Long Live the Nanny

 Breast Feeding Pharisaism

When people deny the righteousness of God they don't necessarily descend into rampant licentiousness.  What they more often do is substitute their own rules and regulations and claim divine prerogatives for them.  They want their rules to be elevated to the state of infallibility and inerrancy.  A new Pharisaism emerges.  Welcome to the wonderful world of the nanny state.  

Here is an example of the type.  Breast feeding is morally pure.  Bottle feeding is evil.  According to Stuff one mother, Jess Schulz who had trouble breast feeding and whose baby was losing weight eventually went to bottle feeding. 

While family supported her decision to bottle-feed, some strangers were not so accepting. One woman told her “if you can't feed your child you shouldn't breed”, while another called formula "evil".

Right.  So let's just let this baby starve while we have a tubal ligation to prevent any further moral monstrosities, shall we?


The new Pharisaism comes from the axis of orthodoxy--the public hospitals, Ministry of Health "guidelines" and NGO's such as Plunket and La Leche League.  If you can't breast feed you are useless.  Going to bottle feeding is damaging to your child, and so on and so forth.  It's a wonder Tariana Turia, leader of the Maori Party is not in there as well.  Oh, wait. She is.  

Meanwhile, one must not violate the laws of Gaia or whatever other false deity is called upon.

Wellington mum Amy, who could not breast-feed because her milk never came in, said no-one informed her about formula during pregnancy.  “It makes me so mad because so many people have these issues and when it happens there's no support. The amount of guilt about my decision was huge.

"I'm still trying to figure out why I felt so guilty about it. If I didn't bottle-feed her she would have starved to death.”  Some hospital staff were “brutal” in promoting breastfeeding. “All I got was ‘you could breast feed if you tried harder'. Actually, I physically couldn't do it.”

 A generation which thinks the law of God is too harsh will quickly find themselves subject to the laws of man--with all their capricious cruelty.