Shame, Compensation Culture, Parenting and Facebook Nonsense

                                     Modern Thinking

Shame

In Disgrace, 

Charles Burton Barber (1845-1894)

Photo Credit: Lytham Art Collection of Fylde Borough Council
[CC BY-NC-ND] 

…It’s a funny thing, this business of shame. It seemed to be part and parcel of life when I was growing up. If you did something that was wrong you might or might not have been punished, but you were certainly made to feel ashamed about it. That was part of the punishment.

…Nowadays if it’s shocking enough the culprit will get offered his own chat show on television.

(John Humphrys, Devil’s Advocate)

You were given a set of moral values when you were a child. You were taught the difference between right and wrong and when you transgressed, as we all do, sometimes shame followed. Now, it’s a strange old world where, perhaps, the same values are not transmitted.

Compensation Culture

Waiting for the Verdict, 

Abraham Solomon (1824-1862)

Photo Credit:Tate [CC BY-NC-ND]

…

Over the past ten years, there has been a huge growth in what might be called “the compensation culture.” There is the expectation that, if anything goes wrong, then somebody is to blame and will provide compensation.

…If you are a victim it is because someone or something is to blame for the predicament you find yourself in. It is our readiness to blame anyone or anything outside us that is the surest sign of our growing addiction to victim status. “Ah, I see,” a droll friend of mine said, when I was talking to him about all this, “so you blame the blame culture.”

(John Humphrys, Devil’s Advocate)

Where there’s blame there’s a claim. Don't accidents happen any more with no one at fault?

Post Birth  

Kiss Me, Baby, 

Frederick James Shields (1833-1911)

Photo Credit: Manchester Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-ND]

…These strange days post-birth when day and night blur into one drowsy amorphous mass, are discombobulating for new mothers and their partners. It is stressful, exhausting, sweaty, grimy, tearful, awe-inspiring, wonderful and awful. It’s a body-shock – and no amount of wealth or privilege can protect you from that. The best way to get through it all is to go to bed, feed the baby, rest and quietly start getting to know the new member of the family.

The problem is that our parenting culture seems to demand the opposite. OK, very few ordinary women are expected to meet the paparazzi with a groomed face and gleaming barnet shortly after birth, but you don’t have to be a member of the Royal Household to feel the pressure to post polished Instagram and Facebook updates with cute “welcome” pictures and detailed birth stories, to share names, weights and first outfits; even to play host, welcoming guests into the home to meet the new arrival.

(Hannah Fearn, The i, 2019)

The problem is nothing to do with parenting culture. It is to do with the perceived need to post “polished Instagram and Facebook updates” concerning the birth of a child. You don’t need to do it so don’t.

                   Three days later.

I couldn’t agree more with Hannah Fearn’s item on childbirth and its aftermath, (i,12 April)

As a GP who ran a clinic seeing new mothers, and having visited many at home in the immediate postnatal period, I tried to give the same messages regarding the need to forget the outside world, forget appearances, get to know the baby, and focus only on the very nearest and dearest.

Most of all, forget social media and try to keep off phones.

I see so many new mothers walking in the street with baby being pushed with one hand and ignored, while the phone is in the other. This small rectangular device has become massively addictive in a short space of time, dominating the lives of many and changing our social behaviour, sleep patterns, mental health, concentration and learning abilities as well as other vital skills such as parenting.

(Eileen Berridge, Nethercote, Rugby, The i, 2019)

                             A breath of fresh air, Dr Berridge.