Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting

A Harvard-trained obstetrician-gynecologist, prominent blogger, and author of the classic How Your Baby Is Born delivers a timely, important, and sure to be headline-making expose that shines a light on the natural parenting movement and the multimillion-dollar industry behind it.

The natural parenting movement praises the virtues of birth without medical interference, staunchly advocates breastfeeding for all mothers, and hails attachment parenting. Once the exclusive province of the alternative lifestyle, natural parenting has gone mainstream, becoming a lucrative big business today.

But those who do not subscribe to this method are often made to feel as if they are doing their children harm. Dr. Amy Tuteur understands their apprehensions. “Parenting quickly feels synonymous with guilt. And of late, there is no bigger arena for this pervasive guilt than childbirth.” As a medical professional with a long career in obstetrics and gynecology and as the mother of four children, Tuteur is no stranger to the insurmountable pressures and subsequent feelings of blame and self-condemnation that mothers experience during their children’s early years. The natural parenting movement, she contends, is not helping them raise their children better. Instead, it capitalizes on their uncertainty, manipulating parents when they are most vulnerable.

In Push Back, she chronicles the movement’s history from its roots to its modern practices, incorporating her own experiences as a mother and successful OB-GYN with original research on the latest in childbirth science. She also reveals the dangerous and overtly misogynistic motives of some of its proponents—conservative men who sought to limit women’s control and autonomy. As she debunks, one by one, the guilt-inducing myths of natural birth and parenting, Dr. Tuteur empowers women to embrace the method of childbirth that is right for them, while reassuring all parents that the most important thing they can do is love and care for their children.

How does Dr. Tuteur separate fact from fiction and empower parents to escape the guilt trap?

• Parenting Pseudoscience Debunked: Trace the history of the natural parenting movement and discover how personal beliefs, not scientific data, created a multimillion-dollar industry that profits from parental anxiety.
• Natural Childbirth Myths: Examine the claims that birth is inherently safe and pain is beneficial, and learn why a Harvard-trained OB-GYN argues these ideas are not only wrong, but dangerous.
• Lactivism and Breastfeeding: Move past the ‘breast is best’ dogma with an honest look at the real, and often overstated, benefits of breastfeeding and the unnecessary guilt placed on mothers.
• Attachment Parenting Critiqued: Uncover the misogynistic roots of parenting styles that demand constant maternal sacrifice and learn why a mother’s love isn’t measured by co-sleeping or baby-wearing.

Amy Tuteur, MD is an obstetrician-gynecologist. She is the author of How Your Baby Is Born, the first illustrated guide to labor and delivery. With degrees from Harvard College and Boston University School of Medicine, Tuteur practiced obstetrics at Beth Israel Hospital and was a Clinical Instructor at Harvard Medical School. Tuteur has contributed to TIME, the New York Times, the London Times, the Boston Globe, Salon, and Science-Based Medicine. Her blog, The Skeptical OB, speaks to all aspects of the natural parenting debate.