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

@The80sweregreat my mum used to talk about how her mother would only take her and her siblings to see the doctor if she was seriously worried that they might be dying because of the cost, but I never really understood quite what that meant yo her until shortly before she died. She had Alzheimer's disease and was clearly back in her childhood in her last days. She was begging my sister and I to take her home from hospital as there was no money for the bill. She couldn't understand it when we told her that there was no bill so we tried "Don't worry, we have got enough money" but that was met with "No. You mustn't use it, you have to feed the children instead". The real fear I saw in her eyes was the first time I truly understood what life before the welfare state must have been like. Sorry, that is going off topic somewhat but I do think it at least partially accounts for why my parents were very much in favour of modernity.

Elbow, my poor mum had to have her tonsils out in the ' poor hospital ' and they left half a tonsil behind! She took ages to recover and nobody really cared.
The money for the doctor was a worry and a lot of people died as they couldn't afford that or the cost of the medicine. I know that things are not always perfect at times these days , but if you need a Doctor 24/7 it is available for free somewhere , at least for basic attention. Even if it's a long wait.
It is derailing the thread , but I'm glad things are not as bad as they were back then. It was brutal compared to now.

Oh @Elbowedout, that’s so sad. It’s a story to really make you appreciate what we now take for granted.

I hate it too so no yanbu.
My mum smoked when she was pregnant with me and I've had lung issues since I was a baby, she also drank some, not a lot but some.
I was on high strength medication when I found out I was pregnant (had been told it was physically impossible for me to fall pregnant back when I was 16 and this was over 10 years later). Came off all my meds cold turkey immediately, against the drs advice, cause I knew they caused miscarriage risks, birth defects and baby dependency. Wasnt about to let my miracle be taken away from me.
Was put on meds at the end of the pregnancy when they discovered both my hips were out of place and I had bursitis and sciatica and was stuck on bed rest in hospital.
Some people may well be fine having not been inoculated, most of us in the over 30 bracket had measles as children, a lot of us spent years riding in the back of a car without car seats or bouncing around the back of a transit van.
However, times have changed, we know things now that we didn't back then, and the measles virus, shock horror, isn't the same as the one around in the 80s and early 90s, its mutated like all viruses do.
I get everyone parents differently but own your choices, don't excuse them as things you had as a kid so can't see the issue!

I think another thing with the allergies is the amount of different substances we are in contact with.

My Dad was 2 at the start of WWII and my mum was born the day before her town was bombed for the first time.

Rations meant there was only 1 egg a week per adult (my Nana never forgave my dad for throwing her one egg she had lovingly boiled for him onto the floor).

Citrus fruit was virtually unknown in WWII.

Even in the 1970s when I was a child, nuts were something that came into the house at Xmas. School dinners at primary were meat potatoes and 2 veg or you went home to eat, not all schools allowed packed lunches.

So children with allergies to grapefruit or mango wouldn't be exposed to those substances.

Thinks were not reported widely either, the local paper would cover deaths and it wasn't unusual for children to die.

The 'Spanish Flu' got its name because Spain was not involved in WWI. The countries that were at war thought it might be some form of biological warfare, and even if it wasn't did not want their enemies to know how many people were ill and how many had died, it actually killed more than WWI itself.