Last week I explained that, contrary to the conceit of its advocates, contemporary natural parenting harks back NOT to nature, but rather a Victorian era romanticization of motherhood. I quoted extensively from Petra Buskens’ The Impossibility of “Natural Parenting” for Modern Mothers

Today I’d like to flesh out that romanticization so we can see how dramatically natural parenting deviates from mothering in nature. Buskens has a lot to say on this as well.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Mothers who think they are doing things “naturally” are absurdly naive about both the throughly modern concerns that motivate natural parenting and the critical role that technology plays in its transmission.[/pullquote]

1. On the faulty notion that hunter-gather societies were the apogee of human existence:

[Many attachment parenting advocates] seem blissfully unaware of the social differences between a hunter-gatherer society and a modern one other than to deem the former “good” and the latter “bad.” The corollary to this crude formulation is that western mothers have become too “civilized to care and that this socialization must be expurgated in favour of a “natural” way of life.

Grantly Dick-Read, the father of natural childbirth, was explicit in his insistence that childbirth in nature was painless and that it was over-civilization that socialized women to believe that childbirth is painful. That is obviously nonsense, but that nonsense has extended to lactivism and attachment parenting, which postulate a natural Garden of Eden where parenting was perfect, having only degenerated since them.

2. On the bizarre belief that hunter-gather societies were uniform across vast tracts of both time and space culminating in the racist trope of the noble savage:

…[T]he “primitive” is constructed as an “empty category” in this kind of formulation; a site of redemption upon which Westerners can project their own anxieties and fantasies. A close reading suggests, moreover, that advocates of “natural” parenting in fact select childcare practices that correspond to current western anxieties: for example, the “breakdown” of the family, or the changing role of women. And so, women are encouraged to mother with the embodied devotion simplistically attributed to “primitives.” … It is rather naively assumed that the stability or harmony lacking in us can be found elsewhere and then simply appropriated, as if culture were as simple as stitching a patchwork quilt. Again this is classic romantic nostalgia for the “noble savage” arising in conditions of destabilizing social change. It depends on the glorification of social practice in non- industrialized societies, and the demonization of practices in industialised ones.

3. On the attempt to valorize primitive practices by the misuse of science:

[Natural parenting advocates] assume special access to some unadulterated, traditional wisdom and then proceed to demonstrate (and defend) this through the process of scientific study. It kills two birds with the one stone so to speak, by defending the natural or instinctual (which, in this instance, doubles for caring, softer) approach with the indisputable rigour of science. No matter what ideological ends the research serves (conservative family values or romantic resistance to the rational-efficiency model), it does so under the powerful rubric of science. This carries with it it’s own specific set of dilemmas, yet these experts have been spectacularly successful in disseminating their ideas popularly as a challenge to scientific-rationalism.

Hence the demonization of obstetric interventions in general and C-sections in particular. Hence the gross exaggeration of the benefits of breastfeeding and the pretzel-like logic of those who are desperate to insist that delayed umblical cord clamping is beneficial. It isn’t enough for natural parenting advocates to claim superiority based on tradition; they insist that science validates traditional practice when it emphatically does not.

4. On the insistence that natural parenting harks back to nature when it is indisputably modern:

[Natural parenting advocates] engage in rhetorical strategy to present their own partial and loaded (that is, “natural”) account of what is “best for baby.” An account that can only ever be modern because it is ensconced within a public debate of competing truth claims; because it is conveyed through the abstract mediums of science and writing; and because it is read by individuals largely divested oftheir “traditions.” … As such, this expert discourse is itself emblematic of the shift from predetermined tradition (the organic and unquestioned transmission of social custom) to a constantly revised present (the modern reflexive world order where multiple discourses compete for truth status)…

In other words, if you have to transmit your views through books, websites and Facebook pages, you are offering the opposite of the natural.

Natural parenting is unnatural:

Again, if we look at social histories of private life we can see that isolated caregivingis a product of the modern gendered split between public and private spheres. There is nothing “traditional”about this. Therefore, while mothering as a practice has intensified through the post-enlightenment emphasis on “good mothering,” this has also taken place in a context of diminishing support with the loss of the traditional, coherent community or “gemeinschaftn.” Mothers are thus attempting to carry out rigorous schedules of attached mothering in an increasingly fragmented and unsupportive social context. And while some aspects of the attachment style may be derived from non-industrialized cultures, the fact that this style of care is first encountered through the purchase and consumption of books themselves written by experts and then carried out by privatized mothers in isolated nuclear families, means “natural” or “attachment” parenting cannot claim in any truthful sense to be outside of modern practice.

Natural parenting is unnatural because it reflects a sanitized and romanticized view of nature, because it reflects a thoroughly modern gender segregation that never occurred in nature, because in nature it “takes a village” to raise a child, not a solitary mother practicing “natural parenting” and because it is just another form of highly technological consumerism.

Natural parenting advocates who think they are mothering as their ancient foremothers did are deluding themselves since our ancient foremothers did not view mothers as solitary caregivers and did not live within gender segregated societies where women “stayed home” while men undertook the work of ensuring the family’s survival.

Natural parenting advocates who think they are copying the “best” way of caring for children are woefully ignorant of the multiplicity of cultures across ancient time and space.

Natural parenting advocates who think they are doing things “naturally” are absurdly naive about both the throughly modern concerns that motivate natural parenting and the critical role that technology plays in its transmission.

These ironies are lost on the sanctimommies who imagine they are recapitulating nature when they are actually falling victim to the relentless consumerism of contemporary culture.

The mainstream media has suddenly discovered fake news.

According to PBS:

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]The mainstream media served for a decade as purveyors of fake news on vaccines and children have died as a result. [/pullquote]

A new analysis by BuzzFeed found that false election stories from hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs generated more engagement than content from real news sites during the last three months of the election. Users shared false stories like this one about Pope Francis endorsing Donald Trump, or Hillary Clinton selling weapons to ISIS hundreds of thousands of times, even more than real stories.

The power of fake news comes from the willingness of partisans to believe it and share it without ever checking to see if it is true.

Social media companies like Facebook are shocked, shocked to find that they have been used as conduits for fake news … as if their business model isn’t built on making millions by monetizing it. Journalists are shocked, shocked that an election could have been won or lost based on such dirty tricks and are bitingly dismissive of the uninformed, gullible multitudes who fell for it … as if those in the media are far above such ignorance and credulousness.

But fake news is not new, and the mainstream media are not above such fatuousness. For years, social media and mainstream media have been the primary conduits for the spread of fake news about vaccines. True, anti-vax “news” does not originate in the mainstream media, but then fake news about politics doesn’t generally originate in the mainstream media, either. The birthplace of fake news about vaccines, like fake news about politics, is the internet and its acceptance and believability is nurtured on social media sites first. But ultimately the mainstream media served for a decade as purveyors of fake news on vaccines and children have died as a result. But they didn’t call it fake news; they called it “balance.”

The Washington Post interviewed a leading creator and purveyor of fake political news in order to understand how and why it works. It is startling how closely the political fake news industry hews to the tactics of the anti-vax fake news industry.

Paul Horner is not a political partisan; he creates fake news because it is extraordinarily lucrative to monetize it.

How lucrative?

I make most of my money from AdSense — like, you wouldn’t believe how much money I make from it. Right now I make like $10,000 a month from AdSense.

I don’t think I’ve ever come across an anti-vax “news” site that isn’t chock-a-block with Adsense ads that provide tremendous revenue for the website owners.

I have Adsense in the sidebar of this blog, so I know how it works. I only run one ad on a page and many the visitors to my site are “hate readers” who would never knowingly contribute to my ad revenue by clicking on the ads. Hence my income from ads is paltry. Moreover, I actually have to spend time crafting real articles for people to read. The ad revenue doesn’t come close to paying for maintaining the site, let alone writing for it. But anti-vax websites, like fake news websites, are filled with multiple ads on each page, ads within the articles themselves, and even ads within comment sections.

Adsense has decency standards for whether they will put ads on your site, just like Facebook has decency standards for what they will allow on their pages. But truthfulness is not one of their standards so you (and they!) can make more money and get more attention for click-bait then you ever could for real news.

And the best part is readers don’t care whether content is true.

As Horner explains:

Honestly, people are definitely dumber. They just keep passing stuff around. Nobody fact-checks anything anymore — I mean, that’s how Trump got elected. He just said whatever he wanted, and people believed everything, and when the things he said turned out not to be true, people didn’t care because they’d already accepted it. It’s real scary. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Horner hasn’t seen anything like it, but I have. It’s how anti-vax sites work, too. Anti-vaxxers are remarkably dumb and gullible. They just keep passing stuff around; nobody fact checks anything. Anti-vaxxers say whatever they want, with absolutely no regard for the truth, and people believe it. Even when things anti-vax websites say turn out to be obviously untrue, anti-vaxxers don’t mind and cheerfully accept it any way.

In other words, when an anti-vaxxers tells you she’s “done her research” and she has “educated” herself, what she means is that she’s read fake news sites, never fact checked it and believes it because she wants to believe it. She imagines that she’s sophisticated when she’s merely the victim of a not particularly sophisticated con. The anti-vaxxers who believes that vaccines cause autism is no different than the hard Right partisan who believes Obama is Kenyan. She’s a fool.

Journalists drip with derision for the “Obama is a Kenyan” fools, but for many years they gullibly served as purveyors of anti-vaccine nonsense under the guise of journalistic “balance.” Most science journalists are not scientists and they lack the basic understanding required to tell the difference between fake science news and real science news. For years they carefully included the anti-vaccine “perspective” in pieces on vaccines and fanned the flames of anti-vaccine autism hysteria. They never bothered to fact check anti-vax “news”; indeed they didn’t care if it was true or not. They profited by selling the “controversy.”

The truth is that fake news is as big a problem in science as it is in politics. And whereas mainstream media outlets in general will not transmit fake political news unwittingly, they cheerfully transmit fake science news all the time. They shouldn’t be looking down on Facebook and Google for profiting from fake political news, when they are equally guilty of cheerfully profiting from fake science news. It’s inevitable whenever a business puts profits before principles.

The biggest irony of natural parenting is that it is entirely unnatural.

As Petra Buskins explains in The Impossibility of “Natural Parenting for Modern Mothers:

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Natural parenting is not a return to nature, but a return to “traditional” values.[/pullquote]

Numerous histories of “the family” show us that intensive, romanticized caregiving carried out by biological mothers in the private sphere is an “invention of modern economic and political arrangements. It was only with the division of public and private and the shift from a domestic to an industrial economy, that mothers were cordoned off to a special occupation called “Motherhood.” Prior to this, women mothered with a community of men, women, and children and did so in and around a myriad of other subsistence oriented tasks…

In other words, natural parenting harks back not to nature, but to Victorian values:

…[W]ith the social changes brought about by the creation of a public sphere (populated by male citizens) together with industrialization and a free-market economy, women in western societies … were sequestered to the private sphere as glorified mothers …

This period of extreme romanticization of the role of mothers was followed by a period of rationalization. It was during this period that motherhood became regimented and “efficient.” Those were the years of rigid infant schedules, veneration of bottle feeding, and the glorification of parental authority. What we think of as “natural parenting” arose in response. Buskens quotes Diane Eyer writing in Mother-Infant Bonding: A Scientific Fiction:

The infant of the 1920s and 1930s was known to be in need of discipline. He should not be picked up everytime he cried or he would become spoiled and would not learn the important habits of living according to a strict and efficient schedule… In the 1940s and 1950 sthe infant was known to be in need of constant gratification. He should be picked up every time he cried or he would become frustrated and develop a neurotic personality…. In the 1970s, this idealized dyad [of mother and child] was threatened with dissolution.. ..Bonding was a kind of social medication for these problems at the same time that it seemed a means to humanize birth. It was eagerly purchasedby parent consumers who wished to preserve at least some remnant of power of the early maternal relationship as a kind of insurance against the unknown.

As Buskens notes:

The emphasis on maternal nurture as an antithesis to the dominant values of rational efficiency and liberal individualism,therefore, provides an invisible subtext of romantic opposition to western modernity. In other words, contained within this radical critique is a thinly veiled conservatism concerning the “natural” place of women …

So natural parenting is not a return to nature, but rather a return to the romanticized Victorian view that women should be immured within the home. Hence it is not a coincidence that natural parenting precludes women working outside the home; it is its central feature and raison d’être.

Buskens identifies William Sears as a major proponent of this ahistorical view of mothering designed to promote Victorian (i.e. “traditional”) values. Her critique of Sears and attachment parenting is both incisive and devastating:

Sears is specifically opposed to mother’s working outside the home and encourages 24-hour embodied care … [amounting] to an utterly exhausting regime of caregiving and patience for the mother. Her role as isolated caregiver precludes her participation in both paid work and socializing but we are assured this is a “natural” and “traditional” state of affairs. One wonders how such a blatant ignorance of history could go unnoticed by both Sears and his readers, but we have only to remember the emotional power of the word “mother.” In the name of this word, Sears manages to reconstruct the past and foreclose much of the future for new mothers.

Buskens takes advocates of attachment parenting to task for presenting their personal views as natural when they are anything but.

Under the emotional power of “instinct,” in other words, the experts have managed to obscure their own status as scientists rationally procuring more and more knowledge on the categories of motherhood, infancy, and childhood. This is classic enlightenment thinking: the improvement of the human condition through the use of scientific reason, yet it has managed, cleverly indeed, to fashion itself as a powerful critique of that very paradigm.

The reality is that natural parenting isn’t about children; it’s about women and their place in the world. Natural parenting is a rhetorical strategy to promote Victorian values.

As such, natural parenting isn’t ancient and it isn’t natural. It’s thoroughly modern effort to immure women in the home and foreclose the most of their future under the guise of what “best” for children.

I’ve been blogging for over a decade now, but it’s only been in recent months that I’ve started writing political posts.

Not surprisingly regular readers who are Trump fans are wondering why.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Homebirth midwives are buffoons. Donald Trump is King of Buffoons.[/pullquote]

First and foremost, it’s because I love my country. America has made terrible mistakes in its past, but I still view it as a shining city on the hill, a beacon of hope to lovers of freedom everywhere. Trump threatens my beloved country and it seems to me that patriotism obliges me to speak out.

Second, I am profoundly distressed by what I am witnessing and I seek the solace and counsel of people I respect a great deal: my readers. I have the greatest group of commentors on the internet, smart, passionate, and articulate. Sure I offer my view on my blog, but I learn from my readers and modify my views accordingly.

Ultimately, though, I’ve started writing about politics because I’m a skeptic. My self-appointed task is to debunk harmful lies designed to mislead people and profit from their distress, and Trumpworld, like the natural parenting world, is nothing if not a philosophy built on harmful lies designed to mislead people and profit from their distress.

1. Both the birth world and Trumpworld rest on a foundation of lies.

Contrary to Grantly Dick-Read’s claim, primitive women don’t have painless labors and labor pain is not caused by fear. Contrary to lactivist claims, breast is not best for every baby. Contrary to attachment parenting advocates’ claims, infant attachment requires only the “good enough mother” not the always physically proximate mother. Contrary to anti-vax claims, vaccines don’t cause autism and are one of the greatest public health advancements of all time.

Similarly, contrary to Trump’s claims, the disappearance of blue collar jobs has nothing to do with Mexicans and Muslims, and everything to do with global forces and technological advancement. Contrary to Trump’s claims, the problems we face in 2016 are complicated not simple, so simple solutions that can be encapsulated in a tweet will not work. Contrary to Trump’s claims that liberal elites have broken our country, the truth is conservative elites have broken our country in order to create chaos. The world as portrayed by Fox News and Breitbart is no more accurate than the world as portrayed by health conspiracy theorists.

2. Both the birth world and Trump world are built on regressive philosophies.

The natural parenting world reflects the effort, both open and clandestine, to force women back into the home. Natural parenting advocates speak to mothering anxieties, offer rigid prescriptions and not coincidentally enjoin women from engaging in the wider world of intellectual, economic and political pursuits. Trumpworld reflects the effort on the part of conservatives to hoard power for their own benefit, not for the benefits of voters. If you didn’t believe that before, you have to be figuratively blind not to realize it now.

The transition to Trumpworld is barely over a week old and it is already debasing the presidency. As Republican security expert Elliot A. Cohen writes in today’s Washington Post:

The president-elect is surrounding himself with mediocrities whose chief qualification seems to be unquestioning loyalty. He gets credit for becoming a statesman when he says something any newly elected president might say (“I very much look forward to dealing with the president in the future”) — and then reverts to tweeting against demonstrators and the New York Times. By all accounts, his ignorance, and that of his entourage, about the executive branch is fathomless. It’s not even clear that he accepts that he should live in the White House rather than in his gilt-smeared penthouse in New York.

Trump promised to drain the swamp, instead he is already wallowing in it.

3. Both the birth world and Trumpworld are built on ignorance.

Just as American homebirth midwives are the least educated, least trained midwives in the world, Trump has no education or training in government. In both cases, their followers don’t seem to mind since the entire purpose of hiring them is to spit in the face of traditional authority. Precisely because of their ignorance and lack of training, homebirth midwives have appalling rates of neonatal death and injury. Precisely because of his ignorance, Trump is likely to have appalling political, social and economic outcomes. Homebirth midwives are buffoons. Donald Trump is King of Buffoons.

4. Both the birth world and Trumpworld exploit distress without relieving it.

Natural parenting and anti-vax are, in part, reactions to the coldness of contemporary medical practice. People are seeking providers who listen to them and comfort them even if that means offering delusions instead of science. Blue collar workers are reacting to economic dislocation. Traditional Republican politicians have ignored that distress while putting the needs of lobbyists above their needs. Trump listens to them and comforts them by providing delusions instead of reality.

5. Both the birth world and Trumpworld offer faux “empowerment.”

In the world of natural parenting, empowerment has nothing to do with power and everything to do with defiance. In Trump world, empowerment of his supporters has nothing to do with economic relief and everything to do with unrestricted expressions of hate toward minorities, immigrants and women.

6. Both the birth world and Trumpworld are hoaxes that redound to the economic benefit of the purveyors.

The natural parenting world has created an army of providers — homebirth midwives, doulas, lactation consultants, bloggers with supplement stores — who profit most when they exaggerate and mislead. Trumpworld is just the latest iteration of Republican strategy to arrogate power by offering constituents social crumbs like pandering on religion and permission to hate, while impoverishing their voters and scooping up financial benefits for themselves and their industry friends.

Trump is preparing to take economic betrayal to even greater heights. His administration promises to be a cesspit of corruption led by the avaricious Trump and his avaricious family. They are already debasing the presidency by advertising their businesses on transition websites. They will turn this country into a banana republic where loyalty to Trump is the only qualification for inclusion in the government and Trump enrichment will be the ultimate metric for government policy.

The bottom line is that Trumpworld has a lot in common with the birth world, and as someone who spends my time debunking the mistruths, half-truths and outright lies of the natural parenting industry, it’s only logical that I would want to debunk the mistruths, half-truths and outright lies of Trumpworld.

I generally agree with NY Times columnist Frank Bruni, but not this time.

According to Bruni, The Democrats Screwed Up.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Republicans won because they were willing to betray American law and Constitutional principles.[/pullquote]

Despite all the discussion of demographic forces that doomed the G.O.P., it will soon control the presidency as well as both chambers of Congress and two of every three governor’s offices. And that’s not just a function of James Comey, Julian Assange and misogyny. Democrats who believe so are dangerously mistaken.

Other factors conspired in the party’s debacle. One in particular haunts me. From the presidential race on down, Democrats adopted a strategy of inclusiveness that excluded a hefty share of Americans and consigned many to a “basket of deplorables” who aren’t all deplorable. Some are hurt. Some are confused.

We’re supposed to tolerate the intolerant.

Liberals miss this by being illiberal. They shame not just the racists and sexists who deserve it but all who disagree. A 64-year-old Southern woman not onboard with marriage equality finds herself characterized as a hateful boob. Never mind that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton weren’t themselves onboard just five short years ago.

Political correctness has morphed into a moral purity that may feel exhilarating but isn’t remotely tactical. It’s a handmaiden to smugness and sanctimony, undermining its own goals.

I don’t think so.

The Republican success is undeniable but it was NOT achieved by Bruni’s strategy — understanding why the majority of the country votes Democratic or pondering Obama’s successes. That idea is ludicrous. The Republicans captured all three branches of government because they were willing to stretch American law and Constitutional principles out of all recognition.

1. They hold the House because of gerrymandering. If House seats were apportioned based on the proportion of people who vote for Democrats, it would be overwhelmingly Democratic. Gerrymandering involves carving House electoral districts to favor the party in power within a state. It is a deliberate tactic to frustrate the will of the voters and substitute the will of the political elite.

2. Gerrymandering allowed Republicans to achieved their victory by a deliberate campaign of shutting government down both literally and figuratively. Mitch McConnell and his colleagues played the long game. They gambled that by using intransigence to break the government, they could benefit from the desperation of those who perceived government as broken. They were right.

3. They achieved their victory by mobilizing the forces of hate. Anyone who thinks that hate wasn’t on the ballot is living in a dream world. Trump used hate to rile up a large segment of the population and bet that the rest were perfectly willing to live with hate, intimidation, discrimation and violence if they thought they could find economic relief.

4. They achieved their victory by lying. From the past 25 years, from Fox News to Breibart, the Republican press has engaged in a propaganda campaign that would make the Nazis proud. They learned from Hitler: if you tell a lie big enough for long enough, people will believe it.

5. They achieved their victory by criminalizing the political opposition. I suspect that when historians come to write the story of Trump’s election, they will begin not with his decision to run, but with Ken Starr’s investigation that led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment. Hillary Clinton’s loss is a direct consequence of the 25 year campaign to frustrate the electoral will of the voters by constantly prosecuting Democratic winners. The lesson they learned from the Clinton impeachment was not that prosecuting your political opponents doesn’t work (though it didn’t work that time). The lesson they took away was that they didn’t try hard enough. They spent the next 25 years spending billions investigating Hillary Clinton, finding nothing, but betting that the mere act of investigating her would cast a pall of suspicion that she would never shake.

The Republicans control all three branches of government because they were willing to ignore the Constitution and frustrate the will of the people by gerrymandering, breaking the government, mobilizing the forces of hate, telling monstrous lies and criminalizing the opposition party.

The idea that the Democratic party could have won if it had been more inclusive of the intolerant is naive in the extreme. It is the naïveté of Bruni and other liberals that has allowed this to happen, not the failure to embrace the intolerant.

Republicans made tactical decisions to put their insatiable appetite for political power ahead of the needs of the people of the United States. And it worked.

Is there any well-informed person who does not think Bill Clinton would have done more to help Americans, including those of the Republican party, if he had not been frustrated by Republican intransigence and the impeachment?

Is there any well-informed person who does not think that Barack Obama would have done more to help Americans, including those of the Republican party, if he had not been frustrated by the Republican tactical decision to break the government and thereby thwart all his efforts to improve the economic fortunes of everyone?

Is there any well-informed person who does not think that Hillary Clinton would have done more to help the intolerant than Donald Trump and the Republicans are ever going to to do?

To imagine that the election results would have been different if liberals had been more tolerant of the intolerant is quaintly and tragically liberal. It reflects a world view that we can all live in harmony if we just try harder to understand each other. And it is worse than wrong. By ignoring the massive, long-term tactical effort that the Republican’s made to capture all three branches of government we’ve missed the most important lesson: their deliberate political tactics worked.

Tolerate the intolerant? I don’t think so.

To paraphrase Bruni, tolerating the intolerant is political correctness morphed into moral purity; it may feel exhilarating but isn’t remotely tactical. Indeed, it’s the exact opposite of a winning strategy.

To win we have to fight the political tactics that have been used against us — gerrymandering, intransigence, hate, propaganda and misuse of laws — not withdraw into the liberal fantasy that all we ever need is greater sympathy and more understanding.

The central conceit of natural parenting is that it is based on science. Nothing could be further from the truth. Natural parenting does not seek validity in rationality, but rather in romanticism.

What’s the difference?

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Those who do not remember the past have condemned their children to repeat its suffering and death.[/pullquote]

According to philosopher Walter Truett, there are a variety of different ways of understanding the world including:

… the scientific-rational in which truth is “found” through methodical, disciplined inquiry

in contrast to:

… the neo-romantic in which truth is found either through attaining harmony with nature and/or spiritual explorations of the inner self…

The scientific view of parenthood is reflected in modern obstetrics, pediatrics, and immunology among other fields. It is predicated on the idea that nature is amoral (“bloody in tooth and claw”), as well as the easily verifiable scientific facts that childbirth is inherently dangerous, breastfeeding has only limited benefits, and vaccines are the biggest life-savers of children.

Natural parenting is a rejection of rationality in favor of a past that never existed:

Neo-romantics reject both the postmodern and the modern, and long for a fantasizes golden era before the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment.

Both scientific and historical fact tell us that childbirth is dangerous, and was only made safe by technology. Romanticism fantasizes that childbirth was safe in the past, and technology has made it dangerous.

Scientific fact and historical fact tell us that exclusive breastfeeding has a high death rate that can only be prevented with infant formula. Romanticism fantasizes that breastfeeding saves lives and formula kills.

Scientific and historical fact tell us that vaccines are one of the greatest public health advancements of all time. Romanticism ignores the dead and their potential descendants and fantasizes that because survivors of infectious scourges are “still here” vaccines are unnecessary.

Why have we experience a resurgence of romanticism in the face of incontrovertible evidence that nature is often deadly?

The growth of the neo-romantic culture in recent years has been nothing short of spectacular. It obviously expresses … a deep disaffection for modern civilization… It has most of the features of earlier romanticism — the reverence for nature, the personal-development preoccupation bordering on narcissism, the mystique of the noble savage — but these appear in much updated forms: environmentalism, spirituality, movies such as Dances With Wolves.

• Hence the narcissism of promoting the mother’s birth experience above the child’s safety, the mother’s “breastfeeding journey” above the child’s health, and the narcissistic fantasy of being “educated” about vaccines.
• Hence the insistence that childbirth is traditionally deeply spiritual and labor pain has been a source of empowerment when it was never either in the past.
• Hence the veneration of “normal” birth.
• Hence the wannabe birth “goddesses” who chant affirmations and refuse medical care.
• Hence the mystical faith in breastmilk to treat and prevent every illness known.
• Hence the fantasy that native peoples eat the placenta despite the fact placentophagy was first described in California in the 1980’s.
• Hence the notion that food is “medicine” and you can “strengthen” your immune system by eating right.

Contrary to the claims of natural parenting advocates, these are not supported by scientific evidence, but rather reflect a desperate desire to romanticize the past as being somehow preferable to the technological present.

Natural parenting is firmly backward looking yet the past it looks back toward never actually existed anywhere but in the mind of natural parenting advocates. Sadly it recapitulates the past that truly did exist: preventable deaths at homebirth, babies starving due to insufficient breastmilk, children dying of infectious disease for lack of vaccination and women forced back into traditional gender roles.

Natural parenting isn’t merely unscientific; it is ahistorical.

To paraphrase George Santayana: natural parenting advocates who do not remember the past condemn their children to repeat its suffering and death.

And the ultimate irony is that they are proud of themselves for doing so.

In the aftermath of this election I am afraid of so many things.

I am afraid that my beloved country will move backwards and retreat from the vaunted American respect for minorities, immigrants, the poor and the disenfranchised.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]This election was not democracy in action; it was nascent fascism in action.[/pullquote]

I’m afraid that my country will betray its ideals and give religion a central place in a government whose founding principles included the separation of church and state.

I’m afraid that the environment will be ruined, business will run amok without regulation, and the economy will enter a severe recession or even depression.

And I’m afraid that my party, the Democratic party, will draw the wrong message from the election results.

I’ve been reading a lot about the election as a repudiation of the elites by blue collar workers. Democrats had become out of touch with the suffering of lower middle class white people, suffering that came from the same sources that powered the rise of the elites to their positions of influence and wealth. I don’t disagree with that … but I don’t believe that is why Donald Trump was elected over Hillary Clinton.

Sure, the Democrats had a flawed candidate. Hillary Clinton brought a lot of baggage into the race; she is reflexively distrusted by people who have marinated in 25 years of non-stop Republican hate and lies. And that’s before we add in the misogyny on the part of many voters … but I don’t believe that is why Donald Trump was elected over Hillary Clinton.

Sure, the Democrats had their problems including scandals with Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her replacement Donna Brazile… but I don’t believe that’s why Donald Trump was elected over Hillary Clinton.

If we blame Clinton’s loss on these factors I fear we have missed the central point about this election: only one candidate, Hillary Clinton, was running for President. Donald Trump, in contrast was running for Strongman.

Trump, a serial liar, philanderer, cheater, sexual predator and failed business man was running as a fascist and was elected precisely because he promised, as fascists always do, to make the trains run on time. He will do so, in the time honored tradition of fascists, by seizing control of government, exploiting it to enrich himself and his family, and diverting the masses by sanctioning hate against the traditionally despised.

This was an election like no other. Hillary Clinton didn’t merely face Donald Trump, she faced the combined efforts of Fox News, Breitbart, the unreasoning hatred of Republican lawmakers who have wasted millions of taxpayer dollars trying to smear her, the hacking of her campaign and the release of unflattering private emails, the technical and political might of the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and the political bias of the FBI director who violated protocol to make egregious insinuations that he later was forced to retract.

Those forces were determined to prevent her election by means legal or illegal and they succeeded.

They wanted to elect a demagogue so they could use him to enact an agenda that is both distinctly un-American and profoundly dangerous to American interests. What is that agenda? They, from the alt-right through Putin, want to create chaos and Donald Trump is undoubtedly the chaos candidate.

This was not just another election where two parties faced off against each other. This was a unique election where one party faced off against forces of both internal and external actors who seeks to take America from a shining city on a hill to a cesspool of racism, financial turmoil and diminished international power and influence.

Trying to make sense of this campaign by casting it as the elites against the blue collar workers is not only wrong, but it blinds us to the true forces at work. It’s like blaming the accession of Hitler in Germany on the fact that the other parties didn’t have compelling candidates. Hitler didn’t come to power because of what the opposition did; he came to power because of what he did to engineer his ascent by means legal and illegal.

Trump didn’t come to power because Hillary Clinton was a flawed candidate. He has come to power because of what he and his erstwhile allies did, both legal and illegal, to engineer his victory.

And that doesn’t even take into account that the Republicans spent 8 years questioning the legitimacy of Obama’s presidency and refusing to act on his nominations and legislative priorities. The Republicans did it so they could discredit a Democratic president and keep him from helping the very people who voted for Trump. “The government is broken!” Trump voters cry and they’re right, but it was the Republicans who broke it, not the Democrats.

Trump voters claim they don’t want politics as usual; they’ve gotten their wish and I’m afraid they and the rest of us will pay dearly as a result.

We were manipulated into selecting the candidate of the KKK, the American Nazi party, and Vladimir Putin. We have elected evil; we have elected hate; we have elected dirty dealing.

So don’t tell me that Democrats could have won if we had only selected a more popular candidate. Who else but Hillary Clinton could have withstood the abuse, and the lies, and hacking of her campaign and the efforts of Vladimir Putin and still have remained standing, let alone get elected? No one.

So don’t tell me we need to heal or that we need to reach across the aisle or we need to listen to the blue collar workers.

So don’t tell me to calm down because it can’t be all that bad. When you elect an evil, hateful, double-dealing predator as Strongman, you are going to get evil and hate and double-dealing and violation of rights, and the enrichment of the Trump family and their cronies. We just have to hope against hope that we won’t get depression and war to go along with it.

And whatever you do, don’t tell me that we need to accept the results of this election because that’s how democracy works, because this election was NOT democracy in action, it was nascent fascism in action.

Recently Amber wrote on the my Facebook page:

Can you adress the issue of over-medicalized births and malpractice? You make some very strong arguments against the “natural” childbirth movement but you haven’t discussed why women are looking for new options.

Amber is asking about defensive medicine.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Defensive medicine offers real benefits to patients.[/pullquote]

According to Wikipedia:

Defensive medicine … refers to the practice of recommending a diagnostic test or treatment that is not necessarily the best option for the patient, but … to protect the physician against the patient as potential plaintiff…

Defensive medicine takes two main forms: assurance behavior and avoidance behavior. Assurance behavior involves the charging of additional, unnecessary services in order to a) reduce adverse outcomes, b) deter patients from filing medical malpractice claims, or c) provide documented evidence that the practitioner is practicing according to the standard of care, so that if, in the future, legal action is initiated, liability can be pre-empted. Avoidance behavior occurs when providers refuse to participate in high risk procedures or circumstances.

What about defensive medicine in obstetrics?

Consider the high rate of C-sections and inductions. They satisfy the requirements of assurance behavior.

Reducing adverse outcomes? Check.
Deterring medical malpractice claims? Check.
Pre-empting liability? Check.

Consider the precipitous decline in the rate of VBAC. That’s avoidance behavior: malpractice insurers have forced providers and hospitals to refuse to participate in VBACs.

There’s an important subtext that undergirds defensive medicine that often goes unrecognized and therefore unanalyzed. Defensive medicine is driven by the fact that we live in a “risk society,” a society that is organized around a new understanding of risk.

There have always been risks, of course, but they have traditionally been viewed as outside the control of human beings — the risk of a hurricane or other natural disaster for instance. The risk society has arisen because of new beliefs that we can and (especially) that we should control every aspect of risk.

In our risk society, we are obsessed with the risk of auto accidents and outfit our cars with ever more airbags and safety features. We are obsessed with risks to our children, and restrict their play outdoors and their independence, and we are obsessed with illness and death, literally passing laws to control personal habits like smoking.

How does the “risk society” impact obstetrics? We have become obsessed with the perfect child, and we construct ever more elaborate requirements to ensure that everything we do contributes to the perfect outcome.

But childbirth is inherently dangerous, especially for babies. Indeed, it has been the leading cause of death of babies, and one of the leading causes of death of young women in every time, place and culture. The most dangerous day of the entire eighteen years of childhood is the day of birth. The “risk society” demands that we do everything possible to reduce those risks to zero.

Lay people often conceptualize risk as a dichotomy: an individual is either low risk (it won’t happen) or high risk (it will happen). But that’s not how risk works. Risk exists on a continuum; the risk varies from person to person depending on a complex interaction of numerous factors. What’s the risk that a baby will die of group B strep meningitis? That depends on the presence of GBS in the mother’s vagina, the exposure of the baby when delivered, and the presence or absence of antibiotics. We can determine the risk of GBS meningitis in large populations, but for the individual woman who carries GBS, we cannot predict the risk that her infant will be infected.

What does this have to do with defensive medicine? Consider that in our risk society we are supposed to reduce our risk to zero. How do we do that? We do that by acting to reduce risk regardless of how small the risk might be.

That represents an entirely new approach. Until the advent of the risk society, we determined which tests and procedures to use by establishing a risk threshold. For example, we know that the risk of stillbirth begins to rise in the last weeks of pregnancy (from about 36 weeks onward). The risk of stillbirth begins to increase precipitous at 42 weeks. So we arbitrarily established the risk threshold for postdates induction at 42 weeks.

Lay people, with their dichotomous view of risk, tend to imagine that there is no risk of stillbirth prior to 42 weeks, and there is a risk of stillbirth after 42 weeks. But the reality is that risk exists on a continuum. Defensive medicine can best be conceptualized at lowering the risk threshold. In the case of induction, the risk of stillbirth starts rising long before 42 weeks. Since the risk society mandates that we reduce risk to zero, doctors feel they have no choice but to offer postdates induction to women by 41 weeks, or even 40 weeks. That’s really the only way to reduce the risk to zero.

This is a critical point. Lay people imagine that defensive medicine offers no benefits to patients and is undertaken solely to protect doctors, but that’s not a complete picture. Defensive medicine is simply lowering the risk threshold. It benefits patients in that the risk of a particular outcome (like postdates stillbirth) is reduced as far as it can be reduced.

So what’s wrong with defensive medicine? Defensive medicine rests on the premise that we must do things to reduce risk. It completely ignores the risks posed by doing things. But that’s not only a feature of defensive medicine, it is a feature of every aspect of a risk society.

Yes, we make cars safer by putting in more safety features, but we increase the price of cars. Yes, we reduce the risk of kidnapping if we don’t let our children play outdoors, but it’s not good for children to grow up cowering inside their houses. Yes, we reduce the risk of illness when we pass laws regulating private habits, but we also reduce freedom. And when we perform more C-sections we lower the risk of neonatal death, but raise the risk of maternal complications.

In our risk society, though, we apparently don’t care. We consider ourselves required to reduce risk of neonatal injury and death to zero, regardless of the other risks or costs that increase as a result.

Where does that leave us in regard to defensive medicine?

First, we can see that defensive medicine is not the use of tests and procedures on people who don’t need them. It’s lowering the risk threshold for using tests and procedures that we previously reserved for higher risk individuals.

Second, defensive medicine is not really a medical issue, but rather a societal issue. To reduce defensive medicine, we would need to give up the idea that we can and should reduce all risk to zero. We would need to recognize that there are negative consequences to reducing risk, as well as positive ones. Most important, we need to figure out how much risk we are willing to tolerate. Zero risk is not achievable, and the price for attempting to achieve it can be very high.

What does this mean for natural childbirth advocates?

First it means an acknowledgement that childbirth is inherently dangerous and that there is nothing trustworthy about birth.

Second, it means that each individual has to determine how much risk she is willing to tolerate and communicate that to her doctor or midwife. Pretending that complications will not happen to you (“trust birth”) is not a strategy; it’s an abrogation of personal responsibility. You cannot give informed refusal to interventions to protect your baby from the risks of childbirth by pretending they are never necessary since that flies in the face of reality.

Finally, it means that blaming doctors for defensive medicine not only isn’t working, but it can’t work. If you want to know the reason for defensive medicine, look in the mirror. Defensive medicine would not exist without the willingness of women to sue for anything less than a perfect outcome.

Natural parenting is a backlash to women’s emancipation.

Grantly Dick-Read was painfully honest that he created the philosophy of natural childbirth as a way to keep women at home; only there could they find true happiness by fulfilling their biologic destiny, and then they would stop agitating for political, legal and economic equality.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Natural parenting promotes the Victorian ideal of women’s proper place … in the home.[/pullquote]

La Leche League and the lactivist movement were founded for similar reasons. Their message that breastfeeding is obligatory because Nature intended for women to breastfed is a reflection of their belief that staying home is obligatory because God intended for women to stay home.

Attachment parenting purports to reflect the science of attachment, but is the exact opposite of what we know about infant attachment. The reality is that attachment parenting reflects the Bill and Martha Sears fundamentalist Christian beliefs about traditional gender roles.

And, of course, natural parenting is always more work for mother. In a society where women can no longer be forced to stay home with small children, natural parenting is the perfect stealth vehicle for manipulating women into believing they must stay home. While ostensibly promoting the wellbeing of infants and small children, it’s really about weighing down mothering with so much work and so much moralizing that a “good mother” can’t possibly do anything but mother.

In other words, natural parenting promotes the Victorian ideal of women’s proper place … in the home.

Victorian ideals were a display of privilege; only families with wealth could afford to allow a mother to stay home. Similarly, modern natural parenting is also a display of privilege.

I’m not the only person to have realized this. In a fascinating piece entitled Twenty-First Century Victorians, Jason Tebbe explains:

The nineteenth-century bourgeoisie used morality to assert class dominance — something elites still do today.

Specifically:

Although the nineteenth-century upper middle class was not nearly as prudish and stern as we imagine, it did adhere to strict behavioral codes. These normative codes reflected the period’s shifting class structure and the ascendant bourgeoisie’s desire to assert its moral superiority …

For this dedication to pay off, however, these enriched Victorians had to display it, making their difference from both the wealthier and the poorer obvious to all.

Today the display of privilege involves conspicuous physical fitness, eating overpriced organic food, getting your child into a good college and natural parenting.

Child-rearing practices get more onerous with each passing year, demanding that parents exercise extreme discipline and self-denial…

Mothers must breast-feed for an extended period, provide only organic food to their children, and keep screen time to nil. Slip-ups indicate failure. This represents perhaps the clearest link between Victorian values then and now: both restrict women and reinforce gender hierarchy.

It’s all about displaying privilege.

It is hardly coincidental that these new expectations require money and time. A working mother who has to juggle multiple service-sector jobs will find it much harder to pump breast milk at work than a woman in an office job. (Not to mention the disparity in parental leave between white- and blue-collar workers.)

And, of course, asserting moral superiority:

The moralistic imperatives now attached to breast-feeding allow working-class women — who are less likely to breast-feed — to be judged moral failures…

Indeed:

Today’s upper middle class maintains the fiction of a meritocratic society, just as the Victorians did. This story allows them to shore up their economic position behind the backs of workers, who are taught that their health problems and dismal career prospects represent individual faults, not systemic dysfunction.

Of course, exercising, eating organic food, and pushing children to use their spare time usefully are not inherently bad things. However, they become markers of bourgeois values when they are marshaled to assert one class’s moral superiority over another and to justify social inequality. It was just as obnoxious in the nineteenth century as it is today.

Natural parenting is simultaneously a display of Victorian sexism (relegating women to the home) and privilege since it implicitly requires marriage and a partner who earns enough to support the natural parenting lifestyle.

That is not a coincidence. Natural parenting is not about children’s needs, it’s about parents striving to display the Victorian virtues of privilege: forcing women back into the home and the sense of moral superiority that comes with it.

Most attachment parenting advocates are strongly opposed to the sleep training method known as “cry it out,” abbreviated CIO.

According to Darcia Narvaez, PhD:

With neuroscience, we can confirm what our ancestors took for granted—that letting babies get distressed is a practice that can damage children and their relational capacities in many ways for the long term. We know now that leaving babies to cry is a good way to make a less intelligent, less healthy but more anxious, uncooperative and alienated person who can pass the same or worse traits on to the next generation.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Letting a hungry breastfed baby cry it out is indefensible cruelty.[/pullquote]

That’s nothing but nonsense, of course, on a variety of levels. It’s nonsense because crying it out does not cause brain damage and it’s nonsense because it is based on the myth of our “noble savage” ancestors who had nothing better to do with their time than endlessly soothe their multiple babies.

But let’s take CIO opponents at their word for the moment. If they honestly believe that CIO harms babies, why do they think it is okay for hungry breastfed babies to cry it out?

Hunger is probably the most elemental of infant drives and, as anyone who has seen an infant scream from hunger would probably agree, is experienced by the baby as suffering. For most mothers, myself included, the sound of their own infant crying is piercing in its intensity and distress. I remember being surprised by this when my first child was born. I had spent my entire professional life surrounded by crying babies and it had never bothered me, yet I found my son’s crying unbearable and always rushed to determine what was wrong and fix it in any way possible. I cannot imagine letting any of my infants cry in out in hunger for any length of time without feeding them.

So why do lactivists think it okay to let babies cry it out for hours at a time because of desperate, all consuming hunger?

Why do they advise women whose babies aren’t getting enough milk in the first few days to CIO arguing that assuaging an infant’s hunger now, when he is suffering, will undermine breastfeeding? Why do they view supplementation in the first view days as an evil so great that it is preferable to force babies to CIO and thereby destroy their brain cells?

Why do lactivists think it is okay to ignore an infant who is not gaining weight because of a maternal milk supply that does not match that infants needs? Why do they denigrate women who find their baby soothed and content after a bottle of formula, and chastise them that they should have let the baby CIO?

Why do lactivists consider maternal mental health/postpartum depression to be a trivial reason for letting babies CIO, but consider that establishing or preserving a breastfeeding relationship is a perfectly acceptable reason for CIO?

Feel free to correct me, but I’m not aware of a single lactivist or attachment parenting blogger who sees anything wrong with letting a hungry breastfed baby cry it out.

Why the hypocrisy?

Because lactivism and attachment parenting have little if anything to do with babies and their wellbeing and everything to do with parents and their self-image. A “good mother” supposedly sacrifices her sleep and mental health and is willing to spend every minute of every day soothing an infant in order to avoid crying it out. But a “good mother” also breastfeeds and therefore, any amount of crying it out is acceptable to preserve bragging rights to exclusive breastfeeding.

This piece first appeared in November 2013.