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

it was he odd tap on the bum only

This is what I don’t get. You “tap” someone on the shoulder. If someone tapped me, I wouldn’t consider it punishment.

People use words like tap to downplay violence towards children. Either you hit them or you didn’t.

There does seem to be a lot of things you cannot do.

No Swaddling in Blankets yet the expensive wrap gimmicky thing is fine. (Dgd didn't like it)

toys in cot

But that's just the point gettingabitdesperatenow you'll never know whether it harmed you or not. The evidence about physical punishment suggests it probably did.

No Swaddling in Blankets yet the expensive wrap gimmicky thing is fine. (Dgd didn't like it)

Swaddling is "allowed", as in they don't advise against it, but there are guidelines to for it to help reduce the risk of SIDS.

www.lullabytrust.org.uk/safer-sleep-advice/swaddling-slings/

toys in cot

There should be nothing in the cot except the baby and a blanket, if using one. This is all part of safer sleep guidance.

People use words like tap to downplay violence towards children. Either you hit them or you didn’t.

If you gave your partner, friend, or colleague a "tap" on the backside they'd be within their rights to pursue a complaint of assault. It's sad that children don't have that same right.

Thanks Venger I know but it was the fact my dd forked out £20 on this snuggle thing that baby didn't like. I felt a cellular cotton blanket would have done the same job

Dd does use lullaby trust info a lot.

No internet when mine were babies so perhaps that plays a part.

My dps and in-laws were always imparting advice, sometimes unhelpful😕

Why do so many people ignore the co sleeping advice then?

Seems a lot of people make up the “rules” to suit themselves.

If you gave your partner, friend, or colleague a "tap" on the backside they'd be within their rights to pursue a complaint of assault. It's sad that children don't have that same right.

Couldn’t agree more.

No internet when mine were babies so perhaps that plays a part

Oh it definitely does.

When I was a kid (80s/90s) if a child was messing about in the supermarket then the parent might get a few disapproving looks or tuts, perhaps a comment or two, but that would be it. Nowadays you could quite expect to log into a site like Mumsnet and read an AIBU about yourself or go on Facebook and find it's now viral because someone recorded it and posted the video. We have access to Doctor Google who has never been to medical school but will quite happily tell us that we're dying from the slightest of ailments. We also have access to countless blogs, news articles, videos and so on about how we're doing it wrong and it's all so tribal - slummy mummy, yummy mummy, alpha mum, crunchy mum, tiger mum, cool mum, and so on.

It's great we have such a wealth of information at our fingertips now and so much has improved in terms of child safety, child development, health, etc but I can see why some people can find it so overwhelming and why it makes them doubt themselves.

Why do so many people ignore the co sleeping advice then? Seems a lot of people make up the “rules” to suit themselves.

Co-sleeping is also "allowed" and there is advice out there on how to do it safely.

www.lullabytrust.org.uk/safer-sleep-advice/co-sleeping/

I was encouraged to co-sleep with DD. She had "failure to thrive" (hate that term!) and one of the ways the MW and HV suggested to encourage feeding was to co-sleep so I was given information on how to do it safely.

Your child is your child and basically so long as you are acting within the law then no one can tell you what you are or are not "allowed" to do with your child. You are the parent, you decide. What various agencies and organisations do though is give advice and information on what is/isn't recommended (note: recommended not mandated), how to do this way or that way safely, what the risks/benefits are of this or that.

NHS guildelines are just that, they are guidelines and often change, they are often different in different parts of the world. WHO guidelines are particularly nebulous in that they make no distinction between third and first world countries. They are based on the best available evidence of the time and local health care services provide their best estimate based on that data. As a mum, you have to weigh up that guidance, and then decide whether you follow it, wholly, partially, or whether you feel able to ignore it. Many things are judgement calls

What actually annoys me more, is the slavish adhesion to "guidelines" and the vilification of those who do not follow it to the letter

Yes completely agree. I didn't even know the rules about car seats had changed until there was something on AIBU a few weeks ago about moving from rear facing to front facing much later. And babies can only be in a car sat for 30 mins? How does that work if you need to do a 4 hour journey - is the guidance really that you should make 7 stops? Yeah right. Meanwhile in the real world...

Not sure cot bumpers were a thing with ds was small, so a "child" would have to be into their 20s now to have had them I think.

I am not sure that the constant stress and anxiety - Should I have eaten this? Should I have done that? - is good for the mother or the developing baby Exactly, will just raise blood pressure which is neither good for mum nor baby.

Advice does change though. And sometimes older advice is right.

My grandmother talked about an old wives tale - German measles could harm a baby if you caught it when pregnant. She’d be over 100 today.

She was also absolutely shocked that my mum was putting us to sleep on our fronts (we’re all in our forties), because we could suffocate. Mum told her that suffocation was an old wives tale, and we could choke on our vomit if we lay on our back.

Two old wives tales that turned out to be true.

I didn’t make it clear that my grandmother thought the German measles thing was nonsense.

“I never vaccinated my kids and they are healthy” is one of the few things I will call out (along with "my kids didn't have car seats etc and are fine"):
THEIR children may be healthy, but they were also incredibly lucky. The children who contracted measles and died or were left disabled were not. So they can just fuck off. If you don't vaccinate your kids, you're dicing with death or serious illness and it's just pure luck (and herd immunity) that determines their fate.

Re: smacking. I was born in the early 90s. Everybody I knew would get a smack on a regular basis. I also got beaten a couple of times, I know the difference. It's still wrong to smack a child, even a tap on the hand.
People know better now. They used to send kids up chimneys- I wonder if the chimney-sender generation thought their kids were snowflakes for putting a stop to that?

Re: smacking. I was born in the early 90s. Everybody I knew would get a smack on a regular basis

Wow that does surprise me. DS was born in 1991 and was never smacked, and I don’t (to my knowledge) have any smacking friends.

I was smacked occasionally as a child and I think the only good it did was to make me strongly anti corporal punishment.

Normally if I hear a "well in my day we didn't.." comment I just nod and smile and generally ignore.
Except once. There was a list of things going round on Facebook, one of which was "we had lead paint on our cots but we survived".
I did call them to task about that. Being nostalgic for lead poisoning? Anyway, you may have survived, but others didn't. Also you don't know what that kind of lead exposure did to your developing brain.
The fact is there's a lot of stuff we know about now, car safety being one of them. Yes, the chances of being in a serious accident are low, but the consequences can be dire. So you have a safer car and a safer seat and whilst that might not change the risk of being in an accident it does give you a much better chance of avoiding serious injury. Yes they're a massive faff, but rather that than not.
Also, having been in what could have been in a terrible accident I know very well that a modern car design with crumple zones and good seatbelts meant I walked away with only whiplash and shock. Without those I'd most likely have been thrown from the car and died.
Yeah, so I mostly just roll my eyes at the "it never did me any harm" crew. Others weren't so lucky.

I think it is far too simplistic to assume that all current guidelines/cultural norms are inherently superior to those of previous generations. Some may well be, others less so. We obviously don’t have crystal balls that would enable us to see the outcomes of the choices we make today. The only thing we can know is that everything we do now will face the same scrutiny and criticism we apply to the past.

Twenty or thirty years down the road, people on this thread may be the ones who loudly defend the ways they raised their children despite the new research/shifting cultural attitudes that will make their decisions seem obsolete (or downright dangerous). And the younger generation will shudder in horror and feel smug about how far they have progressed. ‘‘Twas ever thus.

Rather than being resentful try being grateful that you live in such a blessed time that your children can be transported safely, you have knowledge about the right/wrong things to eat/drink in pregnancy. You have access to help for mental health conditions and these conditions are correctly accepted now as being a serious issue by the medical profession.
Yes, older generations did cope without all the knowledge you have, they just had to do their best and get on with it, good, bad indifferent.
There was not the info, products etc available. Yes, they managed to cope but without the knowledge of today.

Usually the older generation I've not heard anyone younger than 50 say that as I think younger generation except that things change . A lot of advice has changed since I had my dc youngest is teens and I except that more research has been done . My mil who is lovely so I'm not mil bashing is adamant that leaving your hair wet will make you ill . she quotes her own mum saying that who if was still alive would be nearly 100 .

I've told her I've run in the rain and I'm never ill so sitting with towel dried hair in a heated house won't kill me but it really stresses her out.
I had a colleague once who would eat raw sausage I would be like but she said never did me any harm eating all my life . She died in her 50s I'm not saying connected but surly eating raw sausages regularly won't do you any good .

There is wiggle room for most things but not vaccinating your child is abuse.

There are often nuggets of gold in peoples rants, be patient.

I was quite prepared to say you might be being a bit snowflakely from your title before reading your post but i think mothers that drink and smoke whilst pregnant are arseholes, simple as that and I've been flamed on mn before for saying that but it's true.

If you gave your partner, friend, or colleague a "tap" on the backside they'd be within their rights to pursue a complaint of assault. It's sad that children don't have that same right.

Very sad indeed. Perhaps sadder still to hear the passion with which some adults will argue their "right" to hit their children should be protected.

Playing devils advocate here but with the 'nobody had depression' thing for instance - older people might be trying to make sense of the change and be genuinely puzzled. After all, either people suffered as much but didn't speak of it (social pressure? Not understood/no help to be given anyway?) or didn't, in which case what's caused the change? Maybe they're trying to explore something rather than be difficult?

I remember talking to a colleague who was talking about her grandson being weaned on solid food at 3.5 months. I queried it and she said 'well it never did me any harm!' I replied, don't you have IBS? Research believes that early weaning is the cause of ibs, so yes it probably did do you some harm'.