Too hate the “never did me any harm” brigade

[lastqueenofscotland]

You know the type
“I drank through all my 72784 pregnancies and all my children are fine.”
“I never vaccinated my kids and they are healthy”
“My Nan smoked 749298492838 a day and had the lungs of an 18 year old.”

Personal anecdotes do not outweigh often decades and decades of research. There are always outliers.
And if people want to engage in risky behaviour that could potentially harm their unborn child or increases their chances of developing diseases, crack on. But don’t try and justify it by arguing with the science

Don’t forget the “my parents smacked me whenever I misbehaved and it never did me any harm”
I particularly despise that one.

Yep, survivors bias. Ridiculous and usually used by people trying to justify things they know are wrong or against scientific research.

Yes I hate it as well.

Never mind all the thousands of people it did do harm to.

People dont understand personal experience vs population level and how you almost have to ignore your personal experiences because they are statistically insignificant but your brain gives massive weight to them.

The two exceptions that seem to be accepted on here though are bottle feeding and weaning - everyone consistently says to ignore doctors advice as it changes all the time and they bottle fed and weaned their kids when they were 8 weeks and now they're beautiful, tall, never been sick in their entire lives even a cold, and studying at Oxford...and everyone agrees with them

missyB me too. And it clearly did cause harm as it left them thinking that hitting children is ok.

Having been physically abused by my mother throughout childhood, I get extremely upset when people say "Smacking never did me any harm". My mother referred to my beatings as smacking (really, breaking a wooden paddle brush over a ten year olds head is a smack?!) and all her friends would spout "never did me any harm" and justify this behaviour.

There is never any excuse for an adult to lift their hands and assault a little child. That is never a loving act. Apologists for it make me sick.

I see this quite regularly with car seats, and booster seats. People changing too early, or getting rid entirely before the child is safe. I'm sick of hearing "oh my child thinks they're babyish", or "my child wants to look out of the window". How about making sure your child is safe. [grr]

YANBU. The anecdata brigade! Many are just overly defensive about the way they parented or were parented, even though no one is implying judgement on people who followed the guidelines at the time. But things change and for good reasons and instead of being defensive about it, it's better to be thankful we have more knowledge and safer advice for children. It's the ones who blindly assert they won't follow updated guidance that annoy me. Being defensive is one thing, but being so stubborn and self-interested that you won't adapt for the safety of your child is mind-boggling (see the recent 'coats in car seats' threads for examples of that)

Yes!!! Older relatives often use it as a way of insinuating I’m being ‘precious’ over the kids.
DS has just been referred to paediatrician as he isn’t gaining enough weight and I’m understandably worried, Older relative’s response ‘well babies were never expected to be so chubby when you were kids and loosing a bit of weight won’t hurt him’ wtf! So the GP, Health visitor and the standardised charts in the red book are all wrong and in actual fact I should ignore that they are saying my baby isn’t thriving because 30 years ago skinny babies weren’t monitored so well (Didn’t say this but would love to have done!)

'I used cot bumpers with all my 7382882 kids and they were all fine'

Yeah, you were lucky 🙄

Yeah, I drank all through my pregnancies and my babies were fine.

I want to smack people who say this. DD’s birth mum drank whilst carrying her and DD is most definitely not fine.

Yes, my mother has come out with 'people didn't get signed off with stress/depression' back in the day (or words to that effect) on more than one occasion.

Makes me so angry! Things like social media and all the negative stuff it brings didn't exist back then and life generally is more complicated.

some people just dont have mental capacity tbh

i dont believe that about skinny babies,
babies all meant to be podgy, so that can afford to lose if they are poorly, once they start crawling/walking

I used to say this before having children.

Now I feel quite angry that my mum and Dad smoke and drank throughout pregnancy and in the house whilst we were small children. Particularly as there is evidence it can pass down through the generations and their smoking can raise the risk of my children getting asthma etc

It's like something changed in me becoming a parent from ' it never did me any harm' to ' why would you put your child at risk?'

Yep I agree. My mil is a classic. 'don't get why you can't give babies sweets and lard' (or similarly unpleasant rubbish) 'babies haven't changed'... Er Yeh but research has and many children of your era love ended up with full dental clearances at age 5.

Not that I was ever a smoker or heavy drinker btw, but being pregnant highlighted how much responsibility we have for protecting a new life.

My MIL raised her two kids without the help of any relatives (all living elsewhere) and FIL had just started a new business so didn’t help much.

My SIL relies on PIL for a lot of help with her two kids. We have just had DD and she’s not sleeping at night (waking every half an hour) so DH took extended paternity leave so that he can help at night so I am not demented from sleep deprivation.

I love my MIL but she really has a bee in her bonnet and keeps making comments like ‘Well I never had any help’ and ‘I coped’. I think she might actually be jealous that our situations are so different from hers. It drives me up the bloody wall! Just because you ‘coped’ and did it without any help doesn’t mean that we should as well!

I haven’t yet had the the courage to point out that she was able to give up work until my DH was about ten so in that respect she had it a lot easier than most mums who have to go back to work after only 6 weeks leave!

@supercee my dm comes out with "nobody had depression in my day" and "we just got on with it" - well that's healthy then!

@fivefarthings your post reminded me of my MIL. FIL worked away and she was alone with 2 small kids she loves telling us about how hard it was and to my absolute horror when I complained to DH that he wasn’t helping enough he threw back at me ‘well my mum coped and she had it a lot worse’ 😡
I don’t want to just cope: I want my kids to thrive thank you very much!

Oh yes. Sometimes it’s very hard not to say “really? I think it did you a fair bit of damage actually “. But you know they couldn’t process that, and need to believe that they are ok.

This with cot bumpers x10000.
And the people defending the use always look down on the people trying to warn of the dangers so much.
Arghhhhhhhhhhh

I hate those comments scout depression too. I think a lot of it comes from people who secretly struggled with it and now feel jealous and resentful thar they did not have access or opportunity for the help we now face available and the freedom to say openly how we feel.

I agree with you totally. We know the chances of a baby getting strangled on a cot bumper, being in the car during a bad car crash, getting serious food poisoning from a bottle of formula being made fully and left in the fridge all day and lots of other things that have new guidlines are quite rare to happen but it's all about not taking that small risk. Why does anyone want to take risks with their children? I don't get it.

I don't really care if a million people did or still do it a certain way, I will not be. I tend to follow what the NHS and other approved authorities say to do because you know, people that are experts in these things are giving these guidelines. Just because you've had 6 kids that never came to any harm from doing something one way and now the guidlines have changed, it doesn't mean you are qualified to say it's ok to do it the old way.

What irks me the most is a first time mum asking for advice and these 'my kids never came to any harm' types wading in and confusing the poor woman. HV's are also bad for not being consistent about advice either and have their own views which doesn't help either

This isn't an AIBU - it's just an echo chamber of "oldies" bashing. There's no discussion just a bitch fest against the older generation.

And actually people didn't get on with it re:depression. They commited suicide, got locked up in an institution or suffered in silence. Suffered being the key word