…now what does that mean in the real world?

This is a follow up to my post The personal and the political, and a response to this question from reader Rachel on Two things I do believe and several things I don’t:

…she said she and her husband chose to do [crying it out], he is involved in bedtime and it was a decision they both made.

They don’t fit what you’ve described.

So how would you respond in a similar situation?

Much like Rachel, I both wouldn’t want to criticize their choice, but also would feel quite uncomfortable tacitly supporting a practice I feel to be unnecessary and unkind, at best, and borderline abusive, at worst. In truth, I, like her, would be unlikely to say anything.

In fact, I’ve been in situations similar. My brother and sister-in-law did the “graduated extinction” form of CIO with both of their children: once I was on the phone with my brother, hearing my niece cry in the background and my SIL periodically go in to “reassure” her. At that time, I did try to say something, along the lines of “Sometimes babies just need help getting to sleep.” He took this to mean an endorsement of the practice I was trying to gently speak against. I got off the phone shortly after that, and we haven’t talked about parenting and children’s sleep since then.

Why didn’t I say anything more? In part because he’s my brother, and I love him, and I want to be able to continue to have him in my life for decades to come. But also because I think advocacy of parenting practices works on the individual level before the other party has made a decision, or when they are unsatisfied with the decision, or are reflecting on a past decision when looking forward to a new one. They must, in some way, be open to and interested in new information, or a new perspective, about the topic. I don’t find it useful to try to get someone to regret a decision that is over and done with, about which there is nothing can be done to change it, or that is currently being done and about which they are likely to be highly defensive.

I think we also must recognize that no matter what information we share with someone, some people are going to make decisions we disagree with. This is hard to deal with when it is a subject we are passionate about, and especially when it affects the health and well-being of children as crying it, unnecessary formula use, and so on do. Here, I find it helpful to remember a few things:

• Human beings are remarkably resilient creatures. We can endure, even in infancy, a profound array of actually abusive practices, and still, often, grow up in to reasonably sane, worthwhile, beautiful persons. While not good for us, we can usually survive and even thrive under sub-standard conditions of the sort lactivists and attachment parenting types speak against: most babies are not going to be killed by unnecessary formula; most babies are not going to fail to thrive or develop attachment pathologies from being abandoned to cry. Odds are, they’re still going to be fine. “My parents did X, and I turned out alright” is a lousy excuse for not doing better, but it’s a good mantra to save my sanity, and reducing my stress and anxiety is good for my own child.
• I cannot single-handedly counter the kyriarchy. Every parent receives a thousand messages a day from their society, usually messages overtly or covertly promoting kyriarchal values, including messages saying biology is inferior to science, women’s bodies are broken or dangerous, healthy interdependence is pathological dependence, and so on. While I can influence, I might only be a drop the proverbial bucket of information that a parent receives about breastfeeding and infant sleep, and the rest are likely lies and fallacies promoted by the kyriarchy. There is only so much I can do, and while what I do is important and necessary and valuable, it is not up to me alone to change the world or change another’s mind.
• When an individual does manage to defy her cultural expectations — by breastfeeding full term, by meeting her children’s nighttime needs without leaving them to cry, by raising her child to be anti-sexist and anti-racist — by all means I should give her the credit, but when she does not, I find it far more useful to give the culture the blame. I say this both because women and parents exist within the kyriarchy, and have their choices influenced and constricted thereby, and because I don’t have any desire to add the stress of blaming her to my own life and to our relationship. In other words, I take the long view because it makes my life easier.

So in all, my philosophy doesn’t make me look much different in action (in this situation) than any other parent. I get extremely uncomfortable, I try to avoid conflict, and I expend far too much mental energy worrying it over after the fact. I try to speak against the practices I believe harmful when I can — when I believe it to be potentially helpful, and not dangerous to my person or my sanity — and I try to let it go when I can’t.

Other women, other parents, are not my enemy, no matter how much I may disagree with them. Whether or not it’s true, as long as we continue to live under kyriarchy, I am going to continue to believe that parents would not be abandoning their children to cry at night in a sane society, with proper social support and accurate information. I am going to continue to believe that all women capable of it would choose to exclusively breastfeed, and to nurse full-term, in a society that welcomed and promoted it. I will always continue to speak truth as I see it on subjects such as CIO, whether it’s well-received or not, and I will always do my best to be a positive influence in individuals’ lives, but I refuse to do the kyriarchy’s work of attacking them when they do “wrong”.

The first guest post to the Womanist/Feminist Parenting Primer goes up tomorrow! Be sure to submit your own stories for future posts in the series.