Tuesday, August 15, 2006

How did we ever...

...have any kids make it to adulthood before Gary Ezzo wrote "Babywise"? Reading it, one would think that either earlier generations of parents instinctively knew to schedule their children's feedings, or that life was nasty, brutish, and short (thanks Hobbes) because mothers didn't have Ezzo's "sage" advice.

Let's be serious, though. Imagine you are a mother in cloudy northern Europe, 500 years before mechanical clocks were widely available(1700s/1800s). How exactly are you going to schedule feedings?

Further, let's imagine that it's winter, and that effective house heating is still several hundred years away (the Franklin stove). Do you put your child in a crib to freeze to death?

The answer, of course, is that for most of history, mothers have fed their children on demand and kept them in their own beds while they were nursing--if not longer--because weather, technology, and economics did not allow any other arrangement. Despite Ezzo's quasi-historical analysis, his work is simply an attempt to treat a child as if he were a component or subassembly in a factory.

Is this what we really want? If a "part" doesn't work, do we ship him back to the manufacturer or discard him? Do we use the harmonious operation of the "factory" as an excuse to compel parents to do what they would not otherwise do?

This really gets to the core of what's wrong with Ezzo's work. The key issue isn't that he's not an expert in the area, or that he's split churches (and his work has split many more), or that the pediatricians and lactation consultants recommend demand feeding. The key issue, rather, is that families aren't factories, and children aren't "parts." If treating people like "parts" in factories leads to unions, what should we expect when we treat people like parts in our families and churches?

We'd expect exactly the same results that have been observed with implementing GFI. Children who don't "fit the mold" fail to thrive, and families and churches turn on each other.

See www.tulipgirl.com and www.ezzo.info for other information about Ezzo if you like.

2 comments:

Mercy Now said...

Yes, families are people created by God and are special and different. I've talked to parents asking how they raise their kids and they said that each kid is different. They can't treat every child the same.

I have friends that just had newborns and they get tons of advice from friends telling them they should do this and that and how their way is best...kinda like what you are refering to.

Bike Bubba said...

Quite right; I'd simply suggest that GFI and the Ezzos are particularly harmful because they're enormously popular, and their errors are more egregious and pervasive than those of many others.

The Ezzos also have a habit of picking fights with others, and that habit unfortunately carries over to many of those who implement their work.