Predatory Free Birth Society investigated in detail (article)

[Carla786]

Another reason why we urgently need to overhaul NHS maternity care. These kinds of evil snake oil salespeople fill the gap sometimes..

https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/nov/22/free-birth-society-linked-to-babies-deaths-investigation

To be fair to Mary Harrington, she did profile Lauren Southern and acknowledge the dangers of the trad way.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=unherd.com/2024/05/lauren-southern-the-tradlife-influencer-filled-with-regret/&ved=2ahUKEwjZmqDQtZaSAxV1T0EAHXVKL6MQFnoECA4QAQ&usg=AOvVaw0ivr5kle04y0YGmZQ9nU_V

On this point, DV is clearly not 'mainly' a problem for the 'lower classes', but there is evidence that DV may be more common in low income households.

This link: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&rct=j&url=www.willispalmer.com/women-poorer-households-likely-experience-domestic-abuse/%23:~:text%3DWomen%2520in%2520poorer%2520households%2520more,months%2520than%2520those%2520in%2520employment.&ved=2ahUKEwjyjvupupaSAxXXX0EAHaQsPWsQ1fkOegQIBxAF&opi=89978449&cd&psig=AOvVaw1Yw-8Bb49RgmZd-1RvaCsi&ust=1768872668964000

This thread has some points on why that might be.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5284491-the-link-between-poverty-and-domestic-abuse-why?page=1

I find it interesting that YNC has recently given birth to her most recent baby and there has been almost radio silence about it from her.
Normally there are videos / pictures almost straight after the birth of her kids (sometimes during as well) and yet all there has been is a confirmation she’s had the baby but ‘post partum didn’t go as planned’.
Im wondering if she required the medical / hospital help she so vociferously says is abusive and unnecessary but doesn’t know how to pitch it so as not to tarnish The Brand….

It's somewhat beside the point, though, isn't it? Being a "low-status" person shouldn't mean that your suffering means less.

Unless, of course, you see the world as a human Jenga-tower. Perry's most recent podcast featured an enthusiastic discussion of how having a racial underclass helps economic growth. Seriously? Tell that to Zimbabwe. Tell that to South Africa. And take a look at what MAGA is doing to the dollar.

DV, meanwhile, can happen anywhere. We don't just put seatbelts in cheap, old cars: we put them in all cars, because one road death is a road death too many. So sad that we don't instinctively protect women and children in the same way.

Once the Southern story broke, it was no longer possible to present right-wing conservatism as a rescuer of women, betrayed by the selfish left.

Harrington's attempt to rescue the brand, as shown in the linked article, was to split it into "bad" conservatism - the online, unrealistic kind - and "good" conservatism: "millennia of religious belief and real-world domestic praxis". As though the past wasn't saturated with every kind of violence against women (and, for that matter, children) that you can imagine. It's never safe to be powerless.

With the wind taken out of the trad sails, these days MH spends her days peddling the idea of "indigenous" European values. Which, apparently, would make us more peaceful and prosperous, if we could clear away all the pesky foreigners. Would those be the same values that drove centuries of religious war, then? She's a Molotov cocktail of snobbery and cynicism.

Also
Having less money
Having no job or a poorly paying job
Living with family or in precarious housing situations
Having a lower education level
Having difficulty understanding/navigating complex beurocratic procedures

Are all things that are more likely if you are lower on the socio economic scale. They are also all things that make women vulnerable to being trapped in abusive situations and therefore becoming victims of DV. They are also all things that living a "trad wife" life can bring.

People advocating for women to give up their careers, be less educated, have children much sooner etc etc and then decrying DV levels in "lower socio.economic groups" really do struggle with cause and effect. If a posh woman like Louise Perry ticked all of the boxes on that list, she would also be more vulnerable to the downsides of having no money etc (not just DV by the way). It's not that she is automatically a better person because she is upper middle class. She just has more money and opportunities.

Yes - money that she makes from instructing women to make less money. That gurgling noise is logic being sucked into itself, like the Blue Meanie in Yellow Submarine.

It's like being fully vaccinated against polio and measles etc. and then thinking "isn't it awful how people in third world countries suffer so much from those dreadful diseases such dirty countries". And then not vaccinating your own children because the vaccine causes autism or something. You might get away with it if your lucky but many don't.

Has it always been like this or have we come to a point in society where no one is accountable for their own actions anymore? Just eternal blameless victims? “I gave a man on the internet, who I’d never met, my life savings…I’m a victim though. I’m entirely blameless.” “An influencer told me to only drink cucumber juice for a year and I got rickets. It’s all her fault” “This bunch of non-medically trained people told me it was safe to have a baby with no medics on hand on this podcast…it’s all their fault”….
Of course, it has to be their fault because we’re not allowed to “victim blame” in society anymore. I do understand that vulnerable people or people at especially vulnerable times in their lives can be brainwashed by cults or by somebody championing something the “victim” believes in. And those people are wrong and should be stopped. But they’re not going to stop. The world is full of maniacs who will continue to spout bullshit and try and influence people into believing their lies. But people need to rely on their own common sense, judgment and instincts to keep themselves safe. I think if we carry on with this culture of not blaming anyone for their own mistakes we run the risk of setting future generations up to be extremely vulnerable and to have zero sense of accountability

I see your point, but my assumption would be in this case the women that lost their babies will be blaming themselves for the rest of their lives. I don't think there is a way to move on from that.

While it seems the perpetrators were able to bounce from one dead baby to the next with no accountability at all. Besides which, these were women they may have met on the internet but they were also people they met in person and who they built relationships with. And who, for various reasons, they had reasons to trust.

It looks like she's putting the birth story on substack $$$.

And anyone can stand in a gym when they're very pregnant love. All smoke and mirrors with her.