I'm not a parent, but the sentiment expressed here a few times about being bombarded with information and how recommendations keep changing etc -- why the hell are you overthinking all this shit? Like, make sure the kid's basic needs are met, and that they're vaccinated, and I'm confident they'll turn out fine like every generation before them. I almost view it like dieting fads with how often something "good for you" ends up being awful for you a few years later depending on who you ask. Just use your own life experience as a guide along with common sense and filter out the rest.
I was vaccinated, ate normal foods, played outside & video games equally, and i'm sitting here at 31 healthy and fine (though I should eat better). I think all the overthinking in parenting has created a cottage industry to separate new parents from their money by exploiting their uncertainty. Mix that with greater society and how people like to be judgemental gossipy assholes, feeding that pressure to make the "right decision" and here we are.
I agree with what you're saying, and it's true. Some parenting advice I've seen online specifically tries to tell parents to calm the fuck down about everything.
It's easy to glance at someone else's kid and go "he looks fine to me", but speaking from my own experience, it's surprisingly easy to psych yourself out about things when it's your own kid. When your kid is first born, you spend a lot of time just doing nothing but watching your kid by yourself.
And when you spend week after week where it's just you, a kid who can't communicate yet, and your phone full of people talking about how your kid "should be doing this at this age" or "should never be around this or that", it becomes easy to start second-guessing yourself. You start to wonder if you're doing something wrong or if you're missing something, and that's when your mind can start going off the rails if you don't have sensible people around you who can keep your fears in check.
Some parents clearly trust or talk to the wrong people, and that's when they get on the crazy train. It's a very vulnerable period of time for a parent mentally, and many news sources, bloggers, and so on prey on that anxiety to feed them garbage in order to get clicks.
I mean I hear everything you are saying, but in regards to vaccines, doctors have been pretty united behind getting vaccines haven't they?
Yes, that's been unanimous. But general distrust in the "system" these days for various reasons has also extended to distrusting official statements, which unfortunately includes doctors.
I agree that antivax mentality is fucking stupid and dangerous, but I think it's important to figure out how it got there, and I think the growing distrust in authority figures and the government has a lot to do with it.
Overall, it seems like a perfect storm. Everything from narcissistic parenting culture, to internet disinformation campaigns, to government corruption, and the selfishness of the entitled upper middle class society.
It really is the perfect storm. It's easy to write people off as idiots, but I don't think that's the actual issue.
I think the root of the problem is that people are supposed to trust official sources, but rampant corruption is providing a rapidly growing number of very good reasons why they shouldn't.
When the current US administration does things like appoint people like Devos to head the ministry of education and puts a guy who works for the corn industry in charge of making the next official food guide, then I think it's understandable why people are losing their trust in what their government tells them to do.
Take the whole "fuck the police" mentality that's prevalent here. The police is supposed to be an official government organization that you're supposed to trust in a working society. But when there are so many stories about the corruption going on there, then people understandably stop trusting them to help, and instead turn to their own devices.
Health care unfortunately falls into the same boat. For every story about how you should trust your doctor, there are other news stories that talk about crooked doctors taking bribes to prescribe more drugs. Trust medical research? There are stories about pharma companies funding research to get results that they want. Trust your health care system? But there are pharma companies raising prices and flagrantly showing that they don't give a flying fuck about you.
None of these things SHOULD dismiss all doctors and the entire field of medicine, but it certainly erodes a lot of faith in it. And with enough erosion of that faith, bad news and bad experiences, once again it starts to make sense when someone begins to trust themselves more than they trust official sources. And it's a shame, because of course most doctors mean well and are trying their best to make statements and recommendations that are in your best interests. But there are also enough selfish assholes out there doing the opposite, and from an outside perspective, that can be enough to make people not trust doctors at all.
Finally, the word "expert" has no real meaning anymore because every media company, blogger, and so on calls fucking any yahoo they bring on screen an "expert". So when someone says "expert opinion", you have no idea if you're listening to an actual doctor or just some fuckwad who calls himself one because he read a few Wikipedia pages.
