Parents and Children
Clinical Attitudes
FURLONG
By MONICA
TUE medical profession, I dare say rightly, has always regarded mothers with suspicion and con- tempt. They know per- fectly well that we are lazy, unhygienic, super- stitious, hysterical and maudlin, and liable to give .. our offspring typhoid or an CEdipus complex at the drop of a shawl. They let it show. Doctors who treat me with charming respect and courtesy when 1, .consult them about my own ailments change completely when I am accom- panied by a child. There is immediately some- thing accusing and critical in their attitude, and they bark .searching questions on which sooner or later I am bound tube faulted. Do I give it rose-hip syrup? Vitamin drops? Cheese? Do 1 medicale the nappies in boracic crystals? Ought its stomach to stick out like that? Is my husband Pigeon-toed'? Has it been vaccinated, polio- immunised, whooping-cough injected, tetanus- protected? Shouldn't I have another one soon? I suppose one ought to be grateful, even if for the next hour or so one aftieft with such a feeling of guilt and inferiority that the only hope seems to be to auction off the baby and take up fretwork. What matters after all is that ihe child should grow up healthy and comparatively nor- mal. All the same I wonder if doctors take suf- ficient account of how sensitive mothers are to the least breath of criticism. We may, in our ignorance and hurry, do some pretty silly things, but we are desperately anxious to get the job right. After all the nappies one has boiled, all the bottles one has sterilised. all the liver one has sieved, it is depressing to receive not a word of praise for the bouncing result. but merely a cold judgment like a decision at Cruft's. Caring for babies is, for mothers, an emotional business. The mildest suggestion that they might be dif- ferently fed or more warmly dressed is there- fore amplified absurdh to a point where a mother believes she is being accused of starving or neglecting her child and becomes too angry to listen. The suggestions must, of course, be made, but the smugness and superiority could, I am sure, be suppressed with advantage.
It is, 1 fancy, this superiority which makes the baby clinics only moderately successful. For every young mother I know who makes use of the clinic facilities with enthifsiasm, there are half a dozen who refuse to set foot in the place. This seems a pity since the service is in many ways, a good one. ' It gives one the opportunity of getting expert advice Without the interminable waits of a GP's waiting-room, of meeting other mothers with similar interests and problems, of buying baby foods at a cut rate (in sonic clinics), and of getting one's child immunised with consider- able convenience. In spite of all this mothers light hard against going there and the reasons they give reflect the bruises of past combat.
'I wasn't going to have that old spinster telling me what to do.'
'She said he was Underweight and hollow- chested what a cheek !'
'She said it was selfish not to feed the baby oneself Sonic mothers also complain of being let down when they have badly needed advice. like a friend of mine whose si \ -week-old baby never seemed to stop crying. 'These red-headed babies are all alike,' the health visitor told her, 'thoroughly temperamental. There's nothing you can do.' My friend rightly considered this hypothesis un- scientific. Many more mothers say that they have been frightened into believing that their children had things wrong with them, merely by the clinic's• over-enthusiasm for diagnosis. It only needs the faintest suggestion that the funny noise the baby makes when it breathes might be asthma, or that its poor colour might be due to a weak heart, to set all the maternal alares-bells ringing fit to bust. This is unnecessarily cruel when three-quarters of the symptoms tiny babies produce never seem to mean anything at all.
Probably the factor that does most to under- mine the trust mothers feel in the clinics is the way the clinic doctor and the GP frequently give contradictory advice. This is bad enough on mat- ters of treatment or feeding, though there can, I suppose, be two points of view on such things, but it is worse on matters of fact. One mother I know did not attend a clinic for the first time until her baby was about ten weeks old. but regularly took him to be examined by her GP. He was entirely satisfied with him, but the clinic at once complained in shocked tones that he was grossly underweight Obviously they couldn't both be right, but it was baffling to the lay mind to discover that what was near-starvation to one doctor was perfect health to another. Since her baby soon developed a magnificent physique, she concluded that the clinic must have been piqued at not having been consulted earlier. There is often, one senses, fierce warfare going on be- tween the two camps, and it reduces confidence in both. When 1 proposed going to my own doc- tor for a polio injection, the assistant at the clinic seemed offended. 'I'd come here if I were you. At least you know our vaccine is fresh.'
Perhaps the trouble is that neither doctors, health visitors, nor mothers, have entirely thrown off the pre-war feeling that clinics were meant for the ignorant poor. So improving is the atmosphere that I often expect' to be patted on the arm and advised to take up baths and family planning. The clinic 1 go to is often excel- lent, and the health visitor genuinely likes babies and sometimes even mothers, but there is always the riling suggestion that one is likely to act in some monstrously irresponsible way. It would be nicer, I think, to be treated as an equal partner in an exciting enterprise than as a dull native who can't be weaned from her tribal taboos.
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