Has the Cult of Science Killed Parents’ Intuition?
How to Restore Common Sense to Anxious Parents (Who Are Afraid of Dirt)
If You’re About My Age or Older…
You might remember the scandalous 1980 movie Blue Lagoon, with Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins. In the movie two adolescent children are shipwrecked, stranded on a deserted island and somehow figure out how to grow up, fall in love, get pregnant and raise a toddler on their own—all without the help of What to Expect When You’re Expecting, a nurse on speed dial, or an app to track the toddler’s nap schedule. The movie is very “Hollywood”, but it’s also a fun depiction of what might happen if two humans are left on their own with nothing but their instincts and intuition—two qualities I am afraid are being slowly bred out of parents since the advent of BabyCenter.com.
It is natural for young adults to assume they know better than their parents, and also natural for us older folks to shake our heads at “kids these days” and worry on their naivety. However, I believe I have a very abnormal ache in my chest for the last couple of generations of parents who seem incredibly ungrounded, and overwrought with anxiety.
Who Died and Made Me an Expert on Parenting?
I never set out to make child-rearing a focus of my career. Nevertheless, I’ve been raising other people’s children for 22 years now—as a step-mother, nanny, neighbor or “rent-a-mom” on occasion. I had strong opinions about parenting from an oddly young age. When I was kid I had a recurring vision of writing a book titled “Conscious Conception”—a treatise on how to prepare one’s whole being for becoming a parent. I was obsessed with the idea of making sure all children came into this world fervently desired and planned. (Naïve and idealistic, I know. But many books have been written with that very title since then.)
Fast forward 3 decades and birth control has become so accepted and accessible that young women are now waiting well into their 30s and 40s to have a family. My wish for more consciously conceived children has come true, but unfortunately the pendulum of culture has swung so far the other direction that it has produced a new problem.
New parents today, raised in the Information Age and devotees of the Cult of Academia & Science, appear to be drowning in a sea of stress and anxiety despite having so much, (if not too much) information about how to raise children.
Their intuition and connection to Divine guidance has been replaced with a connection to high speed wi-fi. The result, I believe, is the last few generations of children who are riddled with mental illness, learning disabilities and a long list of irrational fears. The National Institute of Mental Illness says that 1 in 5 adults live with a mental illness today . Does that mean we had less mental illness when I was a kid in the 80s, or that the business of diagnosing it was less popular and less funded?
I don’t know. But the number of small children who know how to use the word “anxiety” to get out of a taking a math test these days is astounding.
My chief concern is not just for children who are more comfortable inside the World of Minecraft than the Great Outdoors. A greater concern is the number of parents who implicitly trust Big Pharma and Big Medicine more than themselves. They are afraid of dirt and fevers, have no common sense about how illness actually works, and have lost the age old wisdom that children actually crave strong boundaries and discipline to feel safe.
Parenting ideology has surpassed politics and religion as the most volatile subject you can bring up at a dinner party of mixed ages. Even though I am naturally an outspoken woman, I have learned over the years to keep my mouth shut about parenting methods if I wish to keep any friends of the younger generations.
However….
The air of desperation and anxiety that seems to be consuming new parents these days may be a call for us older folks to extend a compassionate hand, and remind them of their own inner knowing that is perhaps buried under a dependence on Safari and Siri.
Afraid to Get Your Head Bit Off If You Speak Up?
If you’ve been biting your tongue around clueless parents, as I have, it can be very daunting to brooch the subject. Fortunately, I’ve found something to aid you. I stumbled upon a great ice-breaker; a neutral third party, if you will. Her name is Michaeleen Doucleff and she is the author of Hunt, Gather, Parent – What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans.
Michaeleen is a young parent who started out earnest and clueless, and blessed with one of the most tyrannical little monsters you’ll ever meet in print. Her daughter is beyond difficult, totally brilliant, and very demanding. My heart hurt for how hard Michaeleen was trying and failing, as a mother, as I read the introduction of the book—which cannot be skimmed or skipped.
As a reporter for NPR, Michaeleen had an opportunity to witness parenting in places that the Western Cult of Science hasn’t got a stranglehold on yet—like small Mayan communities in Mexico, the Inuit people of Northern Canada, and the Hadzabe tribe in Tanzania. Within these ancient cultures, Michaeleen noticed how peacefully the parents and children co-existed compared to Americans families. Most astonishing to her was how their children were naturally helpful, contributing members of the family even when video games, internet and TV were present in the household. The family dynamics and methods for diffusing tantrums and misbehavior were so starkly different from what she saw in American culture that she decided to devote several years to living in these communities, with her 3-year-old daughter.
Later at home in San Francisco, she took their advice and figured out how to apply it to her metropolitan lifestyle. Then she wrote a book about how much easier parenting became for her and her husband after she ditched the Cult of Science for some ancient wisdom.
Again, if you’re about my age or older…
You’ll read this book and see that you don’t have to be a member of an indigenous or “ancient” culture to be familiar with its techniques. You’ll recognize it, especially if you were raised with your grandparents around. The advantage of her book is that she’s able to present it in a way that gives it a vast amount of credibility for younger people who think us older folks are all washed up.
It’s sort of like how eating real foods became more credible once it was presented with a new name like “Paleo Diet”. Her book is old-fashioned wisdom, re-packaged to look like a new discovery by a young person. I’m not really sure if I can be called “old-fashioned” yet. I’m only 47. But my conservative family values and my childhood in rural America have me feel more comfortable with the older folks right now.
So, I’m completely okay with letting the younger generations think that they are the ones who discovered common sense. Whatever it takes to get this train back on the track, right?
Cultivating Intuition is the Salve to Calm an Anxious Parent
I don’t just refer to “mother’s intuition”. Fathers have it, too.
For me, intuition is a carefully cultivated resource that I would be a robotic automaton if I did not have at my daily disposal. Christians may call it the “Holy Spirit” or the experience of having God lay something upon their heart. For me, it’s my direct access to a higher state of consciousness and wisdom which far supersedes the daily banter in my head. It has taken me decades to learn to hear the difference between my mental chatter and the promptings of my Higher Self, and to hear it so efficiently that I can now access that knowing (almost) just as easily as turning the channel on the TV.
The problem is that accessing intuitive wisdom is nearly impossible when your eyes are glued to a screen, or you’re stressed and overworked, flailing through your day like a chicken with your head cut off.
The still small voice of parental intuition comes when you are in a flow state, or comfortable with yourself in silence—which is a skill I fear is greatly missing in younger parents. It’s not their fault. Modern culture has nearly eliminated any opportunity for one to experience silence.
When you sit in the waiting room of a doctor’s office these days, how many people are looking at the magazines on the coffee table and how many are glued to their phones? I’ll bet you’ll see that the magazines are dusty and out of date.
Even print media is too slow for the average person’s attention today.
How Do Humans Become Motivated to Seek the “Still Small Voice” of Divine Guidance?
Pain, usually.
When you think of the people in your life who are the wisest, calmest and most connected to something greater than themselves, ask yourself if they had an easy life? Were they born with a silver spoon in their mouth?
I’m betting not.
Pain and tragedy push humans into two camps—those who muddle along under a cloak of self-pity, and those who find their way out of the pain through a lifeline to something more grounded than their own egos. That’s usually a relationship with the Divine, a religious faith, or a connection to the awe of Nature.
If you define yourself as someone in the latter camp, you can probably instantly recall the pain points that taught you how to trust something smarter than the modern cult of “pay to play” political scientists who run the world today.
Olivia’s Gift
The event that taught me the power of mother’s intuition occurred when my son was 4 weeks old.
My pregnancy and labor with my son were so traumatizing that I’d rather not relive it through the telling of it. He and I are only alive today because of a thousand little divinely orchestrated synchronicities that doctors today would call mere coincidences.
However, it was an argument with my pediatrician and midwives that taught me the most valuable lesson in self-trust as a mother. Like many new moms I was hell-bent on breastfeeding, but as my pregnancy progressed, I sensed that the plumbing of my breast tissue was not developing as it should. I questioned my team of midwives and doctors, but they assured me that all was well and all new mothers have that similar concern. When my son was finally born after 30 hours of labor at home—a perfect little chubby cherub—he latched on with ease and my milk came according to nature’s plan.
But I continued to feel that something wasn’t quite right, even though I appeared to be dripping with milk all day long.
Mick nursed incessantly, and barely slept for more than 45 minutes before he cried and wanted to nurse again. I knew something was wrong, but both of my midwives, my doctor, La Leche League and my friends assured me that all was well and I just needed to keep nursing.
I wanted to pump to find out how much milk I was producing but I was emphatically told not to. Just keep nursing, they assured me. My mother-in-law came to town to help, and I saw a worried look on her face as we saw his little body grow thinner. When I sent pictures to my mother and aunties they were apparently sharing concern amongst themselves, but didn’t tell me. They knew I was surrounded by medical professionals who were all assuring me everything was fine. All babies lose a pound or two in their first couple weeks of life, right?
By the fourth week after his birth I was a walking zombie of fatigue, Mick was still only sleeping for maybe 90 minutes at most before waking, and his little body started to wrinkle like Benjamin Button. Still, I was assured by all the professionals that if milk was still dripping from me all I needed to do was continue to nurse him.
My husband had no idea how to support me. His brain was mush from fatigue and he was caught between the advice of the doctors and my worry, (and the fact that he didn’t have breasts to help.)
Finally, the still small voice became a roar. I bought a breast pump, against everyone’s advice, and discovered that after an hour of pumping I was only producing half an ounce in each breast. I was a mere dripping faucet, not a fountain of nourishment.
I had been literally starving my baby.
I quickly drove to the nearest goat farm, begged for raw goat milk, filled a 6 ounce bottle and watched my boy suck it down like it was the first time he’d truly eaten in his life. He then promptly fell asleep for 4 hours. I laid next to him and bawled my eyes out. Guilt racked my heart. I had been letting him suffer the pain of hunger for four weeks. As he lay sleeping I watched his little chest rise up and down, barely fathoming that a newborn could sleep that long.
Then the anger set in.
How could my midwives and doctor be so wrong? My head midwife, Olivia, was actually a registered nurse and a fount of wisdom who had delivered many babies at Woodstock. She looked into my eyes and said exactly the right thing.
“Eryn, let this be your first lesson in trusting your own intuition above anyone else. We were wrong. You were right.”
Screw the FDA
Fast forward several months and my son was again a plump little cherub and vibrantly healthy.
Raw goat milk is still illegal to sell for human consumption, according to the FDA, so naturally my doctor wanted me to use commercial formula instead. But I found a hundred-year-old recipe from Weston Price for home-made formula with raw milk and 11 different natural ingredients that mimicked mother’s milk. It could be adjusted for fat and protein content as he grew. Even my doctor could not deny that Mick was one of the healthiest babies he’d cared for and humbly said, “Eryn, whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.” Later, I was asked to teach other mothers the recipe and many sickly babies were brought back to vitality as a result of one treasured little goat farm selling contraband milk against the rules of “scientists” who apparently know better than ancient wisdom.
How Do We Reconnect Parents to Their Innate Wisdom?
Model it.
Share your stories, as I have shared mine. Don’t be afraid to speak out against establishment science, especially now as so much news is surfacing about the corrupt corporations that fund it. For far too long I have been quiet about the “Back is Best” campaign from Big Medicine. Talk to any mother over 50 about the evils of letting small babies sleep on their tummies and she’ll look at you like you have ten heads.
Older mothers know that some babies sleep better and longer when they’re laid on their tummies, but younger mothers are now filled with abject terror at the thought it. To lay a infant on its belly is the most grievous of sins, according to the religion of the American Pediatric Association.
Where did the “Back is Best” campaign come from? Be curious. I could write a whole article on the back-story, but Google has scrubbed most of the references to prove it. And I could be tarred and feathered for letting the cat out of the bag.
I’ll just tease you with this question: What follows when the rise of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) seems to follow the same trajectory as the rise in the number of vaccines given to infants? The answer—Big Pharma creates a campaign to blame SIDS on anything other than the vaccines (namely their heavy metals and formaldehyde preservatives), thusly launching a large and well-marketed tidal wave of media to scare parents into thinking that thousands of years of babies sleeping on their tummies suddenly accounts for the rise in SIDS. Blankets are now death traps. Crib bumpers are as dangerous as wrapping your baby’s face in a plastic bag. And co-sleeping with your infant, despite being done all over the world since the dawn of time, is now a big no-no.
Honestly, people. Are we that stupid? Science can either be a tool for progress, or profit. It’s up to us to discern which. It’s our intuition which will show us the difference.
Be curious and ask your grandparents for their opinion. Obviously some “old fashioned” ideas about parenting are clearly best left in the past—like how my parents put me to sleep by laying me on the floor of the car next to the motor. Car seats and air bags hadn’t been invented yet. (Now that I think of it, the floor of the car may actually have been safer than in my mother’s arms, who knows?)
Nevertheless, our grandparents and parents have ideas and advice that served them well, and much of it ought to be preserved. Had I asked my grandmother for advice when I was struggling with my newborn, I would have learned that she also had trouble nursing, and that we shared many odd genetic conditions that contributed to the problem.
Be the Well-Spring of Calm They Crave
If you are of the older generation, and you have grandchildren and young parents in your sphere of influence, be the grounded and calm example of faith that you wish for them to find in themselves. The ancient Celtic culture divided a woman’s life into three phases: the first is a maiden, the second is a mother and the third is a crone—a term of reverence given to anyone who has raised their children and are the keeper of experience.
Is it time for you to claim your place as an elder and a crone? Your wisdom is needed, whether the young folks know it or not. Don’t be silent. Exercise your well-earned skills of diplomacy to remind the young folks of your experience.
And remember that Google was born in 1998. It’s only 25 years old.
Google is still a baby.
Trust the Silver Chord
I named this Substack The Silver Chord Project in honor of the heartstrings we carry between ourselves and our children, no matter what their age. Quantum phsyics has proven that electrons can exist in more than one place at one time, and that cells in one petri dish will talk to cells in another petri dish from the same organ—not only from across the room but in an other hemisphere.
A mother and her baby’s body share the same tissue until that child is 7 years old. They are quite literally one being in two bodies, and their cells talk to each other. Beyond organs and cells, the bio-magnetic signature that communicates between parents and children exists all their lives. It exists beyond the grave. It exists between humans and their creations, just as it exists between us and our Creator.
Google can be unplugged.
The Silver Chord cannot.