Push Back Quotes

“There are two others: the erroneous claim that anything natural must be safe, and the bedrock assertion of midwives, doulas, and other natural childbirth advocates that childbirth itself is an inherently safe process. Unfortunately, both claims conflict with medical and historical reality.”
― Amy Tuteur, Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting – An OB-GYN's Guide to Childbirth Science, Debunking Myths and Empowering Women

“IgA can protect mucous membranes (like the lining of the digestive tract and the lining of the respiratory tract) from bacteria and viruses. That’s why breastfed babies are less likely to have diarrheal illnesses or colds in the first year. Most other diseases can be prevented with other types of antibodies. These protective antibodies can cross the placenta from the mother to the baby, but they cannot be passed in breast milk. That’s why breastfeeding can’t replace vaccination. Even if the mother is immune to whooping cough, for example, she can’t pass that immunity to her baby through breast milk. She can pass it through the placenta during pregnancy, but those antibodies will last in the baby’s bloodstream for only six months at the longest.”
― Amy Tuteur, Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting – An OB-GYN's Guide to Childbirth Science, Debunking Myths and Empowering Women

“Childbirth in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s was, like most of contemporary medicine, afflicted with patriarchal practices that made things easier for doctors but were not beneficial, and possibly were even harmful, to women. These included putting women under general anesthesia for labor and childbirth and banning fathers from the delivery room. Natural childbirth advocates questioned those practices and eventually pushed for their end. The contemporary patient experience is far better because of them.”
― Amy Tuteur, Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting – An OB-GYN's Guide to Childbirth Science, Debunking Myths and Empowering Women

“Caroline Bledsoe and Rachel Scherrer”
― Amy Tuteur, Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting – An OB-GYN's Guide to Childbirth Science, Debunking Myths and Empowering Women

“The phase “research shows” is repeated over and over, yet no research is provided to substantiate these principles.”
― Amy Tuteur, Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting – An OB-GYN's Guide to Childbirth Science, Debunking Myths and Empowering Women

“It’s the dominant ideology not because it is the way that most people parent, but because it is the ideal held by middle- and upper-middle-class mothers who are often highly vocal on the Internet and social media, and the ideal against which women measure their own mothering and that of other women.”
― Amy Tuteur, Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting – An OB-GYN's Guide to Childbirth Science, Debunking Myths and Empowering Women

“Some of the most fanciful claims about the benefits of breast milk concern its role in aiding the newborn immune system. While breastfeeding does provide a boost in preventing infant colds and diarrheal illness, additional claims of immune benefits are quite exaggerated.”
― Amy Tuteur, Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting – An OB-GYN's Guide to Childbirth Science, Debunking Myths and Empowering Women

“There is no evidence for any long-term health benefits of breastfeeding. The paper is an evaluation of the entire world literature on the long-term benefits of breastfeeding and it is divided into individual sections for each purported benefit. These include overweight and obesity, blood pressure, serum cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, and intellectual performance.”
― Amy Tuteur, Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting – An OB-GYN's Guide to Childbirth Science, Debunking Myths and Empowering Women

“The 2014 study “Is Breast Truly Best? Estimating the Effects of Breastfeeding on Long-Term Child Health and Wellbeing in the United States Using Sibling Comparisons”10 by Cynthia Colen and David Ramey”
― Amy Tuteur, Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting – An OB-GYN's Guide to Childbirth Science, Debunking Myths and Empowering Women

“Beliefs about women and their role in society undergird natural parenting. It seems to me to be more than coincidence that natural childbirth, breastfeeding, and natural parenting share a variety of disturbing characteristics. All impose an inordinate amount of work and pain on women, and all ostensibly exclude fathers and other family members, making women not merely the primary caregivers but the only acceptable caregivers a majority of the time. And by requiring intense around-the-clock effort, they make it nearly impossible for women who want or need something in addition to mothering (a job, a career, free time) to be “good” mothers. It all seems suspiciously like the classic ploy to control and judge women by the performance of their reproductive organs.”
― Amy Tuteur, Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting – An OB-GYN's Guide to Childbirth Science, Debunking Myths and Empowering Women

“Sometimes I wondered if the process of birth was more important than the baby itself.”
― Amy Tuteur, Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting – An OB-GYN's Guide to Childbirth Science, Debunking Myths and Empowering Women

“There is no more dangerous day for a child than the day of his or her birth.”
― Amy Tuteur, Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting – An OB-GYN's Guide to Childbirth Science, Debunking Myths and Empowering Women

“Eating organic food has become a status symbol, having an unmedicated birth is a status symbol, and breastfeeding exclusively is a status symbol.”
― Amy Tuteur, Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting – An OB-GYN's Guide to Childbirth Science, Debunking Myths and Empowering Women

“I challenge the popular notions out there that are so often rooted in pseudoscience. I offer comfort to expectant and new mothers as they face the difficult task of caring for a newborn while simultaneously listening to a cacophony of voices telling them how to have their babies, how to feed them, how to hold them, and that if they don’t follow these edicts, their babies will not thrive and become successful adults. I’ve used science, common sense, and kindness to dispel what I see as the myths miring women in despair.”
― Amy Tuteur, Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting – An OB-GYN's Guide to Childbirth Science, Debunking Myths and Empowering Women