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You're Doing it Wrong!: Mothering, Media, and Medical Expertise
New mothers face a barrage of confounding decisions during the life-cycle of early motherhood which includes... Should they change their diet or mindset to conceive? Exercise while pregnant? Should they opt for a home birth or head for a hospital? Whatever they “choose,” they will be sure to find plenty of medical expertise from health practitioners to social media “influencers” telling them that they’re making a series of mistakes. As intersectional feminists with two small children each, Bethany L. Johnson and Margaret M. Quinlan draw from their own experiences as well as stories from a range of caretakers throughout. You’re Doing it Wrong! investigates the storied history of mothering advice in the media, from the newspapers, magazines, doctors’ records and personal papers of the nineteenth-century to today’s websites, Facebook groups, and Instagram feeds. Johnson and Quinlan find surprising parallels between today’s mothering experts and their Victorian counterparts, but they also explore how social media has placed unprecedented pressures on new mothers, even while it may function as social support for some. They further examine the contentious construction of prenatal and baby care expertise itself, as individuals such as everyone from medical professionals to experienced moms have competed to have their expertise acknowledged in the public sphere. Exploring potential health crises from infertility treatments to “better babies” milestones, You’re Doing it Wrong! provides a provocative look at historical and contemporary medical expertise during conception, pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum, and infant care stages.
261 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 19, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 16, 2020
Anyone who has had a baby in the social media age knows how difficult successfully traversing the social-media landscape is. Fringe groups are given equal (or maybe even greater) voice compared to established medical voices. As the authors chronicle well, technical and lay experts have their voices intermixed so that the distinction between the two seems somewhat arbitrary. Johnson and Quinlan share that this blurring process started a long time ago but has been amplified by recent technology. Medical experts are sometimes more quiet on social media because of their economic interests. (They prefer people to pay for their expertise instead of dishing it out freely on Internet chat.) Combining their own technical and lay expertise, the authors hope to provide us with a greater understanding of how this process happens.
Although I am an engaged father and not a mother, I can relate to the difficulty of receiving diverse advice on parenting in today’s world. In reading this book, I also possess the advantage of medical training, which allows me to empathize with being what the authors call a “technical expert” on issues addressed in this book. As such, I found myself very interested in the sociological observations and critiques in this book. They address how mothering and parenting have changed in the last 150 years – especially in light of social media.
The chapters on postpartum care and maternal grief are particularly enlightening. Social media has seemingly elucidated how the American medical system is ill-poised to meet postpartum needs of mothers – especially mothers at the margins. In addition, the social mores about how grief should be expressed in public have yet to be defined on social media. Some advocate a more silent and stoic ethic while others are more comfortable with an open view into the chaos associated with loss.
Overall, Johnson and Quinlan expose interesting issues associated with contemporary social media use and mothering. When starting to peruse this book, I expected a long dissertation on vaccine misinformation. The authors almost entirely eschewed this topic; instead, they addressed in critical detail a host of difficult issues in mothering and parenting in general – difficult issues that are in flux in contemporary society. The approach of tracking these issues over history worked well as the reader captures a sense of trajectory and movement over time of these issues.
This book is well-suited for a diverse group of audiences. Those involved in the healthcare of birth and young children (“technical experts”) can benefit from the sociology contained here. Parents can benefit from a slowed-down critique of all that is going on around them. Those who are “lay experts” can also benefit from understanding a bigger picture of all that is transpiring in this drama. Finally, those who are acquaintances of mothers/parents of young children can also learn how to be more informed friends.
Although I am an engaged father and not a mother, I can relate to the difficulty of receiving diverse advice on parenting in today’s world. In reading this book, I also possess the advantage of medical training, which allows me to empathize with being what the authors call a “technical expert” on issues addressed in this book. As such, I found myself very interested in the sociological observations and critiques in this book. They address how mothering and parenting have changed in the last 150 years – especially in light of social media.
The chapters on postpartum care and maternal grief are particularly enlightening. Social media has seemingly elucidated how the American medical system is ill-poised to meet postpartum needs of mothers – especially mothers at the margins. In addition, the social mores about how grief should be expressed in public have yet to be defined on social media. Some advocate a more silent and stoic ethic while others are more comfortable with an open view into the chaos associated with loss.
Overall, Johnson and Quinlan expose interesting issues associated with contemporary social media use and mothering. When starting to peruse this book, I expected a long dissertation on vaccine misinformation. The authors almost entirely eschewed this topic; instead, they addressed in critical detail a host of difficult issues in mothering and parenting in general – difficult issues that are in flux in contemporary society. The approach of tracking these issues over history worked well as the reader captures a sense of trajectory and movement over time of these issues.
This book is well-suited for a diverse group of audiences. Those involved in the healthcare of birth and young children (“technical experts”) can benefit from the sociology contained here. Parents can benefit from a slowed-down critique of all that is going on around them. Those who are “lay experts” can also benefit from understanding a bigger picture of all that is transpiring in this drama. Finally, those who are acquaintances of mothers/parents of young children can also learn how to be more informed friends.
May 29, 2020
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If there’s one thing that unites us in motherhood it’s that constant nagging in our heads that somehow we’re doing it wrong. With unsolicited and often conflicting advice coming from our parents, friends, doctors, the media, and online groups it’s easy to feel like every parenting decision we’re faced with is being judged. In their book You’re Doing it Wrong!, Johnson and Quinlan define technical experts vs laypeople and explore how the social construct of the “perfect mother” presented itself in the Victorian era up to the present day. This isn’t a parenting book that sets out to give you advice like you might expect, but rather a history of medical expertise and a study in communication (including a look at more modern forms of communication like through social media). The book is divided into 5 main sections: conception, pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum, and infant care stages.
This book is the perfect marriage of research, personal experiences, and interviews. It is well-written, thoughtful, relatable, and most importantly — enjoyable to read! I appreciated how inclusive the writing is. Johnson and Quinlan cover everyone from gender-nonconforming and transgender mothers to aunts and mother figures without biological children of their own.
I was particularly struck by the discussion on “better babies” and how early contests led to pageants and then milestones tracked for the world to see on Instagram. This was such an interesting book to read during the time of a global pandemic because the choices we make for our families during this time add another layer of scrutiny (to wear a mask in public or not, to social distance or keep playdates on schedule, ad nauseum). It made me stop to think about the advice I give and the unsolicited advice I receive. Reading the book also made me more mindful of instances where I’ve judged someone else for the parenting decisions they’ve made.
I wish I read this book before I got pregnant. It’s one I would definitely recommend to anyone who is considering motherhood or even knows someone who is!
If there’s one thing that unites us in motherhood it’s that constant nagging in our heads that somehow we’re doing it wrong. With unsolicited and often conflicting advice coming from our parents, friends, doctors, the media, and online groups it’s easy to feel like every parenting decision we’re faced with is being judged. In their book You’re Doing it Wrong!, Johnson and Quinlan define technical experts vs laypeople and explore how the social construct of the “perfect mother” presented itself in the Victorian era up to the present day. This isn’t a parenting book that sets out to give you advice like you might expect, but rather a history of medical expertise and a study in communication (including a look at more modern forms of communication like through social media). The book is divided into 5 main sections: conception, pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum, and infant care stages.
This book is the perfect marriage of research, personal experiences, and interviews. It is well-written, thoughtful, relatable, and most importantly — enjoyable to read! I appreciated how inclusive the writing is. Johnson and Quinlan cover everyone from gender-nonconforming and transgender mothers to aunts and mother figures without biological children of their own.
I was particularly struck by the discussion on “better babies” and how early contests led to pageants and then milestones tracked for the world to see on Instagram. This was such an interesting book to read during the time of a global pandemic because the choices we make for our families during this time add another layer of scrutiny (to wear a mask in public or not, to social distance or keep playdates on schedule, ad nauseum). It made me stop to think about the advice I give and the unsolicited advice I receive. Reading the book also made me more mindful of instances where I’ve judged someone else for the parenting decisions they’ve made.
I wish I read this book before I got pregnant. It’s one I would definitely recommend to anyone who is considering motherhood or even knows someone who is!
February 10, 2022
very interesting perspective. Well-researched and comprehensive, yet the writing /formatting is not friendly for the general public with all the citations squeezed in texts.
July 5, 2019
Motherhood! Not easy, especially as everyone seems to have an opinion about how it should go, from how to get pregnant onwards. “You’re Doing It Wrong!” defies standard categorization- it’s part history, part communications study, and part relating the personal experiences of the two writers, both of whom are mothers of young children. It ranges from the mid-19th century until our own period of online expertise and social media to discuss how people think about various stages of early motherhood. Surprise surprise- as the title implies, from then until now, on every conceivable issue, experts believe that mothers are doing it wrong, and issue welters of contradictory advice. I had no idea how controversial cold cuts for expectant mothers were before this book! Moreover, Johnson and Quinlan illustrate the ways different categories of expert — from medical professionals to people with opinions — shade into each other, tread on each other’s territory, dispense similar (and similarly muddled) advice, etc. This was just as true in the days of patent medicine as it is today in our time of social media, which amplifies every dynamic the writers discuss. All in all, an interesting and methodologically novel read in a subject I don’t know well. ****’
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews