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If these women are white, relatively affluent mothers over 30, I’d say that the natural birth/mothering movement likely has something to do with it. 1/ https://twitter.com/jeffsharlet/status/1296153955794325505
Shortly after 2008, romantic ideas of natural food, natural birth, natural medicine etc started becoming more mainstream. http://Mothering.com and similar message boards also became and increasingly popular social outlet for isolated new mothers.
Lots of Michael Pollan, Ina May Gaskin, Rikki Lake, Weston A Price/Sally Fallon Morel, GAPS diet, anti vaccines, attempted homesteading and unschooling.
Weston Price was a dentist from Ohio who travelled the world in the 1920’s and 30’s studying “primitive” people and diets. He became convinced that most health problems in modern societies were due to excess sugar and pasteurization and lack of fermented foods and animal fats.
Sally Fallon popularized his work in her cookbook, Nourishing Traditions.
If you’ve bought kombucha in a store in the last ten years, it’s because of Sally Fallon, basically.
(This will come back around to QAnon)
(This will come back around to QAnon)
This also fueled the enthusiasm for raw milk from grass fed cattle among homesteading types.
Now, not everyone went all in for raw milk and fermenting their own veggies, but the idea that official nutrition guidelines can’t be trusted became quite common in mommy groups
This of course extended to vaccine skepticism and the proliferation of monetized mommy blogs that explained why they chose not to vaccinate and how they were using products from their affiliate links to provide optimal support for their kids’ immune and gut health.
Strangely enough, the Real Food blogosphere kept finding more impurities and advertising more products to combat them....
Fermented sourdough isn’t enough! It really needs to be made with heirloom grains that haven’t been tainted by modern hybrids, since those are (obviously????) more toxic. “BUY MY EINKORN AND HAND-GRINDER! An essential part of Waldorf home schooling!”
Because all those so called experts are really just trying to cram your kids into a school full of toxic food and toxic cleaning supplies and toxic beliefs and wouldn’t you rather just stick with the Nazi clairvoyant with all the nice gnomes and beeswax crayons?
That Nazi clairvoyant was Rudolf Steiner, whose totally untested farming theories are as anti-Semitic as his philosophy of education! Yay! Waldorf toys looks dope as hell on Instagram though. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/behind-the-bastards/id1373812661?i=1000451014433
It also goes without saying that for people in this deep, listening to doctors’ advice about pregnancy and birth is a total non starter. As Rikki Lake argued in the wildly popular “Business of Being Born” docs are more interested in pushing convenient, profitable C sections on
Unsuspecting women than they are in helping you to “trust birth”. (Yes that’s a natural birth community slogan, yes there is merch.)
Any Tuteur has a great book about the natural birth movement and its social context.
Emily Matchar’s Homeward Bound is also really good!
Again, NOT everyone got invested in anti establishment natural living to the same degree or even at all.
But enough influential people DID, that a deep distrust of mainstream experts became increasingly common and accepted.
The rich women in these natural circles run wellness retreats and buy jade eggs, the poor ones make cloth diapers out of rags and hand wash them for internet challenges. (Sic)
Why are women more into this stuff than men, by and large?
Women are more likely to quit their jobs to stay home with kids. Women are traditionally under more pressure to parent “correctly” and to take the lead on children’s’ feeding and education.
Women who are home with small children are often extremely isolated and anxious and understandably find a lot of solace in virtual communities. Unfortunately these can become insular conspiracy incubators pretty easily due to self selection.
And honestly, if the only person you see in real life most days is a baby or toddler, it feels REALLY GOOD to use your brain to dig into the dietary history of different groups.
When you feel cut off from society and invisible and devalued, it feels REALLY GOOD to hear someone tell you how great and crucial it is for you to be with your kids and cook from scratch. You’re encouraged to develop practical skills and people respect you when you share them.
If you get in early enough, you might even manage to get a pretty decent monetized blog out of it!
Some of the main characteristics of most intense natural mothering types are 1) distrust of mainstream authorities, ESPECIALLY when it comes to children 2) extremely online 3) very anxious, especially about children, 4) very interested in internet sleuthing.
So. Yeah. Pretty solid target demographic for Q anon. I’ve noticed a high correlation between QAnon sex trafficking posts and anti vax/anti mask/anti CDC posts.
If you’re interested in intensive internet mothering, American individualism, and the actual history of baby poop, you might also like this thread: https://twitter.com/pamina_q/status/1069969766901825537
