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I mean they implicitly/explicitly give an image of child rearing that is neither factual, nor often physically possible: I joked that if we actually did everyth

I mean they implicitly/explicitly give an image of child rearing that is neither factual, nor often physically possible: I joked that if we actually did everything that was recommended, we'd have no income, have no activities, and still fill all 36 hours in a day. I call it anti-woman because the implicit philosophy underlying the advice is to view the woman as a failure, because she must inevitably break some of the rules and parenting is framed in a 'how far are you from a mythical optimal', even though this optimal is rarely empirically measured, stated or demonstrated, and often assumes an implicit (read diminutive and insulting) view of womanhood/motherhood roughly analogous to domestic housekeeper willing to sacrifice everything. lastly, it downplays the validity of the woman's own desires, and the utility of her experiences, skills, hobbies, feelings, desires into a cult of 'physical and emotional devotion to the child'. The number of women at our parent group and that we've met on our short journey undergoing sleep deprivation and psychological issues, calling out for help, was eye opening to me, especially because from my own perspective from the data point of view was simply 'empirically that's barely an issue, if its causing your family that much distress, just change and do this instead', whereas there is an undercurrent in parenting that says a mother's role is to suffer...

dragonsky67 7y ago
Our experience back in 2000 was of be breast police forcing my Wife to feed a sleeping 4 hour old baby, telling her that if she didn't feed it it the baby would die then standing over her and telling her that everything she was doing was wrong. Not a good start. This is after a 36 hour labour and I'd run away home for some sleep. This was our first baby so everything was new and unfortunately everything in the hospital was high pressure with an undercurrent of "why don't you know how to do this?". After a few days we managed to escape the hospital. Once we were home the pace slowed down and amazingly enough we started to discover what made this little fella tick. Feeding was still a lot of pain and tears, so we finally in desperation purchased some bottles and formula. Was amazing how much of a difference taking the stress of feeding away was. The baby was happy, the mother was happy, I was happy and we never looked back. He's now a healthy 6 foot 18yr old working his first job. It was amazing how much of a different reception we got on subsequent babies. The midwifes tended to just leave us to it. In both subsequent times we managed to get out of the hospital within 24 hours of the birth, allowing us to get to know the new member of the family without everybody trying to tell us how to do it.

dragonsky67 7y ago

Our experience back in 2000 was of be breast police forcing my Wife to feed a sleeping 4 hour old baby, telling her that if she didn't feed it it the baby would die then standing over her and telling her that everything she was doing was wrong. Not a good start. This is after a 36 hour labour and I'd run away home for some sleep. This was our first baby so everything was new and unfortunately everything in the hospital was high pressure with an undercurrent of "why don't you know how to do this?". After a few days we managed to escape the hospital. Once we were home the pace slowed down and amazingly enough we started to discover what made this little fella tick. Feeding was still a lot of pain and tears, so we finally in desperation purchased some bottles and formula. Was amazing how much of a difference taking the stress of feeding away was. The baby was happy, the mother was happy, I was happy and we never looked back. He's now a healthy 6 foot 18yr old working his first job. It was amazing how much of a different reception we got on subsequent babies. The midwifes tended to just leave us to it. In both subsequent times we managed to get out of the hospital within 24 hours of the birth, allowing us to get to know the new member of the family without everybody trying to tell us how to do it.