ok, i probably am, but the way new mothers do thing s now, and there attitude is really getting on my nerves.

[pukkapatch]

rant alert
te entire holier than thou attitude. huge genreralistaion, i know. but whats so speical about waiting till the baby is six months old before weaning that will garantee said mothers a direct ticket to heaven?
from what i recall, upping the age to six months didnt happen because of some amazing scintific breakthrough. no new data was used t o make the decision. (a mnetter showed the evidence of this on some thread.
and then the whole breast bottle thing. the ones spouting statistics at everyone, with their smug expressions. it doesnt matter. every mom does what she sees as best for her baby. we dont constantly need to have information shoved in our noses.

my eldest is ten, and youngest four, so i'm not that far away from these subjects, but, some peoples attitudes just really really get on my tits.

Well, I have 2 children, so obviously I know better than all those silly old experts.

I am just so much better at parenting than anyone else, and my instincts are so much surer than the evidence based research that I can't think why people bother to post actual information when I am around to advise.

only 2 ?

in rl i find new mothers a wee bit patronising and yes like you SR

i think tori speaks sense and rest my case

No, PaulaYates, the WHO don't just say 6 months because people will do it sooner anyway, what a ridiculous thing to say.

Jings. You don't let facts get in the way of a good argument, do you?

VS, of course i wouldnt follow advice to wean at say 8wks just cos someone had done it with no probs against evidence based reearch.

I just think PY is right sometimes we know our babies and what is the right thing to do. My MIL used to constantly tell me to put rusks in ds1 bottle to satisfy him and that bf makes babies clingy!! i dont need research to tell me that aint right, but maybe if i wanted to wean at 4 or 5 mths or make up ff in advance against current recommendations then thats a different thing altogether.

i have been told that the WHO do actually.....so murrrrrr

tori, all 3 instances you give, unco-incidentally, are "facts" which existed before modern scientific method. The difference between modern research methods, is that you can test the hypothesis and prove it wrong if it is wrong. You couldn't test whether the world was flat because you had no way of testing it.

BJB your argument is so illogical. Your MIL knew what was right for her grandchild because it was her instinct. She didn't need evidence to know that she was right.

I love this. It's been going on for ages but everyone's still pretty civil and polite. Healthy debate.

Sorry.

You were told wrong.

And I know this, because I've read what the WHO said, and why.

Why dont' you go away and do the same, and then we can actually have a discussion about it?

If the best argument you can put forward is "so murrrr........" , you mustn't be surprised if people start to mistrust your advice.

i am probably just very bitter because i know a couple of very self righteous people who were brought up by decent parents and now rubbish everything their mothers did. They do bloody everything by the book and are their kids any better off/healthier? no way. I know its a stupid argument but i cant help it. They bf for well over a yr, only feed kids organic, dont drink or smoke(used to) themselves(but do eat junk on the sly)wouldnttouch Greggs with a bargepole(i actually do ocassionally indulge in a baguette or pasty!)and they are smug with a capital S. i mix fed, have never smoked but do drink alcohol, feed my ds1 a varied diet, mainly healthy and my ds1 is a healthy lad but he eats sweets and chocs and thats fine in moderation. Theirs are always sick and they themselves are overweight! i cant help but think what good all the obsessiveness is doing them or their children.
I think thats why i get irritated on mumsnet over stuff like this cos i think just chill out a bit!

But BJB, you're projecting your irritation with one couple onto the whole of mumsnet, plus the whole research community plus those of us here you like to discuss evidence.

Your friends do sound like amazingly annoying people, but why are you punishing us for that?

Ah well, the longer you stay on mn, the more you get to know people. You meet them on different types of threads and learn things about them which startle you, because it didn't fit in with your first impression of them. So eventually, instead of seeing the irritating people you know in RL behind the posts, you start seeing bits of a persona you imagine which makes it easier to read the posts in a different tone, IYSWIM.

oh they are not my friends anymore. Maybe i am tarring everone with the same brush! ha

Right im off to apply my fake bake and paint my nails(must refer to Company as to what nail polish colours are 'in')

wrt my perfection as a parent. 2-year-old dd is currently drinking coca-cola from a can and watching robbie the reindeer. ear infection. i don't care what she's doiing so long as she stops yelling about the pain.

BJB-why should people like that 'chill out a bit'it's up to them if they want to do the best for their kids and you shouldn't worry about what they are feeding their chidren or feel that they are being 'obsessive' or 'self righteous' - they believe they are doing the best for their children.

Well, I can tell you the BIG fashion nail colour round here at the moment is "red food colouring", ta very much dd2....

Ooh, just with reference to the "science versus pre-science" arguments, Melvyn Bragg is on now, radio 4, in our time, discussing the 4 humours. Just for those of you who ar interested - fascinating stuff! (I know how to enjoy myself )

...and anyway, BJB shocked because I am staggered you can maintain such a separation between your personal and worklife that you think it's OK to bury your head in a book while at work but not for your many clients, eg like those women on MN, to do so in their own personal lives. One is tempted to suggest you find it threatening to your professional identity and are wrapping that up in stuff about ho ho ho you're all too serious.

...and PY, ya gotta know right that the old human nature and instinct and all that stuff, half of it is bollox...? Please don't get me started on that one...

Actually i do actively encourage my clients to question the medical profession and to arm themselves with info,, just not obsess about it.

Knowing, following and discussing research is not obsessing about it!

BKB, you say, "I know its a stupid argument but I cant help it". And you go on to describe someone you know in real life and that makes you irritated on mumsnet....you're not kidding that's a stupid argument

If you really can't help it (WTF????), then take it elsewhere. How about a new thread , 'I find real life irritations get in the way of speaking rationally on mumsnet - am I alone?'

Gosh things have moved on again and yet, have strangely stayed in the same place.

Welliemum, I don't think you have read my last two posts correctly. You are agreeing with what I said. See my post of 17.24. I said that women should be sharing their experience even after their babies are out of nappies. By experience I mean personal experience and experience of the literature. Some people on here seem to be saying or implying, that if you no longer have children who bf and who are weaning so why should you care what new mothers do? (see Zealots post of 16.55, for example). Of course we can still be interested and of course we should still share our experience and knowledge. That is exactly what MN is for.

However, the benefit of that experience tells us we should treat the guidelines as guides, not dictates. It also tells us that there are other influences on the health and welfare of our children apart from what we fed them in the first 2 years of their lives. The diet they continue to have, the amount of exercise they get, where they live and the environmental impact of that, their socio-economic class, their level of education, etc, etc, etc. This is an extremely complex web of influences. It is impossible to test the relationship between all these scientifically because you can't isolate the variables in relation to all the others. That is what having older children tells us - that there is more to being a parent than getting the first 2 years right. No matter how vital that is at the time, its importance recedes a little as the other influences take effect.

Maybe some people are clumsy with sharing their experiences, they aren't scientists and they don't word things appropriately but I think that by sharing that they did things differently to how they are done now, they are trying to take the pressure off new mothers who feel they have to be perfect at all times. They are trying to show that the world won't end if they don't do things exactly right.

I really don't think that mothers have ever before had so much pressure put on them to do the 'right' thing and that isn't good for people because it means that they feel they have failed if something doesn't go according to plan (like being unable to bf) and very few of us are really failures, are we?

Nieicie, you know, I suspect if we sat down and had a coffee together that we'd agree on most things.

So if I'm constantly seeming to argue with you it's only because I think our disagreements are more interesting than our agreements. [weird back-handed compliment]

I think we have a fundamental disagreement about the place of personal experience in parenting decisions.

I feel I'm sort of being backed into a corner of criticising personal experience, which makes me uncomfortable because I think being able to listen to other people's personal experiences on MN is amazing, and I've learned a huge amount from doing just that.

But when someone is facing an important decision on a health matter, giving advice based on personal experience is limited and even potentially harmful.

You say, "there are other influences on the health and welfare of our children apart from what we fed them in the first 2 years of their lives. The diet they continue to have, the amount of exercise they get, where they live and the environmental impact of that, their socio-economic class, their level of education, etc, etc, etc. This is an extremely complex web of influences."

Yes, exactly. And so when an individual gives you their experience of a decision they made, they have no way of knowing how much other factors influenced the outcome. "I did it and my children are fine". Absolutely. But "therefore I recommend you do it too" - this kind, well-meaning advice may be doing someone else no favours at all.

It's only when you put thousands of individuals together and adjust for all the other influences, that you can see the true effect of a decision. The technical term for this is adjusting for confounding, and it's a standard procedure in research. Another standard procedure is measuring probability, to demonstrate that the effect was unlikely to have happened just by chance.

For decisions about the effects of bf where the health effects can be subtle, occur over long time periods, and are influenced by many factors, it usually requires thousands to tens-of-thousands of cases before you can be confident that the effect of all those other influences has been reasonably well cancelled out, and that any differences weren't just random chance.

With the best will in the world, no-one can make those judgements based on an experience of 2 or 3 children.

It's not about setting up arbitrary standards for new mums to meet or fail - it's about giving them the very, very best info so that they have the best shot at making a good decision - whatever that decision turns out to be.

But I'd like to stress again, this pretty much only applies to health decisions.

If I want ideas for story books for dd1, I don't look up the Journal of Child Storyology for randomised controlled trials of preschool reading preferences, I just ask people "what's your 3 year old reading at the moment?", make a list of suggestions, and head off to the library.

I'm talking about a very specific range of decisions here.