Today marks yet another episode in my love/hate relationship with the New York Times. (Today is "hate", if you couldn't guess.) I ran across this little gem in the Op/Ed pages:
Honey, I Plumped the Kids
by Olivia Judson
Judson starts out describing an experiment done on pregnant rats, in which Group A was given access to as much lab-rat chow as they wanted, along with access to as much human junk-food as they wanted. Group B was only given access to the all-you-can-eat lab-rat buffet (sans junk-food). This continues after birth and during nursing, and then the pups are given access to both kinds of food.
Experiments like this have found that pregnant females with access to junk food ate, on a daily basis, roughly 40 percent more food (by weight) and 56 percent more calories than rats that just had chow. Moreover — and this is the interesting bit — pups whose mothers ate junk food while pregnant and lactating had a greater taste for food high in fat and sugar than those whose mothers did not. The junk-food pups ate more calories and were more prone to gaining weight.
Okay, that doesn't seem like such a revelation. Most educated people realize that what happens to us in the womb has a significant impact on us once we leave the womb. So clearly we shouldn't feed pregnant rats or their babies junk-food. Oh, but wait for it...
What goes for rats does not necessarily go for humans. Nonetheless, such results are thought-provoking.
Yes! What's an op-ed article without making unjustified conclusions about people on the basis of lab experiments on rats? Let's go ahead and make some assumptions about how rats' informed decision-making about what they choose to eat applies to pregnant human beings and their children. Then, let's make the substitution that "eating junk food" = "being obese" (because if you're obese, it's obviously because you sit around eating junk food all day).
Judson devotes all of one paragraph to the sound reasons NOT to make the connection that "fat moms make fat babies". Then she plows right on:
But the results of several studies suggest that the very fact of a woman being obese during pregnancy may predispose her children to obesity. For example, one study found that children born to women who have lost weight after radical anti-obesity surgery are less likely to be obese than siblings born before their mother lost weight. Another study looked at women who gained weight between pregnancies; the results showed that babies born after their mothers put on weight tended to be heavier at birth than siblings born beforehand. Since the mother’s genes haven’t changed, the “fat” environment seems likely to be responsible for the effect .
I love it that she's calling pregnant mothers "the fat environment." That is hilarious. (Except not, because in the world we live in, pregnant mothers have enough cultural messages telling them they're "fat" -- even though, duh, they're pregnant and hence supposed to gain weight.)
First of all let's back right up and mention that the notion of "obesity" that this article is likely using is based on Body Mass Index , or BMI. According to the CDC, "obese" folks have a BMI that is 30 and above. There are plenty of problems that feminists have raised with using this method as a way to classify obese people. (Check out "why BMI is a crock" over at Shakesville. ) But I digress...
If this is right, it raises the alarming possibility that the obesity epidemic has a built-in snowball effect. If children born to obese mothers are, owing to the environment in the womb, predisposed to obesity, they may find staying thin especially hard. Reversing the epidemic may thus rest on helping women to lose weight before they conceive and helping them to eat a balanced, non-junk-food diet while they are pregnant. The well-being of the next generation may depend on it.
Of course! The article is about the well-being of the unborn, so naturally we've got to come around to controlling women's bodies eventually. It just makes me crazy how often--and in what bizarre ways!--mothers are continually blamed, shamed, and controlled in the service of "the next generation". Here they're reduced to being called "the fat environment" rather than independent, thinking human beings. The conjunction in this article of negative body image and controlling women's reproductive capacities floors me.
What really bothers me, I think, is the way the article is written to an audience other than women, much less the women who are the focus of the article. It doesn't say "there are potentially some more compelling reasons to eat well and exercise, particularly when you're pregnant, besides for your own well-being." What is so hard about that? The whole tone is just so patronizing. And somehow Judson manages to subtly blame obese mothers for the entirety of the obesity epidemic. Because if it starts in the womb, clearly making informed and healthy choices about what to eat is out of our children's hands.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Pregnant women are making their fetuses fat..
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/8511
Weekly Feministing Newsletter
Feministing RSS Feed
Ooh! Mother-blaming, fat bashing, and general sexism all rolled into a giant crepe of crap. Women's health and general well-being are important to healthy pregnancies and kids, but this is just rubbish.
I was told by a pediatrician that I needed to start worrying about the risk of being overweight for my three year old because she was 39 lbs instead of 38 lbs. I said, would you be worried if she was 38 lbs, and the ped said no, since that was in the range of normal, but 39 was not.
As for the BMI, I'm sure this has been discussed here, but if you haven't seen Shapely Prose's BMI Project of pictures illustrating the BMI guidelines, you should go see it: http://kateharding.net/bmi-illustrated/
Guess what? My link just links to a different part of your link! Sorry, should have clicked before typing.
This is disgusting. I agree with you. How many ways are people going to shame / blame / control pregnant women. It's like they think women are incapable of making decisions about our bodies and lifestyles and want to make them for us, and yet blame the mothers for everything that could go wrong. This is just ridiculous. Thanks for the post!
UGH. Just one more way to make mothers feel guilty. Don't we get enough? It seems we are responsible for everything.
The article is about the well-being of the unborn, so naturally we've got to come around to controlling women's bodies eventually. It just makes me crazy how often--and in what bizarre ways!--mothers are continually blamed, shamed, and controlled in the service of "the next generation".
When are parents--mothers included--to blame for the effect their behavior has on their children? Unfortunately, women are the ones that get pregnant, so yes, they'll get the primary burden of blame if they, say, they expose their fetuses to drugs or other substances without a plan regarding treatment the fetus for crack addiction or FAS once its born-
Are women (those who don't terminate their pregnancies) responsible to ANY extent for the health of a fetus that will one day exist apart from them? Or is it pure misogyny when the Surgeon General tells mothers not to smoke while their fetuses are in the womb (unless they WANT their children to be born with birth defects)?
Is the article DEFINITIVELY blaming fat people and mothers, or is the author straining to say, "This isn't conclusive"?
Feministing has cited the womb and the woman's body as an "environment" or locus for pregnancy (and the burdens it puts on women) before--her "personality" has jack shit to do with whether or not she wants to terminate the pregnancy, whether her BODY is in distress, etc.
"Here they're reduced to being called "the fat environment" rather than independent, thinking human beings."...
Yes, b/c the article is describing a medical problem and trends within pregnancy...how exactly should their "independence" and "individuality" be described and what does it have to do with the health of a fetus here?
I read the editorial. Has the medical/psychological establishment made some suspicious statements that hurts women, gays, and "fat" people? Sure.
Does that mean there isn't something of value here in the article?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/opinion/10Judson.html
"Being obese during pregnancy is dangerous for the mother and expensive for the health care system. But does it affect the babies?
There are reasons to think it might. The period between conception and birth is crucial — after all, you’re growing from a single cell into a baby. Your heart is being built; your brain is being wired. Exposure to alcohol during this time can disrupt brain development; lack of iodine may permanently stunt growth. Being starved in the womb can lead to health problems such as heart disease later in life, especially if food becomes abundant. So what about overnourishment? Does an “obese” environment in the womb somehow predispose babies to obesity later on?
At the moment, such questions are difficult to answer. Humans are much harder to study than rats, and the phenomenon of obesity in pregnancy is relatively new, so we don’t know much about it yet. Moreover, many factors contribute to someone’s becoming obese, and picking them apart is tricky. Added to that, an “obese” environment in the womb has two separate elements: the nutrients provided by the mother via the food she eats, and the hormonal environment of someone who is overweight. (Being obese can profoundly alter a woman’s hormonal profile.) Again, picking these apart is hard.
But the results of several studies suggest that the very fact of a woman being obese during pregnancy may predispose her children to obesity. For example, one study found that children born to women who have lost weight after radical anti-obesity surgery are less likely to be obese than siblings born before their mother lost weight. Another study looked at women who gained weight between pregnancies; the results showed that babies born after their mothers put on weight tended to be heavier at birth than siblings born beforehand. Since the mother’s genes haven’t changed, the “fat” environment seems likely to be responsible for the effect.
Why might this happen? Perhaps an “obese” environment in the womb alters the wiring of the developing brain so as to interfere with normal appetite control, fat deposition, taste in food, or metabolism. Studies on other animals suggest that parts of the brain that control appetite develop differently under “obese” conditions. And in humans, one study has found that babies born to obese mothers have lower resting metabolic rates than babies whose mothers are of normal weight.
--
I don't think this is a simply a point that can be wrapped up with a nice "society is blaming Mommy/fat people INAPPROPRIATELY" card (not that those two troubling trends don't exist...just not here).
I also like the implication in the article that pregnant women don't have any more will power or intelligent decision making skills than rats. Never mind that as human beings we have knowledge of our own biological process and that most women use that knowledge to make decisions about what to do and eat while pregnant. Everyone knows that 'teh hormones!' turn us into crazy, emotional, chocolate devouring monsters.
I ate better than I ever did in my life while I was pregnant. Not that I didn't crave to eat a pound of fudge and chase it with a bag of potato chips, but I'm a human being and, thus, have self control. Some women would just eat the fudge, and that's OK too. When you're pregnant, even getting up to go to the goddamn bathroom is really difficult. Everyone should leave pregnant women the hell alone and let them eat whatever they want as long as it isn't rat poison. I've known many women who ate unhealthy food while pregnant and their kids are just fine.
Women are not rats, women are not mindless beasts, and women are not too stupid to know how to take care of themselves and their fetus.
uhm did they take into consideration genetics here just because the mother is eating "unhealthy" doesn't mean that is the reason the baby is going to be unhealthy. that is so stupid. and you can't like eliminate the mother as a variable unless you inserted a fertilized egg that was not hers into her womb. then that would prove that an unhealthy environment would harm the baby otherwise its just a correlation not causation. :P
It is frightening that there has been a recent rash of pregnancy -related articles that blame potential mothers for all sorts of ridiculous things. Most recently I caught headlines on msn.com that proclaimed "Asthma risk from eating nuts during pregnancy" and "The Pill makes women pick bad mates." So now not only are we harming our fetus left and right, but our birth control is going to lead to infidelity, infertility, and divorce (which will obviously be the woman's fault). So glad that the misogyny isn't subtle or anything....*grrr*
And it goes both ways too - my daughter was super skinny when she was born, and a lot of people assumed I had been dieting while pregnant. She was born at 34 weeks, when they have just had a growth spurt but haven't put on much body fat yet. She was perfectly healthy, breathing on her own, nursing just fine, etc. But because she looked so skinny I got a lot of rude questions about it. I ate a lot while pregnant, but only healthy food. Since I avoid processed foods (with hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup), only eat meat if it's hormone and antibiotic free, and bike just about everywhere I go, people often assume I'm dieting - which I never do. I'm a muscular 5'9'' and usually weigh 140-145, so I generally do need a lot of calories, and consumed even more while I was pregnant, but only gained 21 pounds. Of course, at 34 weeks that's just fine. But that's not how people see it. Even if you've been consuming plenty of calories in a well-balanced way, they assume you must have been dieting. Ironically enough, they'll congratulate you on not gaining much weight and having your flat tummy back a week after the birth while at the same time questioning whether you've harmed your baby by dieting while pregnant! You really can't win.