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.
You’re Doing It Wrong!: Mothering, Media, and Medical Expertise
By Bethany L. Johnson and Margaret M. Quinlan
Copyright (c) 2019
Rutgers University Press
ISBN13 9780813593784
eBook
Genre: Sociology, Anthropology
www.amazon.com