Patriarchy and the 'detached mother' article

[Ineedacupofteadesperately]

Apologies if this has been posted before. As someone currently struggling with getting enough sleep with a newborn as well as what I want to teach both DDs about feminism, this feels quite relevant. I'm not sure entirely how I feel about it all & would be interested in the views of the many on Feminism chat who seem to think more clearly about these issues.

evolutionaryparenting.com/liberal-feminism-patriarchy-detached-mother/

In general I feel a lot of the 'advice' I get from the system (HV, gps etc) is often quite guilt inducing and creates even more work for me. I do feel the natural state of babies doesn't fit well in our disconnected world, nor with the situation in this country where either you outsource baby care or only one parent does the bulk of it (and is responsible for it). On the other hand some babies (although I think not all) seem to adapt quite well to how things are. I do feel the "happy mum, happy baby" advice quite often really contradicts the rest of the messages we get about not letting the baby get into "bad" sleep habits etc and the fact that the work parents (mostly women) do overnight in regard to babycare does seem to be unrecognised and devalued.

cupoftea Well it depends on the baby innit. And it's not working with this one as last night showed. But it's 9:30pm now, he's been asleep for nearly three hours so fingers crossed for tonight.

No method, just patting through the bars if he wakes. Lots of outraged bloodcurdling screams. Joy for our attached neighbours. I'm still giving one night feed which i was going to cut out until it went pearshaped.

He never cried until he was one or so. I had a very relaxing first few months!

Have you read The Feminine Mystique, OP? Brilliant book on exactly this topic, although written in 1963. It's not perfect, and there are certainly bits of it I'm highly sceptical about but the basic principle that this obsession with turning women into the self sacrificing Perfect Mother is damaging to both women and their children (and society). I wish I'd read it 12 years ago before I became a parent.

Oh and I'm surprised at you saying you were told in the 90s to put babies to sleep on their fronts. My MIL remembers its changing from front sleeping to back sleeping from 84 to 88

Firstly I didn't say that. I referred to advice changing from supine, to prone to lateral and back. Spock reccomended prone in 1955.

In 1985 American researchers reported that babies in Hong Kong, following Chinese habits, placed babies supine and had low rates of cot death. The Netherlands started campaigning in 1987 , UK , New Zealand and Australia in 1991, US and Sweden in 1992 and Canada in 1993.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommended supine or lateral until 1996 when advice was changed to supine only. Clearly the UK was advising the same.

Therefore , so far as your patronising comments about not reading/out of date health visitor unless I had been involved in post-natal infant health research in 1990 it would have been extremely unlikely I would have been able to read up on advice which wasn't available, except in the Netherlands.

No one is suggesting ignoring advice. I followed the advice given by experienced, qualified midwives.

Re sleeping babies, on their back with my first two and then feet to foot with the last.

I co slept with all my babies. They came into us from an early age. But especially I loved sleeping with a child. It's one of the most delicious memories I have of being a mother.

I thought at the time the advice about putting baby on his side was odd but apart from a friend whose daughter was born 4 months earlier (and who got the same advice) I hadn't been near a baby since my brother was born in 1969 so had nothing to compare.

In 1990 the Edinburgh maternity unit must have been ahead of the official UK campaign but why it decided to suggest lateral rather than supine or lateral I don't know.

What is "feet to foot"?

Re co-sleeping I only did that in the mornings after husband had gone to work and I agree it was lovely - despite getting told off by health visitor although absolutely none of the risk factors were present.

We discovered many years later when we hadn't the heart to turf out a frail, elderly cat who slept between us under the duvet that your body is aware of a small living creature beside you.

Lass I'm not really understanding why you're arguing so hard about this.

I objected to another poster referring to sleeping position as 'mothering fashion'. Not only is it a bit odd to refer to 30ish year old unchanging advice as simply 'fashion' it's also IMO pretty crass to refer to lifesaving advice as 'fashion'.

You are saying the advice changed a fair bit pre the 90s, including some advice from 1955. OK, I defer to your knowledge on that. Not really sure why that's relevant now, in 2017.

Batteries You posted several posts which were actually quite rude and dismissive.
The suggestion that I wouldn't have read up and just went along with a health visitor giving out of date advice.

And unless your mil, whom you cited as an authority , was in Hong Kong or mainland China, actually wrong as to the dates advice changed.

Feet of baby to foot of the bed. 'Feet to foot'.

Oh you know why it is important Batteries ?

Women followed the advice given by doctors and midwives up to the mid 90s that lateral placing was fine. Then they were told it was wrong. Fortunately for me and my friend the fact it was wrong had no consequences. I don't need your patronising comments to tell me if I'd just read up a bit I would have known better.

If that is how I feel imagine how someone who had also followed the official advice and lost a baby would feel?

I was advised to put DS feet to foot on his back over ten years ago, but also three blankets and a hat because he was premature and had no fat on him at all...

DS was also the first baby I had held, the first nappy I had changed, the first everything really. Back in the day I would have grown up with my sister, cousin, neighbour, possibly my mother having children around me and I would at least have known how to burp, give a bottle, change a nappy and soothe a baby. And if I was struggling, they would have been there to help me.

Thankfully the internet has gone some way to plugging that knowledge gap for new mums today, but MN doesn't provide a pair of hands to hold a baby while having a shower, or give a second opinion on a fevery head or funny rash. We aren't going back to the community living that we had 50 years ago any time soon, though.

I think it's overly simplistic to refer to evolutionary traits that we should now emulate in modern parenting, because we can only do this if we cherry-pick. What about the tribes that abandon children who are too noisy and thus imperil the whole group? Lactose intolerance or other eating problems? Also abandoned. Too small or frail? Better to focus on the children who are likely to make it through...

What I find interesting historically is how, whenever women's rights and living conditions start to improve relative to men's, bringing up children suddenly becomes a terribly difficult and complex undertaking that mere mothers can't be trusted with. In the late 18th century when the education of middle class girls began to improve and women novelists made their names, you got the likes of Rousseau introducing the cult of childhood innocence and raising child-rearing to something approaching a divine undertaking.

In the industrial age child-rearing became something to be standardised and measured and marked out of ten, and the standards seem to change as much according to political fashion as scientific discovery. It's notable now, when women's legal rights in the West have never been better, that mothers feel less confident about bringing up their own children than ever, because looking after your own child is so full of pitfalls and difficulties which need checking with experts at every turn. And yet this terribly difficult work will not earn you any money. It's not even work, according to employers. It's fairy work done by invisible house elves and doesn't really exist.😞

OlennasWimple

Oops, hit enter by accident.

OlennasWimple

I was advised to put DS feet to foot on his back over ten years ago, but also three blankets and a hat because he was premature and had no fat on him at all

My DS was very prem 16 years ago and I was told never to put a hat on him unless I was out and it was chilly. It was emphasised to me that over heating was a billion times worse than being cold.

Although, thinking about it, this is probably a medical thing rather than a typical child raising thing. I wouldn't have even posted it only for the above mistaken post.