The Bad Mother's Excuse Book
Written: Nov 08 '07 (Updated Nov 09 '07)
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Pros: If you're a bad parent, this will make you feel better.
Cons: Anti-"natural parenting," misinformation aplenty, counsels slavish obedience to authority and ignoring one's own instincts
The Bottom Line: Garbage. Go with Dr. Sears or Penelope Leach.
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| kmennie's Full Review: Arlene Eisenberg, Sandee E. Hathaway, Heidi Murkof... |
"What to Expect When You're Expecting" was such risible garbage that I couldn't resist picking up "What to Expect the First Year." I'm surprised and amused to find that it's actually worse!
Well, sort of. It's the same old "Listen to the doctor. You are wrong. You suck. Ignore your instincts" misogynist hectoring; it's only worse because it takes it out on innocents.
The format -- irritating hypothetical naff's question followed by a fluffy answer -- continues from "Expecting."
"What to Expect" has an agenda, as usual, and it is based on bullshit, not facts. This is the hands-off, lazy mother's excuse book. Want to let your formula-fed newborn "cry it out," in a crib down the hall from you? That's fine, Mother; in fact, you're doing the right thing.
This is 'detachment parenting' at its worst: mothers are cautioned that picking up a baby who cries before drifting off to sleep will "make it more difficult for her to get to sleep on her own" (p122), told it is "time to start making demands of your own" if your newborn (!) is nursing too often (!!) (p111), and frightened by the "serious problems" raised by sharing your room with your baby (p185). "Crying it out" is "the best way...to respond to a
baby's need to fall asleep on his own" (p261) -- "if you can tolerate an hour or more of vigourous crying or screaming, don't go to baby, don't soothe him," it "almost invariably works." To do what, one wonders? Convince your infant that he has a jerk for a mother?
Make no mistake that they are addressing mothers, too; this is not a book that will do anything but offend and bother an eager Daddy. There are a few scant "for the father" pages; Daddy is an accessory, and not necessarily a good one. Fathers are, like mothers, crapped upon: we are told that a "minority" "can't deal with a crying baby at all" (p130); I submit that a "father" who can't deal with a crying baby "at all" needs to have his status as "father" reassessed, not be given a pass by Eisenberg et al. Though one begins to suspect that a lot of this book is about giving out that pass -- certainly nobody with any interest in the well-being of babies is going to tell you that "can't wear certain styles of dresses" is a valid reason to go with artificial feeding.
The agenda becomes clear when the book discusses issues like what are now fashionably called 'co-sleeping' and 'babywearing.' On co-sleeping and its "serious problems," one is cautioned about less sleep for parents and baby, because you will pick the baby up more often. It seems this might more reasonably be addressed with a little caveat that picking the baby up because she sighs peculiarly in her sleep might not be worthwhile, but no. This is all addressed as an answer to the question "Our ten-week-old has been sharing our room since birth. When should we move him to his own room?" (Despite the book, there is quite obviously only one correct answer to that, viz: whenever it pleases you and your family to do so.)
Sharing a bed is even more of a no-no than merely rooming in with baby. "Co-sleeping, parents and children sharing a bed at night, does work well -- but chiefly, it seems, in
other societies. In a society like ours...co-sleeping is associated with a wide range of problems." At this point one wonders what sad and strange society the authors are members of. These "problems" include discredited or unsubstantiated worries like dental problems from too-frequent nursing and "developmental problems."
Toting your baby around can cause "sleep problems." Why? Well, some babies are too secure and happy in their slings and Baby Bjorns, and like to nap on Mummy or Daddy. I assume this is in line with the benefits of "crying it out": your tiny baby may, shamefully, learn that a parent is a source of comfort if allowed to nap on one.
The scaremongering is one thing victims of "What to Expect When You're Expecting" will recognise. "The First Year" has some panic-inducing safety advice: "Never leave a baby alone at home, even while you go for the mail...or check the laundry in the apartment building basement; it takes only seconds for a fire to blaze." This sounds reasonable until you realise that you will have to call the newspaper and ask for the paper delivered to your door, not your front lawn, because... (I also wonder why the prohibition on basement visits seems to apply only to apartment-dwellers.) There is even a "Never leave baby alone with a pet, even a very well-behaved one" for the old wives fearful of cats 'stealing baby's breath away.' Rather confusingly, you must also not place baby "on any surface next to an unguarded window, even for a second," which seems puzzling -- will my newborn stand up, unlock the window, and walk out onto the ledge? -- until you realise that, as with so much else in "What to Expect," you are assumed to be a moron, an incompetent, and cannot be trusted with "When baby becomes mobile, ensure that windows are safe." No, you are an incompetent, and must live in fear of babies being near windows (why you need fear that is of course something you need not concern yourself with, little lady).
The breastfeeding advice is awful. "No doubt written with help from the Similac people," sneered one veteran mother I discussed the book with. Artificial feeding is given more of a go-ahead in this book than in any other baby book I've read (quite a stack, too); Eisenberg et al are happy to sacrifice infant nutrition for the sake of fashion -- the difficulty of dresses with no or few buttons at the top is presented as a reason to go with the Nestlé junk. Yes, bottle-feeding is a choice, but it is an exceedingly poor choice, and that is not made adequately clear. There is a segment on the dangers of smoking around a baby, who may be more colicky, more likely to be hospitalized, more prone to ear infections, etcetera, thanks to your smoking. The exact same risks are present for a baby who is artificially fed, but why stress that? There is a helpful list of "Facts favouring bottle feeding," which include "no interference with lovemaking" (?) and "less stressful feeding in public" as "facts," along with outright lies such as the need for a nursing mother to worry about her diet.
Also familiar to previous "What to Expect" victims: strange dietary advice, and awful recipes. Nursing mothers are nagged to follow the "Best-Odds Nursing Diet," worry over strongly flavoured foods, keep up the vitamins, etcetera. Mummy will thrill to preparing such "Best-Odds Recipes" as "cottage cheese sundaes," a sugar-free birthday cake with an unwieldy amount of wheat germ, and a thoroughly inedible version of muesli ("super cereal"). The orders to do follow doctor's orders, even on trivia, even when he is proven wrong by research, will prove familiar as well. Nursing mothers may not take so much as a Tylenol without "permission," and while it is quite safe to take a bath after delivery, it's still best to listen to your doctor if she doesn't think you should.
It is almost a wonder that hospitals and the lazier, more incompetent sort of obstetricians and paediatricians do not hand out "What to Expect" books. No routine hospital procedure is questioned in the least: nurses will do X, Y and Z to your baby, and you do not need to know why, or know that you are allowed to stop them, on planet "What to Expect." Rooming in with your baby is a burden, and the hospital staff are there to take your baby away and let him sob alone in a nursery, because it's just fine if actually looking after your child is just "not for you."
This is admittedly a harsh condemnation of a mere book, yes. Perhaps it is a useful at-a-glance reference for the more ill-informed sort of American mother whose instincts regarding her child (who she would really rather not get that well acquainted with anyway) are shaky?
But she will be a poor mother if she pays much mind to the advice given here, and will deserve harsh condemnation herself. It is a sad commentary on contemporary American society that birth, now a pathology, is often followed by isolating the newborn from its parents. It is seen as acceptable in certain circles, even preferable, to keep a babe in a car seat rather than in arms, and for him to suckle at a rubber teat rather than at his mother's breast. Even the smallest baby can be "trained" into something more convenient for the parents, no matter how heartbreaking the training, be it "crying it out" or forcing him to eat the processed junk of the Nestle corporation to have something to doze off on. (One conjures up images of "Now shut up, Momma's watchin' her stories!" a few years after the rice-cereal-in-the-bottle phase...) This is a pathology in itself, this disdain for infants, this disdain for parent-child bonding.
I suspect this book's somewhat inexplicable popularity can be explained by seeing it for what it is: an excuse manual for lousy parents. "The book" said I could allow my infant to sob. "The book" said it would hurt my baby to not be in his own room. "The book" said...
Wake up, mothers. This is the wrong book.
Recommended:
No
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kmennie
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Member: K.M. Mennie
Location: Five cities in one year! Ha!
Reviews written: 380
Trusted by: 405 members
About Me:
Hopeless case: thorough knowledge of Victorian Domestic Science, Comparative Literature, Lego...and even worse stuff.
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