should be shamed for even considering those needs.

Make no mistake, requiring a prescription for infant formula is a form of shaming. How dare a woman imagine that she is entitled to determine how her own breasts are used? She should be required to justify herself to her doctor or midwife and receive the appropriate scolding for failing to adhere to her appropriate gender role.

Natural childbirth is also about shaming. How dare a woman imagine that she is entitled to relieve agonizing labor pain simple to ease her own suffering? She should be required to justify herself to midwives, doulas and peers and receive the appropriate scolding for failing to accept her womanly suffering.

And attachment parenting is about shaming mothers out of the workforce. How dare a woman imagine that she is entitled to a job and the intellectual fulfillment and economic power that come with it? No one cares about her needs. She should be shamed for even considering them.

Don’t tell me that natural parenting is about what’s good for babies. Infant mortality rates in nature are astronomical. There is no historical or anthropological evidence that natural parenting is safer, healthier or better in any way than parenting with technology.

Don’t tell me that breastfeeding is what’s good for babies. There’s simply no evidence that breastfeeding has any impact on the mortality rates of term infants in industrialized countries. Professional breastfeeding advocates can’t point to any real world evidence that a change in breastfeeding rates has any change in the health of any but the most premature babies.

Don’t tell me that unmedicated vaginal birth is what’s good for babies. Childbirth interventions rates have never been higher and perinatal mortality rates have never been lower. What about maternal mortality? It’s a cruel joke to blame maternal mortality on too much technology. It disproportionately affects women who LACK access to high tech obstetrics.

Don’t tell me that attachment parenting is about what is good for babies. AP has become ever more popular but the rates for teen suicide and self harm have never been higher.

Who benefits from requiring prescriptions for infant formula?

Lactivists benefit:

First, lactation consultants benefits by increased employment and income. If every women is shamed into attempting breastfeeding, and shamed if she attempts to stop, and shamed if she combo-feeds with formula, and shamed when she is seen bottle feeding, there will be greater need for lactation consultants.

Second, lactivists benefit in the same way that those inflicting shame on others always benefit, by enhanced self-esteem through feeling superior to the shamed.

Finally, lactivists benefit by enjoying ugly behavior that is usually forbidden but is actually encouraged in the case of formula feeding. There is simply no limit to the cruelty of lactivists toward women who don’t or don’t want to breastfeed, and no limit to the delight that lactivists experience in sanctioned cruelty to other mothers.

Natural mothering seeks to recapitulate the rigid gender stereotyping in nature. It seeks shame women for daring to consider their own needs. There is no better illustration of this than the ugly desire of lactivists to require a prescription for infant formula.

Sadly the only thing natural about natural mothering is the sexism.

An article in Quartz illustrates the way that midwives are trying to rewrite the history of childbirth. The piece, entitled The reason American women over-medicalize childbirth has its roots in racial segregation, by Annalisa Merelli is pure, unadulterated nonsense.

There were three reasons obstetricians and hospitals came to dominate childbirth in the industrialized world and racism isn’t among them. First, obstetricians and hospitals could offer safe effective pain relief for the agony of childbirth. Second, hospitals offered women something that midwives could not: an opportunity to rest and recover from childbirth without having to care for their husbands and older children. Third, and most important, obstetricians and hospitals made childbirth dramatically safer.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]The difference between safe childbirth and dangerous childbirth is not midwives; it’s the routine interventions of modern obstetrics.[/pullquote]

Let’s face it: midwives presided over childbirth for literally thousands of generations and they didn’t make a dent in astronomical rates of perinatal and maternal mortality. It took obstetricians less than 3 generations to reduce both by more than 90%.

This graph makes it crystal clear:

Midwives don’t like to acknowledge that history, so they’re trying to rewrite it. According to Quartz:

Every year in the UK, more than half of babies are delivered with the guidance of a midwife. In Scandinavian countries, it’s more like three quarters, similar to the rate in France. In fact, in these and many other countries, midwives take part in almost all deliveries, as they also assist OB-GYNs in more complicated cases.

But in the US, less than 10% of deliveries are led by midwives. The rate has languished in the single digits since a century ago, when expectant mothers largely stopped using midwives to embrace doctor-led childbirth, believing that was safer. Ironically, that shift has resulted in myriad problems stemming from the over-medicalization of childbirth. Those problems are reflected in the country’s high rates of C-sections as well as in the “cascade of interventions” that comes with medically managing labor …

There’s nothing wrong with properly educated, properly trained midwives. They can provide excellent care but ONLY if they follow the principles of obstetrics and medicine elucidated by doctors and scientists. Childbirth is not inherently safe; it is exceedingly dangerous (as it is among nearly all higher order mammals). Dangers include hemorrhage, infection, pre-eclampsia and obstructed labor among others. The difference between safe childbirth and dangerous childbirth is not midwives; it’s blood transfusions, antibiotics, anti-seizure medications, easy access to Cesarean and anesthesia. How many of those innovations were discovered or invented by midwives? ZERO!

What about the so-called problem of over-medicalization? It’s much more of an economic problem for midwives than a health problem for mothers or babies. In fact, it’s such a problem for midwives that they have resorted to demonizing whatever it is they cannot do. They can’t offer epidurals or C-sections so they insist they are unnecessary. They require a doctor’s supervision to use blood transfusions, antibiotics and anti-seizure medications so they pretend they are rarely needed.

The American Medical Association (AMA) saw midwives as competitors for what would become the most common cause of hospitalization in America, and a reliable source of revenue…

The AMA’s focus on specialized healthcare wasn’t limited to childbirth—it was spread across all disciplines. But its expansion into childbirth was especially effective, partly because the midwives who were, until then, running childbirth were overwhelmingly African American and Native American—both demographic groups that were easy to discredit in a country that had abolished slavery just decades before, and would enforce racial segregation for decades to come.

Midwives were overwhelmingly African American and Native American? What drug was Merelli smoking when she wrote that nonsense? And do the folks at Quartz bother with fact checkers or do they just publish whatever drivel their journalists fabricate? Only a foreign journalist could have blithely accepted the falsehood that the overwhelmingly white population of the US allowed their women to be attended in birth by African Americans and Native Americans. In many states, there were and to this day there are few African Americans and even fewer Native Americans. The claim is absolutely ludicrous.

Sure midwifery remained popular with African Americans far longer than for white women, but that was because black Americans were denied access to the lifesaving technology of hospitals as a result of racism and poverty. There was no Medicaid or welfare; you couldn’t go to a hospital unless you could pay for it. Sadly, the same dynamic still exists today. Black women and babies are dying in childbirth at far higher rates than other minorities because they LACK access to high technology care, not because they have too much of it.

Quartz quotes Jennie Joseph, a black midwife, who is apparently a font of this nonsense:

Midwives continued to deliver the children of women who couldn’t afford medical care, but eventually they all but disappeared. “Slave women delivered America,” says Joseph, but as soon as medically-managed hospital births became the preferred option for anyone who could afford it, the tradition of American midwifery, which had been passed on through generations of black women, was lost. Today, only 4% of the country’s midwives are black. “We all know each other,” says Joseph. “That’s how bad it is.”

Joseph is not from the US, either, or she would be aware that slavery was ended in abolitionist states long before the advent of midwifery and that many states had few African Americans at all.

Only 4% of midwives are black? That’s hardly surprising for two reasons: only 11% of the country’s obstetricians are black as a result of a legacy of racism. More importantly, midwifery has become associated with privilege. Midwives promote natural childbirth and the refusal of interventions. You have to be privileged to have easy access to hospital technology before it becomes a status symbol to refuse it.

The bottom line is that the decline of midwifery in the US has NOTHING to do with racism and everything to do with women wanting access to the safest possible care and the availability of effective pain relief. When women are allowed to choose their care providers, instead of having them forced upon them by the government, they prefer obstetricians and hospitals.

For the past two days I have written about the cultural construction of nature in natural mothering.

In Mothering like an animal, I pointed out that mothering in nature has been thoroughly romanticized, starting with refusal to acknowledge the extraordinarily high death rates from childbirth and breastfeeding in the animal kingdom.

Yesterday I wrote about the cultural construction of “Mother Nature,” a benevolent goddess who provides everything her “children” need and punishes those who turn to artificial substitutes instead.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]In natural mothering, women are idealized but the purpose is not to empower them but rather to disempower them.[/pullquote]

Today I’d like to talk about the culturally constructed view of women within the natural mothering paradigm. Adriana Teodorescu has written a fascinating chapter, The women–nature connection as a key element in the social construction of Western contemporary motherhood, in the new book Women and Nature?: Beyond Dualism in Gender, Body, and Environment.

In natural mothering, women are idealized but the purpose is not to empower them but rather to disempower them.

Teodorescu notes:

…[E]mbracing the women–nature connection may lead to an idealized figure of nature, reifying the position that women are irrational and intended for reproductive purposes only.

She paints a damning picture of natural mothering, basically the same picture that I have presented in my writing:

Popular culture praises motherhood as a stereotypical, sugary display of affection toward an angel-like child … The child is more important than the mother… [T]he mother consents to giving up her job to raise and educate her child following closely the advice of specialists in child rearing. She embraces the natural birth movement, opting for a vaginal birth, and, for a very long time, breastfeeds the child upon request, in accordance with the attachment parenting ideology and the strong advice of La Leche League International.

Natural mothering isn’t about what’s good for children, though that is how it is promoted; it’s about a culturally constructed view of women:

…[T]he fundamental trait of the good mother paradigm is the glorious revival of the women–nature connection in the light of a post-evolutionistic grasp on nature, while women become, through childbirth and mothering, the agents that restore the ideological dominance of nature over culture.

In other words, natural mothering is about subordinating women’s intelligence, talents, needs and desires, justified by an appeal to nature.

Teodorescu scathingly summarizes the cultural construction of women promoted by natural childbirth advocates:

The good mother paradigm insists on presenting the biological capacity of giving birth as a form of social empowerment … What is tackled here is not just any kind of birth, but a specific type of birth, the natural, vaginal birth, which actually limits the number of surgical interventions involved: the epidural injections, the pain killers, and the C-section. Women are advised to trust nature, because births have always happened in nature … and because nature is the mother which can take care of her own children… [W]omen must reject medicine, a patriarchal science, which manipulates a woman’s body, depriving mothers of the authentic experience of motherhood. One of the main arguments against the medically driven birth is the fact that it intervenes in the birth process, which is seen as the essential pillar of the mother–child bond. The more natural the bond, the better that bond remains.

What about the dangers of childbirth?

The fact that pregnancy is a difficult time in a woman’s life and that giving birth, no matter how, places women in close proximity to death is veiled in the good mother discourse by placing death entirely upon the shoulders of medicine.

Natural childbirth advocates and lactivists are hypocrites:

While, in terms of conceiving children, everything should be done to remedy infertility, through the possibilities of medicine, childbirth should be as natural as possible … The risks the woman exposes herself to when resorting to medical assisted human reproduction, and the inherent risks of any natural childbirth are not set in the collective memory of society and contemporary mass culture. In stark contrast, the risks of C-section are promoted, debated, and fought against.

Teodorescu reserves particular condemnation for ICAN (International Cesarean Awareness Network):

…ICAN discourse is restrictive and manipulative. The discourse is restrictive because it wants to steer women toward the good path of natural birth. The discourse is manipulative because the method by which ICAN understands manipulation is hiding a general truth about all births. Any birth, whether natural, vaginal, or surgical implies a series of risks for both the mother and the child, the highest risk being death… Admitting to this fact would entail that nature offers no guarantee, no form of automatic superiority.

Similarly, lactivists present formula use as inferior because it is technological, yet the use of every possible piece of medical technology is encouraged to remedy breastfeeding problems: from mechanical pumps and artificial pumping schedules, to restrictive diets supplements and medications. The risks of insufficient breastmilk have been wiped from the collective memory of society and the “risks” of formula are promoted, debated and fought against.

I reserve particular condemnation for La Leche League and the World Health Organization whose discourse is restrictive and manipulative. Both LLL and the WHO want every woman to breastfeed regardless of whether it is the best choice for her, her baby and her family. The discourse is manipulative because LLL and the WHO manipulate by hiding a general truth about breastfeeding: it has a high natural failure rate and the consequences include infant brain damage and death. Admitting to this fact would mean admitting that nature offers no guarantee, no form of automatic superiority.

In truth, natural childbirth does not reflect childbirth in nature; it exists to manipulate women into a culturally constructed view of childbirth that empowers the midwives, doulas and childbirth educators of the natural childbirth industry. Lactivism does not reflect infant feeding in nature; it exists to manipulate women into a culturally constructed view of early infancy that empowers lactation consultants, LLL and various breastfeeding organizations.

The result is the DISempowerment of women as their needs and desires are subordinated to those who believe that women should be judged by the function of their uteri, vaginas and breasts:

Mothers who give up their jobs in order to appeal to the requirements of the good mother do not re-instate a natural lost world, but instead manage to capitalize on and increase women’s poverty … Moreover, the feeling of personal happiness diminishes, the risk of depression grows because of the responsibilities involved in raising children and the social pressure to be a perfect mother… highlighting the dark side of a naturalist construction of motherhood.

Natural mothering, including natural childbirth and lactivism are cultural constructs. They deliberately misrepresent both women and nature in an effort to reduce women to their reproductive organs, immuring them back into the home. Natural mothering doesn’t merely ignore women’s needs and desires apart from mothering; it seeks to make women feel ashamed of those needs and desires. It is deeply retrograde and profoundly anti-feminist.

In perhaps the ultimate irony, the contemporary natural parenting and alternative health movements are based on a TV commercial for margarine.

The tag line of the 1970’s commercial for Chiffon Margarine was “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.”

https://youtu.be/L5zDdhg2ZbM

Mother Nature tastes the margarine and declares that it is her “sweet, creamy butter.” When apprised that it is margarine, a processed food, she reacts with anger, punishing people by sending natural disasters. Although natural parenting and alternative health advocates would deny it, it is this view of nature, basically benevolent unless tricked by artificial substitutes, that animates the current natural parenting and alternative health movements.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Belief in benevolent nature is nothing more than a cultural construct.[/pullquote]

In other words, natural parenting and alternative health aren’t based on science; they’re based on a cultural construct lifted from a marketing campaign, a campaign that could only succeed among extraordinarily privileged people who have no knowledge of nature. Those who believe in them haven’t done their research; they’re just gullible.

Think about it:

The lactivist movement is absolutely certain that breastmilk is the perfect food because it is natural. Formula, a semi-artificial substitute, must be bad because it is an attempt to fool Mother Nature.

Natural childbirth advocates are sure that we should “trust birth” because it is natural. Interventions and C-sections are to be avoided and scorned because they are attempts to fool Mother Nature.

Anti-vaxxers are sure that vaccines must be harmful since they are so obviously attempts to fool Mother Nature. Natural immunity must be better.

Food-phobes are sure that the key to health is eating only food your grandmother would eat despite the fact that your grandmother’s generation had a shorter life expectancy and higher rates of death from cancers and disease than the current generation.

Only incredibly privileged people who have never been forced to rely on nature could actually believe such nonsense. In reality, “nature is red in tooth and claw.” Premature death — from starvation, predation, and violence —is a fundamental, ineradicable feature of the life all animals, and human beings are no exception.

Only the simple minded believe (consciously or unconsciously) that “fooling” Mother Nature with technological substitutes leads to natural calamities and that avoiding technology leads to health.

They prefer to ignore the fact that Nature is responsible for earthquakes, typhoons, snake bite and disease. They imagine Nature as a gentle breeze when it is in reality a heartless, selfish force, operating to the rhythm of its own rules and completely unconcerned with the wishes and hopes of human beings.

“Breast is best” is nothing more than a cultural construct, every bit as artificial as formula itself. The scientific truth is that breastmilk is NOT the perfect food for all human babies and even the most cursory knowledge of history makes that crystal clear. Breastmilk substitutes have been used since the beginning of recorded history and undoubtedly long before. If breastfeeding disappeared tomorrow, nearly every infant would survive in a world with easy access to formula. In contrast, if formula disappeared tomorrow literally millions of infants would sustain brain injuries and starve to death.

The injunction to “trust birth” is a cultural construct every bit as artificial as a C-section. The scientific truth is that childbirth is deadly for mothers and a 100X more deadly for babies. If starting tomorrow every baby were born by C-section and none by vaginal birth the rate of injury and death would be minuscule compared to the times and places when all babies were or are born vaginally.

The idea that “natural immunity” is superior to vaccine immunity is a cultural construct belied by the scientific and historical evidence. Natural immunity could not eradicate smallpox despite tens of thousands of years in the attempt. It only took the smallpox vaccine ten generations to wipe it from the face of the earth.

The belief that “natural” food is healthier than processed food ignores the fact that everything today, including our water, is processed to make sure it isn’t contaminated with deadly bacteria. It is the purity of food and water that ensures our health, not its resemblance to the diet of our Paleolithic ancestors (many of whom, like the Neanderthals, actually died out).

Nature is not benevolent and it cannot be controlled to become benevolent. Technology, in contrast, can be controlled and optimized for human benefit. It is not an accident that those with the greatest access to technology in food and health live the longest and have the best health outcomes in human history. Nature is just as happy to kill us as to nurture us. There’s nothing inherently good about nature and nothing inherently bad about technological substitutes.

In short, life is not a margarine commercial, not matter how easily natural parenting and alternative health advocates have been fooled into believing it.

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.