Comments on: Judging Motherhood

By: Jaya Ramji-Nogales

Jaya Ramji-Nogales — Mon, 11 May 2009 13:55:41 +0000

Thanks for your thoughtful comments, Nate. Part of my response would look very similar to Anon’s comments above. Additionally, the breastfeeding discourse gives rise to a couple of concerns about disapproval of others’ parenting decisions. First, where should we set the boundaries of appropriateness in expressing such disapproval? Is it appropriate to express absolute disapproval (i.e. “Your parenting decision is wrong”, which may be a more subtle way of saying “You are a ‘bad’ parent”) to strangers? To acquaintances? To friends? Second, a related question — what level of grounding in medical science should be required to support such absolute disapproval? How harmful must parental decisions be and how reliable must the studies establishing this harm be? These are the questions I struggle with when moving beyond private parental choice, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on how to address them.

By: TRE

TRE — Sun, 10 May 2009 15:27:46 +0000

I’d definitely judge someone for feeding their children tons of hot dogs. Or non-diet soft drinks, or tons of prepackaged foods, aka lunchables whatever. Doritos are even easier to prepare than hot dogs and I bet the kids love them even more! Been working hard at my job all day and all! Non-diet coke, some doritos and hot dogs, that is an efficient way to feed the little buggers!

Parenting choices are not “the direct result” of class and socioeconomic status. (No comment on semicolon usage.)

Also isn’t the breast feeding orthodoxy a maternalistic something or other and not a paternalistic one?

I don’t know whether breastfeeding is beneficial for the child or not, but assume for argument that it is, then forgoing it is detrimental to the child barring some kind of extreme trade-off.

By: Nate Oman

Nate Oman — Sat, 09 May 2009 02:17:08 +0000

It seems to me that is a good reason to be careful and sensitive, but I am still not convinced that the the optimal social attitude toward parenting decisions is a binary one of either legally actionable misconduct or private parental choice. I also suspect that no in fact acts as though that is the case. Even the most tolerant among us will find something that we are willing to disapprove of. This is not necessarily such a bad thing…

By: anon

anon — Fri, 08 May 2009 23:00:40 +0000

Nate, except that parenting choices don’t operate in a vacuum; they’re often a direct result of class and socioeconomic status. Thus, more often than not, it’ll end up being middle class (or higher parents) looking down at “those other” parents. That’s why I hesitate to encourage social stigma, at least. Working to expand the options available to parents always seems like a better and more equitable option to me.

By: Nate Oman

Nate Oman — Fri, 08 May 2009 20:55:38 +0000

How do with know if the father is stigmatized or not? It seems to me that we might already stigmatize fathers who feed their children poorly. Furthermore, I am not at all convinced that eliminating stigmatism in parenting practice is a good idea. Precisely because it is difficult for the law to do any work in terms of sanctioning bad behavior, it seems to me that there is a good case to be made for stigmatizing bad parenting socially.

This is neither here nor there with regard to the breast-milk wars, but I do want to sound a note of skepticism about the advantages of treating all child-rearing decisions in terms of parental choice free from social judgments. It seems to me that there is an enormous among of bad parenting in the the grey area between legally sanctionable and utterly harmless, and social stigma is probably as good a way as any at getting at it.