Said the comedian Ali Wong, quoted in "Maternal Instinct Is a Myth That Men Created." That essay, in the NYT, is an adaptation of the book, "Mother Brain: How Neuroscience Is Rewriting the Story of Parenthood," by Chelsea Conaboy.
Conaboy writes:
Research tells us that to become a parent is to be deluged. We are overwhelmed with stimuli, from our changed bodies, our changed routines, and from our babies, of course, with their newborn smell, their tiny fingers, their coos and their never-ending needs. It is brutal, in a sense, how completely engulfed we are by it and from multiple fronts, like a rock at the ocean’s edge, battered by waves and tides and sun and wind.
With that water cue, here's...
There, did that bring on lactation?
ADDED: Meade texts calling attention to the phrase "savage ritual," in "Breastfeeding is this savage ritual...." Having breastfed, I knew exactly what Wong meant to convey, but I also see how to problematize "savage."
Isn't it politically incorrect to characterize other people as savages? And then isn't "savage ritual" an oxymoron? What is savage is wild — in a state of nature. But rituals belong to culture. They are part of civilization.
Even if we accept that that human beings can be divided into savage and civilized — and I've known people who would shun you forever if you obliquely suggested you believed in that distinction — we might want to see "ritual" as taking us out of savagery.
But Wong is doing standup comedy, even as I am doing blogging. She's free and I encourage her to say "Breastfeeding is this savage ritual that just reminds you that your body is a cafeteria now." She's on stage getting big, deserved laughs.
And over here in my lane, I'm blogging about little extra angles on what other people say. Breastfeeding doesn't just remind you of one thing. And cafeterias are neither savage nor ritualistic. All true! But the comedy remains, and tweaking it to obviate my observations would be a very silly mistake.
Here's Ali:
Posts
68 comments:
As a cis white male, I feel empowered to say no.
Is that wrong? After all, I am simply exercising my standpoint epistemology.
No lactation but I did wet myself a little.
Hmmmm, I must be lactose-intolerant.
Nice music, but I wasn't moved to respond as suggested.
Israel! Best version ever!
It's hard to respond to this as a non-lactating-person. However, many people recoil at the raw animalistic nature of babies. They also recoil from cross-cultural or interracial interaction because physical differences draw attention to our animalistic realities. And this is how xenophobia and dying cultures happen. People who comply with biology may continue.
"I'll take my meat sealed in plastic and dyed pink rather than go out and slit the throats of cows and pigs and chickens. Killing is so cruel."
Yeah. Nature is not lollipops and unicorn farts. How did we convince ourselves that it is?
There, did that bring on lactation?
Is fat-shaming okay now?
actually serious question (though, it sounds like it's just snarky)
IF women DON'T have children, WHY HAVE THEM ??
men are stronger, smarter, quicker, harder..
In Every way* men outperform women, except children. Thus, the question.
Of course, gilbar Likes the fact that women have children, so there is That
Every way* sure, women live longer than men, but how is That relevant?
of course, sociology tells us, that if you leave it up to the women (through birth control, etc); that women (most women) will have no more than 2 children.. So, There's THAT
A myth that men created? Right, that's why you only ever hear it used by mothers to win arguments against fathers. Because that's the way the patriarchy wants it.
I just left a week visiting our kids and their kids- our three grandkids ranging in ages 4 1/2, to 20 months to 8 weeks. I literally crawled home after just a week out there. Our daughter-in-law is a warrior of the highest order, taking on the task of constant feeding, running, corralling, instructing, reprimanding, of course- loving. And somehow keeping her sense of humor through it all.
We all (including the father) try to help as much as we can, but Mom is still Mom and she's the one that makes this thing work.
I stand in awe of mothers. No comment other than that. I missed most of last week while chasing the little ones around. Did I miss anything in the world?
A myth that men created? Right, that's why you only ever hear it used by mothers to win arguments against fathers. Because that's the way the patriarchy wants it.
I came to say this…and that Ali Wong is funny. She goes for the laugh. I suspect she twisted this idea to get the laugh…
No lactation, no peace!
Wikipedia:
"Kamakawiwoʻole suffered from obesity throughout his life, at one point weighing 757 pounds (343 kg) while standing 6 feet 2 inches (1.88 m) tall. He endured several hospitalizations because of his weight. With chronic medical problems including respiratory and cardiac issues, he died at the age of 38 in the Queen's Medical Center at 12:18 am on June 26, 1997, from respiratory failure. On July 10, 1997, the Hawaiian flag flew at half-staff for Kamakawiwoʻole's funeral. His koa wood casket lay at the state capitol building in Honolulu, making him the third person (and the only non-government official) to be so honored. Approximately 10,000 people attended his funeral. Thousands of fans gathered as his ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean at Mākua Beach on July 12, 1997. According to witnesses, many people commemorated him by honking their car and truck horns on all Hawaiian highways that day. Scenes from the funeral and scattering of Kamakawiwoʻole's ashes were featured in official music videos of "Over the Rainbow", released posthumously by Mountain Apple Company. As of August 2022, the two official video uploads of the song, as featured on YouTube by Mountain Apple Company Inc, have collectively received over 1.362 billion views."
Ali Wong probably also imagined that raising a child was going to be easy. All peaches and cream. Except who is gonna change the infant’s diaper? The infant itself? Who is going to take care of the child when the child is sick? Help the child with its homework from school? Run the child to to its sports or band practices? Take the young child everywhere she goes since the child can’t look after itself? Really? Why didn’t the child come with an owner’s manual when it was born? Why didn’t Ali’s college make it a mandatory course a class on how to raise a child along with the gender studies and anti-racism classes? Nobody ever told her of her RESPONSIBILITIES AS A PARENT!!!
Maternal instincts created by males? All of the women who I know that gave birth had maternal instincts to figure out as they went alon how to raise a child from birth. As a man, I had instincts including protecting my children, guiding them to adulthood, and doing whatever I could on their journey to adulthood. I call BS on her statement.
Ali, do us all a favor, including any potential future children, AND GET YOUR TUBES TIED! You apparently can barely, if at all, handle the one child. Yet, many of us have figured out how to raise a child, let alone multiple children, from birth to adulthood. Yes, it is not easy, but then again, life in general is not easy. You made the decision to get pregnant. You must now see this whole process through to its end of at least the next 18 years and beyond.
She sound like Kate in the East of Eden.
What amazed me the first time I saw a goat giving birth, was the mother's eyes, way dilated. She looked drugged to the gills.Sometimes we are just along for the ride, our body has its own agenda.
"IZ!" I like his version where he adds "What a Wonderful World."
That "fat Hawaiian" died in 1997 at age 38. Obesity is a killer.
She should consider getting in touch with La Leche League. Those ladies will come right to the house, and they are absolutely am-a-zing.
Thoughts congruent with the view that fetuses are parasites.
Breastfeeding releases oxytocin for the mom and can, in a calm environment, be very meditative. After awhile the milk truck analog applies and that’s a hint that it is time to wean the kid.
Woodworking is really exhausting, mentally and physically. The idea that it is just a pastime that gives men a chance to get away from the family and the drudgery of home repairs, etc., is just a myth pushed on us by the matriarchy.
So, what kind of research tells us that to become a parent is to be deluged? Becoming a parent? Not sure that’s “neuroscience rewriting the story of parenthood”. Writers, these days!!
"Breastfeeding releases oxytocin for the mom and can, in a calm environment, be very meditative."
Yes, you hallucinate a ukulele playing and a floating fat man crooning oooo oooo oooo oooo....
It's amazing!
" ... like a rock at the ocean’s edge, battered by waves and tides and sun and wind."
There's no upside to being a rock but with some luck and hard work the upsides to parenthood can be terrific. And we often think of going to the ocean's edge (sometimes called the beach or Cape Cod) as a good thing.
The "fat Hawaiian man version" was the cringe for me. The "gentle Uke version", maybe. To identify such a beautiful musician like that pushes past comedy for me, but YMMV.
As for lactation, there's a lot of comedy potential. Milk the topic for all it's worth.
Do us a favor, Amy, and don't have children.
Ali is so 1970! Modernize your take already. Men don’t need no myths about your motherhood because they can have their babies without you and your mythical instinct. “Mother” means anyone we want it to mean you hater.
In our Girl Boss society, which even I marinated in twenty years ago before children, motherly instinct is very unnatural. Nursing doubly so. I didn't nurse my first few children because I didn't want to resent them. That decision helped nurture my motherly instinct and eventually I nursed my last few children very successfully. Sometimes I think I could have imagined IZ singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow.
So the NYT and others have now moved on from the trans movement to demonizing a basic fact of motherhood? A lot of damage has ben done over the last 20 years by things that are funny until they are not. I used to laugh this stuff off but now I see it as a canary in a coal mine. A precursor to the next cultural wave. Don't be a mom- too icky.
Savages have at least as much ritual as modern humans, if not more. Ritual creates communal bonds and appeases the gods at the same time.
My sister must have experienced the Oxytocin thing…she found breast feeding very pleasant. But she stopped after 3 months both times…she had others things to do and it became tedious. Another friend tried everything but just didn’t produce enough milk, so she wasn’t able and had to move immediately to formula. She was very disappointed. Another friend had the bonding and lily pad expectations, but she literally cried every time the first month with her first kid because it hurt so much. She kept it up, and then she enjoyed it. Every woman is unique - make fun of your own experience but it’s tedious to try and turn it into something about men. I don’t understand women who feel the need to turn everything they say, do or feel into a statement about men.
If men created maternal instincts then I would have bottled the nesting behavior my wife had before each of our four kids were born and made a fortune. My house was never cleaner than it was two weeks before they were each born.
Not sure it's fair to say Braddah Iz was "fat". He had a weight problem. He's Samoan, what's he supposed to do?
He'll be remembered a lot longer than Ali Wong will.
Why breast feed when baby formula is readily available and cheap?
Babies are born selfish. As they grow up, good parenting causes them to mature out of/manage their selfishness.
Those who don't have good influencers in their life grow up to become selfish adults - like Ali Wong.
Any interaction (like nursing) between two selfish humans is going to create conflict.
I can see how childbirth would be dreadful, but is breastfeeding all that bothersome? I have first hand knowledge of several women who didn't find having their breasts suckled all that unpleasant. I always figured that breastfeeding like reading Regency novels had rewards that were hidden from the male mind.
She's smoking hot, intelligent and successful. Definitely solid breeding material.
It seems like when some woman writes or speaks about pregnancy, birth or even breastfeeding it’s met with idiot men or women scolding them. Then you have the Mother Earth types that have had oxytocin induced trances that were so pleasant they just kept having one child after another and just can’t relate to any less than magical, or won’t admit it and pretend they had a perfect experience-I’m kidding, sort of.
The reality is that every woman is different, every baby is different and there are many things that can go wrong. That’s not saying women shouldn’t have children or don’t end up having a good experience after a rough start, or vice versa.
I breastfed my 4 babies in the days that you couldn’t do it in public, even covered up and were made to feel you were doing something unnatural. Women had to go to dirty germ laden public bathrooms to nurse their children. So all the men and women who are so quick to jump down the throat of any women who dares to speak or write publicly about the realities of pregnancy, birth or breastfeeding, I say shut up and quit judging.
EAB is right. My daughter, the only one of three with kids, was 40 when she had her daughter (My mother was 40 when I was born) and she loves being a mother. It has changed her whole outlook on life. She is very lucky that her husband's art is selling well and she can afford to stay home. Her daughter is 3 now and is darling. I think it also changed her politically. She was a Bernie Bro before 2016. Now she thinks she will homeschool Lily to avoid the stuff in LA schools.
Breastfeeding is the best for the health and growth of the baby. It also enhances bonding. If you are too self-centered to put the needs of a baby first, don't have kids.
rehajm said...
"A myth that men created? Right, that's why you only ever hear it used by mothers to win arguments against fathers. Because that's the way the patriarchy wants it."
I came to say this…and that Ali Wong is funny. She goes for the laugh. I suspect she twisted this idea to get the laugh…
I hope you're right. In the current environment, satire usually doesn't occur to me unless I know the person well enough to recognize they couldn't have meant it literally.
"Kamakawiwoʻole..."
That's easy for you to say.
"His koa wood casket lay at the state capitol building in Honolulu..."
So, one casket or build a housing development.
"Thousands of fans gathered as his ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean..."
We finally find out why the seas have risen.
Too soon?
But Wong is doing standup comedy, even as I am doing blogging. She's free and I encourage her to say "Breastfeeding is this savage ritual that just reminds you that your body is a cafeteria now." She's on stage getting big, deserved laughs.
Once again we are treated to a woman-hating woman. Wong's bit is essentially, "Being a women sucks."
It may get big laughs, but there is nothing deserved in the notion that a woman needs to essentially be a man and that anything specific to women needs to be despised, denigrated, and eliminated.
Got Iz recordings - great talent.
His size does recall The Onions' "Notorious B.I.G Cremation Enters Fifth Week"
My mom, who had me at 23, tried breastfeeding, but I was not getting the nutrition so she was told to stop. Perhaps today doctors would have figured something out to keep going. But I think we still bonded, as did 5 sibblings following me.
Wait-a-minute, I thought we were supposed to call it 'chest feeding' now. ( Caution Ann, your sanity is showing! )
Breastfeeding is this savage ritual....
ha ha ha
I do like to slurp on 'em.
Sorry!
"gilbar said...
of course, sociology tells us, that if you leave it up to the women (through birth control, etc); that women (most women) will have no more than 2 children.. So, There's THAT"
What that means, is that in the future, most people will be descended from that rather small group of living women who have large families. Just as most gazelles will be descended from the faster ones.
Terry-Thomas ranting about the matriarchy.
"And this positively infantile preoccupation with bosoms!"
How are Pete and Chasten managing with the formula shortage?
'She's smoking hot, intelligent and successful. Definitely solid breeding material.'
She's not going to fuck you, Howard...put it back in your pants.
"I thought [breast-feeding] was supposed to be this beautiful bonding ceremony where I would feel like I was sitting on a lily pad in a meadow and bunnies would..."
Answer: What is something no man in history has ever thought?
Re breastfeeding... I did this with both of my children until they were 6-8 months old. Of course in the beginning it is not easy or comfortable, you and your baby are still getting to know each other, and the hungry baby is kind of a "savage". Do you see the rooting reflex, where if something is rubbing on the side of their face, they are trying to bite it with their little toothless mouths? They are not gentle, they are hungry. But once you and the baby are both into the routine it is gentle and bonding. They are looking at your face while they are eating, and slowly falling asleep when they have had enough to eat. I am so glad I did this even though it was not always easy.
While maternal instinct isn't a myth, it can (with enough social indoctrination) be suppressed.
“My sister must have experienced the Oxytocin thing…she found breast feeding very pleasant. But she stopped after 3 months both times…she had others things to do and it became tedious. Another friend tried everything but just didn’t produce enough milk, so she wasn’t able and had to move immediately to formula.”
Ex wife happily nursed (after a rough start - took awhile to relax) until she went back to work, and her milk dried up because she want expressing enough at work. My partner naturally took to nursing, but her firstborn got teeth early, and similarly needed solid food early. Second born never liked nursing, which had its own problems. My mother, wound as tight as she was, never got the hang of it. She didn’t even try for babies #3-#5. I was her first, and maybe take responsibility for depriving my siblings of having been nursed. Ok - not really.
My first thought was, “she might be a female Jerry Seinfeld. She’s funny!” But then she got angry and he hit the Stop button.
Breastfeeding is this savage ritual
She's doing it wong.
No comments on "Conaboy?" Sounds like a Dickens character.
“What that means, is that in the future, most people will be descended from that rather small group of living women who have large families. Just as most gazelles will be descended from the faster ones.”
Hee. Yeah, except most people won’t be descended from the faster ones. See the movie “Idiocracy”.
Motherhood is the hardest job you will ever love, and fatherhood follows in close support. #HateLovesAbortion
Ahhhh, Wong's figured out what a woman is....
Wong, a comedian, is making fun of the dreamy version of perfect motherhood. I have no problem with that.
Conaboy claims that modern European capitalist males invented maternal instinct to justify patriarchy (and white supremacy!). That's nonsense. Is maternal instinct unique to our era and culture? Are men responsible for breastfeeding?
I see a trend to denigrate biological -- natural -- womanhood. And I resent it.
BTW, I found breastfeeding to be easy, convenient, free and emotionally rewarding: I had what my baby wanted.
My mother had three children in five years (all breast fed) and a fourth child after a 10-year gap. I used to wonder why she was so crazy. The minute my daughter was born, I thought: Why was my mother so sane?
Research tells us that to become a parent is to be deluged. We are overwhelmed with stimuli, from our changed bodies, our changed routines, and from our babies, of course, with their newborn smell, their tiny fingers, their coos and their never-ending needs. It is brutal
This sounds like someone who should never, ever be a mother. (Sorry, "birthing person".)
Research tells us that to become a parent is to be deluged. We are overwhelmed with stimuli, from our changed bodies, our changed routines, and from our babies, of course, with their newborn smell, their tiny fingers, their coos and their never-ending needs. It is brutal
This sounds like someone who should never, ever be a mother. (Sorry, "birthing person".)
Research tells us that to become a parent is to be deluged. We are overwhelmed with stimuli, from our changed bodies, our changed routines, and from our babies, of course, with their newborn smell, their tiny fingers, their coos and their never-ending needs. It is brutal
This sounds like someone who should never, ever be a mother. (Sorry, "birthing person".)
Research tells us that to become a parent is to be deluged. We are overwhelmed with stimuli, from our changed bodies, our changed routines, and from our babies, of course, with their newborn smell, their tiny fingers, their coos and their never-ending needs. It is brutal
This sounds like someone who should never, ever be a mother. (Sorry, "birthing person".)
Let's take the next step and point out the most common bare breasted women (who breastfeed) images are from National Geographic of African tribes. She connotes breastfeeding feeding with savagery, which is the only way these tribal women can take care of their babies, indeed the way all tribal men and women were raised with this "savage" form of nutrition. How disgustingly racist of her.
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