Why Have Kids?: A New Mom Explores the Truth About Parenting and Happiness by Jessica Valenti

Author:Jessica Valenti [Valenti, Jessica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AmazonEncore
Published: 2012-09-04T04:00:00+00:00

THE SICK SENSE

When Jenny McCarthy came on to the anti-vaccination/parenting scene, everything changed. The former Playboy bunny turned nineties MTV personality turned anti-vaccination superstar has used the idea of women’s intuition to completely change the landscape of the way parents think about caring for their kids.

McCarthy caused a huge spike in the mainstreaming of anti-vaccination thought after she started publicly writing and talking about her son’s autism—which she believed was caused by the MMR vaccination. She’s written eight books, appeared on Oprah to tell her story, and is now the president of Generation Rescue, an organization that claims to help parents “cure” their children of autism.

When McCarthy’s son, Evan, was diagnosed with autism in 2005, McCarthy says that after the initial shock, she “got up, went to the computer and Googled the word ‘autism.’” She claims that a year after putting Evan on a special diet, giving him particular vitamins, and changing his home environment, he was “un-diagnosed” as autistic. (Experts have since suggested that Evan never had autism, but in fact likely has Landau-Kleffner syndrome, a childhood neurological disorder that can have similar symptoms to autism.)

McCarthy’s story is incredibly compelling and she’s a perfect spokesperson for any cause: likable, beautiful, and comes with a built-in platform. While there’s no doubt that McCarthy’s star power lent credibility to this fringe movement, what really makes McCarthy so gripping to so many parents—especially mothers—is something much bigger. She’s tapped into the one thing that so many American moms are looking for: validation. That their knowledge means something.

When McCarthy was confronted with a statement from the CDC during her 2007 Oprah appearance that pointed out the overwhelming scientific evidence against her, her response perfectly captured the sentiment of moms across the country: “My science is Evan. He’s at home. That’s my science.”

So for a generation of parents—mothers especially—who are extremely uncomfortable with not feeling in control and increasingly more interested in trusting their own knowledge over experts, the anti-vaccination movement is perfect.

When a cause comes along that says: You do the research, trust yourself, Big Pharma is trying to get one over on you, that’s a very seductive message to a population that is sick and tired of not being respected. That’s why, in part, women tend to be more anti-vaccination than men. They’re more vocal not only because they tend to be the ones that are making decisions about children, but they’re also the ones who are more invested in the idea of their own knowledge as expertise.

“They do their research—and it’s not that they’re stupid, they find this information on alternative medical sites. The joke, and it was coined by McCarthy, is that they go to the University of Google,” says Anders.

One problem with researching autism or vaccines on the Internet is that without a specific kind of expertise or context, it’s easy to get caught up in false information. Anders points out that when you type “vaccine” into Google, the first hits aren’t science based. “They’re anti-vaccine sites that skew the data and terrify people,” she says.

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