HarrietJ over at Fugitivus is someone I read regularly. She’s got a lot of really insightful things to say that can be reapplied directly into my life. In her post Oh Right, I have a Blog She talks about adoption advocacy and says -
And when you’re employed in the adoption field, unless you’re employed by advocates for adoptee rights, your new boundaries include a lot of soft-talking, a lot of nonjudgment, a lot of hair-smoothing and back-patting and therapist-smile. Which is perfectly legitimate in most contexts; if you’ve set up shop in a place where people go to get help, the least productive thing ever would be to scare off the people who need help, even if they legitimately need to be scared. And the people who need help the most are usually also the biggest assholes, either because needing help for so long has put them in a rotten mood, or because they were arrogant and ignorant and that’s what got them in over their heads in the first place. The people who have their shit together? The people who could hear a difficult thing, unsugarcoated? They don’t need you.
And that my friends, in WAY fewer words than I will ever be able to string together is why I get frustrated when I see articles, blog posts, and comments that either explicitly state or soft-pedal around the statement “You should feel guilty for not breastfeeding”.
BONKing a mom on the head with my opinion (while it may feel reeeally good when I say it and may have the additional benefit of being true) is often the best way to lose my audience and create problems for myself and others who encounter that person later on. As Harriet said (because DANG – this is so good it needs repeating), “if you’ve set up shop in a place where people go to get help, the least productive thing ever would be to scare off the people who need help, even if they legitimately need to be scared. <snip> The people who have their shit together? The people who could hear a difficult thing, unsugarcoated? They don’t need you.”
