The Ironic Suckiness of the Anti-Suck Supernanny

I have watched episodes of Supernanny on television before, with that sort of horrified exhaustion with which one sometimes watches a bad TV show in disgusted fascination. I have never liked the woman. Her condescension to parents bothers me a great deal. Her reliance on 'techniques" is the antithesis of what I consider good, connected parenting to be. Her anti- co-sleeping, cry-it-out stance often seems abusive to me and never seems good. About the only decent thing I could say about her is that she does not condone corporal punishment. Last night, I actually watched an episode on purpose because I caught promos implying that she would be weighing in on toddler breastfeeding. It was even worse than I expected.

On the program, a mother was nursing a strongly and securely attached fourteen-month-old who slept with her parents and wanted to be carried most of the time. It should be pointed out that while the biologically appropriate age range for weaning is 2.5 to 6 years, if you care about science, during which time a child ready to wean will wean itself with no need for any sort of technique at all, very few American or British children are nursed anywhere nearly as long as 14 months, due to cultural prejudices that make it hard for women to even consider nursing for the span that would allow for optimal health and development. The mother in question ought to have been applauded and supported for making a choice, unusual in our culture, that was so good for her child. She wasn't, though.

Supernanny was very, very careful not to directly knock breastfeeding, in an attempt - no doubt- to prevent the Web from lighting up with this sort of post. She carefully insisted that continuing to breastfeed or not was entirely the mother's choice and that she would help the mother with the "problem behaviors" she, the Supernanny, had identified - nursing to sleep, nursing a lot, wanting to be carried all the time, co-sleeping - either way. She was, however, the one who brought up the fact that the mother was still breastfeeding, who said that the child and mom were using each other as a "pacifier" (like that's a bad thing) and who implied that the mom was only still nursing for emotional reasons and that there might be something wrong with that. She was careful to put on a more respectful front than I have ever seen her use, but all of her careful wording led in the same direction. Anyone who has ever nursed a toddler knows that the behaviors the Supernanny saw as problems are part and parcel of the breastfeeding relationship and, while individual families will adjust on what they need to adjust, most folks are not going to be nursing for the long haul unless that sort of co-sleeping, babywearing culture exists in the family. It is just the way most young one-year-olds are when they are allowed to develop on their own timetables and not the hurtful timetable of the me-first Western culture.

Naturally, mom decided to wean and to get the baby out of her bed. Supernanny graciously helped her, of course, and the woman was appropriately grateful. The help involved bottles of cow milk and crying it out in bed and then crib. A rare mother, doing what was best for her child in a culture that makes such actions almost impossible, talked out of it and made to feel happy about becoming another cog in the machine. Sad, sad, sad. Big thorns for Supernanny...what a royal bitch.