There are few jobs more demanding, more confusing, or more closely scrutinized than that of a mother. I write this with awestruck admiration and nausea-inducing terror at the thought of ever enduring such an awesome responsibility. We know that motherhood is a hard – really, really hard – job and yet, with every new gadget, study or piece of expert advice, a mother’s job only seems to get harder. How do mothers ever make sense of the constant deluge of expert and scientific advice? What can we do to help them, and what can they teach us about evaluating expert advice?
Two news stories released this week highlight the conflicts that mothers
face. The New
Scientist reports that an article in the Journal of Pediatrics
indicates that the severity of morning sickness may be linked to high IQ
in offspring. Doctors believe that the same hormones that make expectant
mothers feel ill help the child’s development. Another news story from Science
Daily reports a new medication protocol has just been developed
to treat severe nausea during pregnancy. Will expectant mothers feel pressure
to refuse the treatment for nausea because they don’t want to negatively
impact their child’s development?
Perhaps you think this is ridiculous, that someone would choose to stay nauseated just because there’s a possibility that her child might gain a few IQ points. And you may be right. Many mothers would agree with you. But at the same time, these kinds of decisions are never straightforward because there is no perfect formula for raising smart, happy and healthy children. Instead, mothers have to evaluate the influx of expert advice and decide what, if any of it, they can and want to incorporate into their lives.
I spend a lot of time with a 17-year-old girl, “Jess,” and her one-year-old daughter. When Jess told me that she was giving up breastfeeding after a week and switching to formula, I panicked. But… but… All those parenting magazines and La Leche League and… the nutrients and the IQ points and the bonding…! And then I stopped and reevaluated: she’s trying to be one of the four out of ten teenage mothers who finish high school, and then part of the 2% of teenage mothers who will finish college by the time they turn 30. Conclusion? That will do a lot more for her daughter’s development than whatever questionable extra value breastfeeding will provide. And as Hanna Rosin pointed out last month in The Atlantic, even though breastfeeding is almost a requirement for mothers (my reaction to Jess’s decision indicates how powerful and pervasive this idea really is), the studies that have looked at the benefits of breastfeeding have come back with very thin results.
Mothers face an incredible amount of scrutiny for every choice they make – from the inception and how they become pregnant (Marriage first? Donor egg or sperm, or surrogate?¹ Adoption?), to the pregnancy and what foods to eat, what medications to take, what form of exercise to do, to the delivery (c-section or vaginal delivery, in a hospital or at home?), and finally to the nurturing and what sleep schedule to follow, how to potty train, how to discipline, what languages to teach the child, what extracurricular activities to enroll them in, what medical treatments to pursue if any are needed, and when. They face this intense scrutiny – from strangers, from doctors, from other mothers – in part because of the mountain of expert advice available and the ways such advice is communicated and digested, and in part because there is a deep tension between our commitment to individual freedom and privacy of the family, and the belief that child-rearing does indeed “take a village.”
Every day, mothers evaluate expert advice, and think about how that advice
makes sense in the context of their lives and their values. If we had more
open and honest conversations about the limits of scientific expertise and
the myths of objectivity, it would be easier for mothers to carefully evaluate
the advice they read, and to trust themselves to make the best decisions
for themselves and their families.
“Mothers know best” that expert advice can be helpful, but that it should be taken with many grains of salt – and definitely without the extra helping of shame.
¹ Assisted reproductive technologies… well, that's a story for another day. Father's Day to be specific!
