Crunchy Parents General

[AnOminous]

Or a quack family doc who diagnoses autism like it’s the new ADHD. Or a troll post goading people into arguing about circumcision. The crunch is real tho.

Either she's a munchie, or the doctor is a quack. Or both. I'd go with both.

 

[Lunete]

Person A: Why would you not want your child to have a birth certificate? How would that be a positive thing for you or them? I'm not being snarky here, I'm really curious about the concrete reasons behind this choice.

Person B: No one has ever given me any concrete reason why they really need to have one. The things I keep hearing are:

health insurance
tax money
school
future job

unless I have something more than those things, I'm not worrying myself over it anymore.

Those are all concrete reasons though. You can't even even get a job at McDonald's without a birth certificate.
What are going to do when your kid is 20 something, still living at home, with no job and at least one kid of their own?

 

[Frogasm]

Some of the things listed in the OP are insane like refusing to vaccinate, but there's nothing inherently wrong with stuff like breastfeeding or cloth diapering or no diapering (as long as they can actually train the baby to poop on command, I've never heard of any non-african cultures doing this, only heard of it in a few small places in africa), it's just that a lot of people take it WAY too far.

By far the most painful thing to me about parents not vaccinating their children is that, they would rather risk having a dead child than an autistic child. Autism is worse than death to them. I've known autistic children. They can be difficult but their parents still love them. They can be happy families. It kills me to think of the autistic kids I know and then think that there are people who would risk their kids' lives to make sure that they never had a kid like them.

 

[Coldgrip]

Can we include parents of 'indigo children' too? I remember reading about an indigo child who managed to convince his parents that he was the Avatar, reincarnated once a generation with the ability to bend all four elements. Go ahead and guess what his favorite Nickelodeon show was.

Johnny Test.

So did his parents ever have him display his powers? Or did they just nod in agreement knowing full well he's not the avatar and continue to not raise their kid right?

 

[AnOminous]

Some of the things listed in the OP are insane like refusing to vaccinate, but there's nothing inherently wrong with stuff like breastfeeding or cloth diapering or no diapering (as long as they can actually train the baby to poop on command, I've never heard of any non-african cultures doing this, only heard of it in a few small places in africa), it's just that a lot of people take it WAY too far.

By far the most painful thing to me about parents not vaccinating their children is that, they would rather risk having a dead child than an autistic child. Autism is worse than death to them. I've known autistic children. They can be difficult but their parents still love them. They can be happy families. It kills me to think of the autistic kids I know and then think that there are people who would risk their kids' lives to make sure that they never had a kid like them.

Not just risking their lives, but risking they get measles and end up a completely brain damaged tard for life, incapable of anything but drooling and grunting.

 

[Frogasm]

Some points of amusement.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...f-her-children-come-down-with-whooping-cough/

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/anti-vaxxer-mom-mind-kids-fall-ill/story?id=42351543

 

[Dysnomia]

Interesting that they don't like PKU tests because phenylalanine is found in breast milk. If your child has this rare condition your own breast milk could be causing them brain damage and seizures. They may develop behavioral and psychatric problems. But that's ok because you know better than the doctor who is telling you that your baby needs to be tested and that your own breast milk could cause permanent neurological damage. I knew a kid with PKU and her diet was very restricted.

PKU tests are required in all 50 states and it' a simple heel prick test 1-2 days after birth. It could save your child from a lifetime of completely avoidable misery. If you homebirth to avoid this kind of test and you pass down the genes that cause PKU you are quite literally forcing your normal baby to grow up r.etarded and seizure ridden. All because boob milk.

The lady that believes 2000 infants die each year from formula toxicity can't even be bothered to pull statistics from anywhere other than her ass.

Also: "This is just mother nature's way of ensuring that women don't reproduce too much and clog up the planet with diapers. "



Mother Nature doesn't know what diapers are. Diapers aren't used in nature. That has nothing to do with natural selection at all. Pressures to reproduce or not reproduce are tied to food availability, mate availability, environment and risk of predation. That's why mice and rabbits make babies so frequently. They are constantly being eaten. Compare that to elephants, who are big enough to avoid predators other than humans. Rabbits can even reabsorb fetuses if danger or food scarcity makes giving birth too risky. Diapers? Maybe she was homeschooled by some crazy vegan and didn't learn any real science.

Here's the whole birth certificate thread if anyone cares: https://www.mothering.com/forum/306...1-choosing-not-get-birth-certificate-all.html. It's long.

These people will never be bringing their kids to a hospital.

No birth certificate no social security number. Have fun getting a job, an ID card, insurance, a bank account, schooling, a passport or literally anything. Your kid's going to grow up resenting you for making their life difficult.

I wanted to just not get one for dd and am considerring it for this one.

I was married to exy at the time and we really needed the kids to be income tax deductions; we had to keep filing extensions on our tax returns until we had gotten the kids' ss #s. We applied for both birth certificates and ss #s at the same time and ds's was much easier than dd's.

She needed both a birth certificate and a ss# to get her state ID. She needs to show her SS card for such jobs as "Courtesy Clerk" (bagger and general flunkie) at Safeway, In Home Support Services (caregiver for the disabled), and cashier at retail clothing stores. She was homeschooled/unschooled/self-schooled through high school, but the community college she attends now has her ss #.

In spite of all that, I still have my regrets about "caving" and have yet to make that appointment with Planned Parenthood to get a confirmation of pregnancy.

I know that Mary Pride, a fairly well-known personality in the Christian Homeschooling community, does not have social security numbers for her kids. There are people who do it.

So after all the trouble you put your daughter through to the point where it was hard for her to even get a job bagging groceries because of your stupid convictions, you still regret caving? I guess you figured she'd just have a lifetime being barefoot and pregnant while home birthing in a kiddie pool and would never need to worry about official documents.

All the folks I know who don't get B/Cs for their children are very independent types. (Not a shock there!) Most are self-employed, the HCPs among them do not accept Medicaid/care, all that I know homeschool their children, and some are income tax resistors. The ones I know with grown children have pursued non-traditional secondary education or went to Hillsdale College. SFAIK, Hillsdale is the only accredited college that does not accept any government funds... not even GI bill.

Hillsdale!

Hillsdale is a private Christian college preferred by many fundies.

Health care hasn't been an issue for any of the families I know. Some of the parents are dentists, MD, and naturopaths. They all seem to be well connected to like-minded folks to get whatever services they need. They pay cash at time of service (many HCPs will negotiate a cash at service discount for non-insured patients) and often travel to Canada if surgery is needed. The Amish in my area commonly find it's much cheaper to hire a driver and stay in a hotel for surgery in Canada than to stay at home and pay cash at the local hospital.

Hello privilege! I guarantee those parents who are dentists, doctors and (lulz) naturopaths have an SS and birth certificate because their parents weren't crazy. If your kid decides they want more out of life they are going to suffer because of your idiocy.

I have flown at least 5 times with my son who was born in 2001 and he does not have a bc. I have never been asked for id for him. Though I do agree it would eventually become an issue.

You know, personally, I don't have any problem with having a bc. I'm not an anarchist or anything. Frankly, I'm not understanding what is so difficult to grasp about some people not wanting to be "on file" with their government. It makes perfect sense to me.

I'm not necessarily one of those people, but I don't think it's wierd that people deliberately, and thoughtfully choose to NOT file a bc. We are at a really wierd place in time right now.

That said, the reason my kids don't have them is because it was not easy for me to register my first sons birth. They insisted I must have a doctor or midwife "check out" my son. I refused. I don't allow anyone to handle my babies until 40 days after birth. And even then I'm not too keen on strangers, those with medical credentials or not. We were at a standstill. I let it slide (for quite a while, I admit!) Until just before his first birthday. When I went back, the ONE woman who could register the birth was "off" that day. So, I started the process of filing a delayed bc, when I ran into the info on getting a passport without one.

I dont' think it will be anymore difficult for my kids to file a delayed bc than it would be for me to do it now. So I prefer to leave it up to them and let them make the decision.

We DO plan to live in MT eventually

And having been "legally married" for 11 years, I think it's highly overrated, and intend on telling my children that.

And no, I don't mean I don't like my husband. I mean our marriage certificate doesn't mean diddly when it comes to defining our relationship and whether we are happy/fulfilled/in love etc.

You see, no one can touch her baby until 40 days after the birth. So the doctor can't check her newborn and register a birth certificate. Guess that kid comes glued to her boob and likely so for the next five years.

She doesn't think that it will be all that hard for her kids to get their own delayed birth certificate in the future. So rather than save them the hassle when they are too young to need it for the stuff they want to do she'll just leave it up to them. So when applying for an ID, college, jobs ect... They will be brickwalled by the lack of documentation and it will delay life plans and make a lot of hassle.

Congratulations on making your American born kids like undocumented migrants.

 

[Francis E. Dec Esc.]

I'm surprised nobody has brought up Hathor the Cowgoddess yet.

 

[Crunchy Leaf]

Some of the things listed in the OP are insane like refusing to vaccinate, but there's nothing inherently wrong with stuff like breastfeeding or cloth diapering or no diapering (as long as they can actually train the baby to poop on command, I've never heard of any non-african cultures doing this, only heard of it in a few small places in africa), it's just that a lot of people take it WAY too far.

By far the most painful thing to me about parents not vaccinating their children is that, they would rather risk having a dead child than an autistic child. Autism is worse than death to them. I've known autistic children. They can be difficult but their parents still love them. They can be happy families. It kills me to think of the autistic kids I know and then think that there are people who would risk their kids' lives to make sure that they never had a kid like them.

It's not that breastfeeding or cloth diapering are bad--what makes it bad is when people get preachy about them. Especially breastfeeding. Women will be so incredibly nasty to any woman who dares formula feed her child, even if the child would otherwise starve--not all women make enough m.ilk! And then they act like if you formula feed your child, it will be forever inferior to a breastfed child. What is true is that in a Western country, a woman who can devote two or more years to breastfeeding is probably going to have more economic privilege (housecleaners can't take lots of time out during the day to pump!), and that does correlate with better outcomes.

 

[2_blank_spaces]

Yeah cloth diapers and breast feeding saves money. But if you don't do those things it's like the absolute worst.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

I have no idea where or when I'll ever bring this up, but I guess this can count as crunchy parents. Apparently there may be some people trying to normalize "supersized" newborns and saying that having an obese baby is "beautiful". About like a month or so back I came across this article with a very suspicious title:

"Your Baby Was How Big?! Why Your Supersized Baby Is Perfectly Normal (and Beautiful)"

and immediately I went "HOLY FUCK FAT BABIES ARE NOT NORMAL". Then I looked at the article a bit more, and while I'm certain in the end they're still trying to say "Nah girl, your baby may be fat but there's no worries", they seem to at least be trying to make sense of this sudden epidemic and at least telling expectant mothers to keep track of their weight and their baby's weight and to still get physical check-ups. It's still very cringe-worthy, though, in trying to wave this off as something you shouldn't be thinking too deeply about, even if it may result in an increased risk of destroying your vagina/birth canal pushing out a 13-pound kid when C-sections are perfectly fine and recommended in such cases. Or better yet, watch what you're eating and have regular check-ups to make sure you will have a healthy baby and not Jabba Jr.

Are babies really getting bigger?
It’s not our imaginations that babies have been getting bigger in recent years, and it’s not just that the internet is whipping everyone into a frenzy. According to research, there has been a 15 to 25 percent increase in babies weighing 8 pounds, 13 ounces or more in the past 20 to 30 years in the developed world. This was, as a reminder, my son’s weight at birth — apparently the weight at which babies are considered “oversized” nowadays. The medical term for that is “macrosomia,” but “very big baby” will do in casual conversation.

This is a source of endless fascination for people, though men and women tend to have very different reactions to this phenomenon.

Men hear about it and think, Oh, wow, that’s crazy. And then they move on.

Women, on the other hand, involuntarily shrink inward, break into a cold sweat and think, Dear God, how does that happen? Could that happen to me? Even women who aren’t planning to have more children — or who don’t plan to have any children at all — can’t help but feel extremely empathetic in their lady parts because they’re all too aware that even the biggest baby has to come out somehow. And, well, ouch.

So, exactly how is the baby going to get out?
You might think the moms of these big babies would all need to have C-sections. Indeed, there’s a much greater likelihood of needing one if you have a bigger baby, but, believe it or not, that’s not always the case. Yes, that’s right: A 15-pound baby can be delivered vaginally. That’s how a little (or not-so-little) bundle of joy named George King came into the world in 2013.

Baby George weighed in at 15 pounds, 7 ounces and was reportedly the second-biggest baby ever to be delivered naturally in the United Kingdom. But it was not an easy delivery: His head and shoulders got stuck, and he was without oxygen for five minutes. Doctors — and there were 20 present to assist at his birth, according to the baby’s mother — gave him only a 10 percent chance of survival. But he defied the odds and not only survived but ended up leaving the hospital healthy a month later.

But that’s where things can get scary with supersized babies. One of the big risks when delivering a baby with macrosomia is a condition called shoulder dystocia, where the shoulders can get stuck behind the mother’s pubic bone. Doctors can solve this issue more easily when delivering smaller babies, but it can be much more difficult with larger children. It can lead to a dislocation of the baby’s shoulder or, more commonly, a fracture of the baby’s clavicle (collar bone), as well as cause tearing or pelvic-floor damage for the mother.

But to leave this on a happy, less frightening note: Large babies can absolutely be delivered safely. Earlier this year, an Australian mom gave birth naturally — with only laughing gas to ease the pain of labor — to a13.4-pound baby boy without any complications, aside from not being able to fit into any of his newborn clothes, that is.

For reference, I just took a quick look at some of the writers behind this Healthline site:

There's medical advisors and reviewers, but far as I know they don't do the actual writing.

In fact, I have to question if a lot of these parents follow these kinds of ego-stroking blog-sites, sure seems like it.

 

[Crunchy Leaf]

A heavy baby is fine if it's a correspondingly long baby, which is normal if both parents are very tall. But the average height in Western countries has gone up maybe half an inch in the past 30 years, so...

Parents of fat kids could be their own sad thread.

 

[ToMyMaster]

This is so creepy.

 

[SJ 485]

This is so creepy.

The virgin bottle-fed urchin, the chad breastfed cherub

 

[Okkervils]

I know I'm bumping an old thread but I had to share this somewhere.

 

[Crunchy Leaf]

Barefoot weirdos could get their own thread too.

 

[Gingervitis]

Why isnt this in Community Watch instead of here?

 

[NimertiS]

I just can't get it. We live in a wild timeline. My mother was born to her parents' house, in a small island in the Aegean BUT the person who delivered her, was the MAYOR and he was a gynecologist and he had with him also a midwife to prepare the birth.
Also, they weren't that crazy about breastmilk? Even in the 1960's they had formula or remedies to substitute milk if the mother couldn't give the baby some tard cum by herself.
It's not unique or special what they do now, it's some steps backwards.

 

[Okkervils]

These people should lose their kids.

 

[snuffleupagus]

Yeah I was ridiculously crunchy when my kids were little but it was always tempered with moderation.

When my oldest got a fever that spiked out of nowhere up to 105.7. It was a do not pass go, do not collect $200 moment and I took him to the ER.

I caught flak from some of the crunchy friends I had, but fuck that shit. No amount of breast.milk or sugar pills was going to bring that down and I didn’t want him brain damaged just because I was freebasing the woo.

Turns out he had roseola, a common illness but sometimes accompanied by a scary high fever. Some of the cuckoos in my crunchy mom group wanted me to throw a fucking roseola party so their kids would get it and have immunity. I declined and set up the quarantine flag.