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

There's usually an element of "suffering has made me a better person" - get lost !

These are the kind of morons who voted for Brexit - they're prepared to eat gruel and dress in rags if it means fewer foreigners and the national anthem at TV closedown

I get this about parenting; I don't smack or hit the DC ever simply because it's not the choice I make. I once heard someone in DH's family say that unless children are smacked they can't ever know boundaries, and will grow up to be soft Lefties.

I also hate the fact that anyone chooses to smoke through pregnancy and when people declare "never did mine any harm". DS2 had asthma as a baby (not because of smoking - nobody on either side does) and there is nothing as terrifying as watching a baby who can't breathe properly; to deliberately expose your baby to that is fucking stupidity beyond measure.

Absolutely can't stand it!!

I honestly didn't know cot bumpers were considered a danger, is this quite a new thing ?

I've spent the past 46 years not telling one of my closest friends about the sexual abuse dealt tpme by my stepfather and some of my mother's other chums , which resulted in me giving birth to my beautiful daughter 2 days short of my 15th birthday . Battled so hard to keep us together then realised she deserved a chance of a far better life than I could offer her so offered her to be adopted at age 2 .and

Hard start for my innocent daughter and ruined my education /family relationships as was expelled from posh school / put into care by mother who told me I had wrecked her marriage to the main abuser .

Shared my story with said close friend a couple of weeks ago . She replied :
" I fended my Uncle Basil , off , too x"

Not sure how to continue that relationship anymore .

I honestly didn't know cot bumpers were considered a danger, is this quite a new thing ?

I don't think so. When my nephew was born in 2000 the health visitor advised against cot bumpers as part of her safe sleep talk. There was an American study in 2007 that concluded they were unsafe and when I was pregnant in 2008 I was also told by the midwife and health visitor that they strongly advise against them. They can compromise the air flow in the cot, they're a suffocation and strangulation risk then when the baby gets a little older they're also a climbing hazard as they can be used as a step when trying to climb out of the cot.

I actually don't have that much of a problem with it except when it absolutely DID do harm but they're too thick or obtuse to realise. Like the woman who was pregnant at the same time as me, drank, smoked cigarettes and drugs through her pregnancy and now has a kid with severe asthma, behaviour problems and has real trouble learning anything. But that's just life apparently! It didn't do him any harm....

I remember attending Infant Loss Awareness training and seeing first hand some of the major SIDS risks that parents scoff at because ‘it never did me/my relatives/my firstborn any harm’ YANBU. The number of parents who say that X/Y/Z never did their child any harm (or ‘they sell them in shops, how can it be harmful??’) wind me right up. I am incredibly glad their children are safe and happy and healthy. But many children aren’t.

Usually said by emotionally blocked, low self esteemed, judgemental, awful people.
YADNBU

Well TBF having had babies across two cultures it was very clear to me that guidelines were different from one country to another over things like what not to eat in pregnancy, so who to believe?

I honestly don’t think it would occur to my boys (19 and 32) to smack a child; it’s not part of either of their coping strategies to lash out.

It was mine though and I had to retrain myself to deal with fear, frustration and anger when I had my own children.

DD has SLD and sometimes hits out because she’s struggling to articulate herself.

Agree

It’s not always older generations.

I know someone (in her 30s) who smoked throughout her pregnancy (OK it was a few a day) and her parents did. She said “well it never did me harm”

Venger youngest is 10 , didn't see a HV or have a safe sleep talk. Did have a google and can now see why they could be a risk.
It is strange when you have had children over a couple of decades the differences in advice, I followed the advice, but what was recommend with the first child would be very much frowned upon with the last iyswim.

There is a difference between saying it did me no harm as in I, personally, haven’t had a negative response to it and saying therefore it’s okay to do.
Out of my siblings and I certain events have had very different outcomes for us individually. Arguably harmful in one way or another but not necessarily negative. As a parent there are many things I don’t understand why my parents made the choices they made but I can also appreciate their own upbringing and sometimes they knew no better. (I’m not sure why they didn’t question some things but they didn’t.)

I always wash my chicken lol

@nicky7654 yay! 🙌🏼

I have IBS and was weaned late as premature and my daughter has IBS and was weaned at 4.5 months. 3 other members of my family have bowel issues so I believe it's more a genetic issue rather than weaning young. Scientists have not proven anything.

YANBU at all.

What I hate is when someone is doing something known to be harmful and is clearly seeking validation for it, the "it never did me no harm" types seem to think that others pointing out the truth is somehow mean and nasty.

On a recent thread people were defending smoking during pregnancy by saying their friends smoked through pregnancy and were fine, or worse "only have asthma"!

Then again it's seen when people don't want to own their choices so they'll mock people who exercise saying "aye but my dad's mate Tony rarely drinks, always doing triathlon and he had a heart attack at 58, but my dad's fit as a fiddle into his 60s and spends his evenings down the pub watching the racing" as if that proves anything.

I don’t hate it but I do find it annoying. It’s the lack of empathy - they were OK so never mind what anyone else went through. Nice. This is often based on reactions against perceived bad behaviour from the younger generation being lazy and shiftless. It makes me laugh because my generation were punks, goths, travellers, New Romantics. They drunk, smoked, swore, were often unemployed and often took drugs. So when I see the memes about their mother smacked them and forced them to get a job etc with the implication that the younger generation do not do this I have to laugh. This woke younger generation are ridiculously well behaved and hard working compared to the one before. They are not smacked but the rules people enforce at home and at school are pretty strong. There is violence but look at gangs in London in the 60’s! Or punks in the 70’s.Or race riots and Poll tax riots in the 80’s. Or what happened to the travellers in the 90’s etc. Anyway, I just scroll past these days it’s not worth getting upset about.

Sometimes it’s about balancing risk though.. so front facing is safe (versus no car seat at all) but rear facing is safer.. however if your child gets car sick facing backwards you need to balance a high risk of something unpleasant against a tiny risk of something catastrophic.
Whereas smoking in pregnancy or smacking are clearly harmful, and now we know better we should do better.
And I had my first in 1999, they strongly advised against cot bumpers due to the sids risk even then. It was also advised to put them on their backs with their feet to the foot of the cot.

Yep, every piece of information you were given said Do Not Use Cot Bumpers.

And every catalogue you got sent contained beautiful nursery sets, including cot bumpers.

@boilingstormyseas I don’t consider this “older bashing. Certainly in my case DH is the main culprit for “never did me any harm”. Whereas DM and DF are extremely progressive and can’t imagine why anyone would risk things “in the light of all the evidence” - smoking, drinking, car seats, cot bumpers, blind cords...
DH on the other hand 🙄

When I was pregnant with DS in the late 90s we were told not to eat peanuts I didn't, he has a severe peanut allergy. When I was expecting DD a few years later the advice was the same but I ate a lot of peanuts at a party before I knew I was pregnant she has no allergy to peanuts

I think the balancing risk factor is the important one here. A lot of things that the "didn't do me any harm" brigade refer to, are things for which, at the time, there was no data or rather, no actionable data. For example, while I'm sure they had statistics about the mortality rate in car accidents, alternative options didn't exist - there simply weren't the sophisticated seats (and cars) that exist today. So frankly, they did what they had to.

Now we know that backward facing seats are the safest. We also know that a really good forward facing seat, while less safe in an accident than a backward facing seat, is still pretty safe. So we might decide to move to a forward facing seat but we probably wouldn't go with no seat at all because we know that's incredibly dangerous and even a very minor accident could result in serious harm or death for a child in that situation.

So basically, the "it never did me any harm" types annoy me because there is data to show it did. But at the same time, slavishly following random guidelines (and they are sometimes random - see alcohol for example in that every country/doctor has a different guideline) is annoying and I sympathise with the older generation when they do get frustrated.