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.

There is nothing more satisfying than having your work reach the mainstream. It is truly thrilling to read people expounding on the themes that I have blogged about for over a decade and collected in my book Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting. But it’s a little disconcerting to see it in a major newspaper under the byline of one of my Twitter followers but missing attribution to me.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]It’s thrilling to see my ideas succeed and be embraced by others, but a brief attribution would have been appreciated.[/pullquote]

Imagine my surprise to see today’s piece in the LA Times, Is ‘natural motherhood’ more feminist? by Lizzie Garrett Mettler. It’s a question I’ve asked repeatedly on this blog and in my book.

Here’s what I read in the LA Times:

Dr. Fernand Lamaze, who popularized the technique for breathing through contractions, ranked women’s childbirth performance from “excellent” to “complete failure” on the basis of their restlessness and screams…

Grantly Dick-Read, an evangelical Christian who wrote the best-selling book “Childbirth Without Fear,” once wrote: “Woman fails when she ceases to desire the children for which she was primarily made. Her true emancipation lies in freedom to fulfill her biological purposes.”

William Sears, who coined the term “attachment parenting,” spent most of his life as a Christian fundamentalist and believed his technique to be God’s design for raising children. In his 1997 book “The Complete Book of Christian Parenting and Child Care,” Sears opposed the idea that women belong in the workplace…

Even the female icons of the movement are overtly traditional. La Leche League, the group that gave rise to modern “lactivism,” was started by seven Catholic housewives who advocated for a return to breastfeeding and were also opposed to mothers working outside the home…

Not only are these my ideas, expressed very similarly to the way I have expressed them, but Mettler describes them using words similar to those I have used.

To me, the approach feels retrograde. It further entrenches women in the home as primary caretakers, places much of their value on their bodies, and makes it even more difficult for them to work.

I’m thrilled that Mettler thinks so highly of my work and clearly agrees with much of it. I’m disappointed, however, that she didn’t attribute it to me.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not plagiarism since nothing is quoted exactly. And it’s not a copyright violation because you can’t copyright ideas. But it is my work and acknowledging that would have been appropriate.

I guess ideas can grow up and move away just like children can. After years of caring and worrying, it’s thrilling and deeply gratifying when you see your children succeed emotionally, educationally and financially, but a little thank you every now and then never hurts. It’s also thrilling and deeply gratifying to see my ideas succeed and be embraced by others, but a brief attribution would have been appreciated.

Winston Churchill famously noted:

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

And that was before lies traveled at the speed of the internet.

While the internet has brought many improvements to our lives, it has dramatically empowered liars. That is especially true of social media like Facebook and Twitter. There’s no better example than the anti-vaccine movement. Anti-vaccine social media is nothing more than peer to peer sharing of ignorance and fear.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]You have to be mindbogglingly unsophisticated to imagine that the “dangers” of vaccines are simultaneously top secret AND circulating on Facebook.[/pullquote]

The anti-vaccine movement has a perfect record. In the 200 plus years of its existence, it has never been right about anything.

Vaccination was less than a decade old in 1802 when Gillray created his etching The Cow Pock for the Anti-Vaccination Society.

…[S]atirist James Gillray caricatured a scene at the Smallpox and Inoculation Hospital at St. Pancras, showing cowpox vaccine being administered to frightened young women, and cows emerging from different parts of people’s bodies. The cartoon was inspired by the controversy over inoculating against the dreaded disease, smallpox. Opponents of vaccination had depicted cases of vaccinees developing bovine features and this is picked up and exaggerated by Gillray…

In other words, the first known accusation of anti-vaxxers is that vaccines would turn its recipients into cows. The etching was an early form of social media designed to spread the ignorance and fear of anti-vaxxers to others. Ignorance because they didn’t understand the basic concepts of immunology and fear at what they could not understand.

Over the years, the message has been changed repeatedly, but each has had one factor in common with all those they came before. Every single claim has been a lie that has no basis in science and has been thoroughly debunked. No matter!

By 1884, anti-vaxxers were no long claiming that vaccines turned people into cows, merely that vaccination killed babies.

As an article in the Atlantic explains, even some scientists believed and disseminated anti-vaccine nonsense:

“Every day the vaccination laws remain in force parents are being punished, infants are being killed,” wrote Alfred Russel Wallace, a prominent scientist and natural selection theorist, in a vitriolic monograph against mandatory vaccination in 1898. He accused doctors and politicians of pushing for vaccination based on personal interest without being sure that the vaccinations were safe…

Sound familiar? Disgraced physician Andrew Wakefield is merely the latest in a long line of purveyors of anti-vaccine lies.

These liars have been tremendously empowered by the internet, which allows lies to travel ever faster and in new and insidious ways. It used to be hard for crackpots to be heard; the internet makes it easy. Social media makes it even easier by passing the nutty theories directly from trusted friends, acquaintances and admired celebrities.

Why does anyone believe this nonsense? One factor that all anti-vaxxers have in common is profound ignorance about immunology, science and statistics. They don’t understand the principles of immunity, the way in which vaccines work, and they don’t know how to read scientific research, analyze statistics, or weigh competing claims. That makes them easy prey for quacks and charlatans.

The other factor is fear. People fear what they don’t understand. Those who lack education fear being manipulated by scientists. Those who feel powerless fear being manipulated by the government. Untold millions fear being manipulated by corporations. They manage their fear by resorting to ludicrous conspiracy theories, pretending they have “done their research” and obtained access to secret information they can use to protect themselves.

But it’s not just ignorance and fear that makes it possible. There is one personal characteristic that is shared by anti-vaxxers everywhere — a stunning lack of sophistication.

You have to be remarkably unsophisticated to believe what you read on random Facebook pages and posts shared by your friends.

You have to be remarkably unsophisticated to imagine that the every government in the world and every pharmaceutical company is engaged in a conspiracy that involves literally millions of people and is capable of keeping word of the conspiracy from getting out.

You have to be remarkably unsophisticated to think that doctors, scientists and pharmaceutical executives willingly risk their own children’s lives by giving them “harmful” vaccines as a ruse to hide the secret dangers of vaccines.

You have to be mindbogglingly unsophisticated to imagine that the “dangers” of vaccines are simultaneously top secret AND circulating on Facebook.

Today’s anti-vaxxers would probably laugh at the naïveté of the original anti-vaxxers who thought vaccines would turn them into cows. The sad truth is that they are just as naive and just as foolish to think that vaccines will make their children autistic or that every illness or personality quirk is a “vaccine injury.” Their imaginations spin different horrors but the ignorance, fear and lack of sophistication remains the same.

The ultimate irony is that anti-vaxxers think they are educated by social media, but anti-vax social media makes them stupid. It is nothing more than peer to peer sharing of ignorance and fear.

The lactation community is tearing itself apart over an issue of ideological purity and no one could be happier about it than I am.

Lactivism is a cult, and like most cults, it places a premium on ideological adherence and punishes those who don’t demonstrate appropriate ideological purity.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Lactivists are circulating a petition designed to humiliate and shame Ruth Lawrence, MD, a giant in the field of breastfeeding research.[/pullquote]

Exhibit A: A Change.org petition designed to humiliate and shame Ruth Lawrence, MD, a giant in the field of breastfeeding research, signed by over 2000 lactivists.

What did the 90+ year old Dr. Lawrence do to merit such treatment? She dared to speak, along with other prominent breastfeeding researchers, at a conference sponsored by Satan Nestle, more accurately the affiliated Nestle Nutrition Insitute. Quelle horreur!

The Nestle Nutrition Institute held their 90th Nestle Nutrition Institute Workshop in Switzerland from October 30 to November 1, 2017…

Several prominent breastfeeding and human milk researchers spoke at the event, thereby offering their own reputations and credibility to the brand whose egregious infant formula and baby food marketing practices have been heavily documented for decades.

How should the elderly Dr. Lawrence and the other miscreants be humiliated disciplined?

We call for the following:

– Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine to remove Dr. Ruth Lawrence from their Board of Directors

– La Leche League International to remove Dr. Ruth Lawrence and Dr. Paula Meier from the Health Advisory Council

– International Society for Research in Human Milk and Lactation (ISRHML) to remove Lars Bode (current President of ISRHML) and Sharon Donovan (President elect of ISRHML)

How this will promote breastfeeding? It won’t, but it is just a blatant attempt to enforce ideological purity, a central feature of any cult.

According to Google Dictionary, a cult is a “system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object.”

• Lactivism is a cult because it displays a near religious devotion to breastfeeding, treating it as perfect for all babies, at all times, in all situations.
• Lactivism is a cult because it frames any criticism of breastfeeding, no matter how minor, as opposition to breastfeeding.
• Lactivism is a cult that shames those who dare deviate from cult orthodoxy; hence the shaming of women who can’t or don’t breastfeed.
• Lactivism is a cult because it demands ideological purity.

The demand of ideological purity is critical.

The world is depicted as black and white, with little room for making personal decisions based on a trained conscience. One’s conduct is modeled after the ideology of the group, as taught in its literature. People and organizations are pictured as either good or evil, depending on their relationship to the cult.

Universal tendencies of guilt and shame are used to control individuals … There is great difficulty in understanding the complexities of human morality, since everything is polarized and oversimplified. All things classified as evil are to be avoided, and purity is attainable through immersion into the cult’s ideology.

What has Dr. Lawrence contributed to the field of breastfeeding research? For many years she was the field of breastfeeding research.

At the University of Rochester School of Medicine, with which she has been closely associated since 1949, she is a professor of Pediatrics and Obstetrics and Gynecology and a member of the Division of Neonatology. She also is Medical Director of the Breastfeeding and Human Lactation Study Center, which she founded in 1985, and Medical Director of the Finger Lakes Regional Poison and Drug Information Center, which she has guided since 1958-after helping to organize it in 1954, the second such center to open in the country.

Author of Breastfeeding: A Guide for the Medical Profession , the standard reference work since its 1979 publication, and many articles, chapters and reviews, Lawrence is a founding member and a past president of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine. As a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics work group on breastfeeding, she participated in the preparation of the Academy’s statement on breastfeeding and human lactation, and is now on the Executive Committee of the Academy’s Section for Breastfeeding.

But apparently none of that matters. She consorted with Satan and must be punished.

Make no mistake, Nestle is Satan in the lactivist cosmology. If it did not exist, it would have had to be invented for the purpose. Yes, Nestle did unconscionable things fifty years ago in Africa. In an attempt to increase market share, they promoted formula (and got women “hooked” on it) knowing that the only water that would be used to make it was contaminated and that many of them could not afford it and therefore eventually diluted it. Many babies died as a result.

But that was fifty years ago. I doubt that anyone responsible for that ethical outrage is even alive today, let alone still working at Nestle. No matter! Nestle has continue to serve as a convenient foil for the breastfeeding industry. It allows lactivists to imagine that formula itself is evil because it is produced by a company — though not only that company — that once allowed unethical and deadly business practices.

The demonization of formula is central to lactivism, as if any food should ever be demonized let alone one that has saved literally millions of lives. If breastfeeding disappeared tomorrow, very few babies would be harmed as a result; if formula disappeared tomorrow, millions would die.

But this incident isn’t merely amusing for those outside the lactivist cult, it is also instructive. There is little more important to the contemporary lactivist movement than the work and dedication of Dr. Ruth Lawrence. She is a pioneer and an intellectual giant within breastfeeding research. I don’t always agree with her, but I have the most profound respect for her.

The fact that lactivists would shame and humiliate her because she didn’t demonstrate sufficient ideological purity tells you that breastfeeding is more important to them than people. It really doesn’t matter to them whom they hurt, even one of their own. We should not be surprised then that they are willing to hurt babies and mothers — even let them die — because of their cult like veneration of breastfeeding.