As if there wasn’t more to the world of parenting, that we need to honestly keep trying to divide parents further and further apart, let’s create some mind blowing terms to continue to widen the crack.
You may be wondering what is a crunchy mom? In simple terms according to Google “A crunchy mom is a mother or female caregiver who practices a natural lifestyle and parenting style that avoids modern medicine, technology, and processed foods.”. Sounds kind of harmless I guess? Until you see they are opposed to life-saving vaccines that have decades of research and science behind them, they support home births which have an abundance of issues. I even talk about that here. And chooses holistic medicines over medical interventions. Again ignoring the years of science that has proven modern medicine is just needed in situations sometimes. Funny enough while learning this, they use the name crunchy in reference to granola. And for the opposite type of mother they call them “Silky” moms, who are all for modern devices, technology, and don’t care about organic.
Let me paint you a picture, and yes this really happened in a baby group I run for one of the years my kids were born. A mother had posted that they were looking for solutions. Their child appeared to have an ear ache or infection. They had the signs such as irritability, rubbing ear, broken sleep, etc. They were asking for holistic resources because they read that pouring garlic oil in their ear makes it go away. Keep in mind, people had immediately suggested that the child be seen by a doctor because in children so young, an ear infection left untreated can cause serious and irreversible damage. In comments to other parents they specifically stated they did not want to bring their child to the doctor because they had been on antibiotics once previously after being a few months old and they would not be putting them on it again. And then declining they would bring their child to the doctor. And then on the same post you also seen a few other “crunchy” moms suggesting bogus claims that something “worked” for their child. While theirs maybe didn’t have a full blown infection as the original crunchy mom had claimed due to the signs their child wad spread showing.
Now if I need to explain why this is bad, you either aren’t a parent or are a nut case. While I don’t think holistic medicine is always hog wash, I do think there is very specific situation where you should seek a trained, medical professional. In this it was a major concern due to the child being so young and already showing signs of infection that the holistic stuff may not even work (if it would to begin with) and that medical interventions were likely needed. Let me blunt here also, if a child is in need of medical interventions, and a parent prolongs that knowing they need medicine, I believe that’s child abuse. Period. There is no other way around it. So while this mother perhaps didn’t want to go a medical route them denying it to their child wasn’t providing then with proper care.
Other Ideologies that comes with crunchy moms is they believe in home births. I won’t go into too much depth because I do it here in this blog, but if someone is in a 3rd world country or something, obviously home births happen. Hell, even car births have been known to surprise even the most prepared people. But if someone is in a developed country and chooses a home birth over one with medical aids, if something happens to this baby, I’m sorry but I also believe the parent should have some liability to the injured (or worse) child because they choose to do this without the care proven to save lives. And while the first two I mentioned are extreme, there are other ideas they try to encourage that aren’t necessarily bad, unless maybe to another extreme. They try to be all natural, sometimes have their children home schooled, and then recycle etc. Which in hind sight isn’t bad. Limiting technology also is used in defining a crunchy mom which, let’s be real, sticking to no technology hasn’t ever killed a child. And if you are a crunchy mom reading this, by chance, just know that you aren’t a bad parent if your kid watched 30 minutes of a TV show for you to grab a quick shower. And if you didn’t buy your all organic veggies this week if they weren’t available that too is okay. Parenting is a balance and you can grab different Ideologies from many avenues and also use them for your parenting style!
I also have encountered that it appears crunchy moms are normally self proclaimed. You don’t need to label them as they already do themselves. Which, yay, great to be proud *insert eye roll* but when you are boasting about preventing your child from say a vaccine to a nearly irradiated diseases I don’t think anyone would be proud of that. It also is alarming because this type of parent has a cult like following. Groups who literally support toxic behaviors and unsafe parenting. It’s like when they see one person speak they suddenly have the confidence to also speak up while at the same time making it appear they have many more people supporting these harmful at times and delusional ways of thinking.
Like any parenting, there is extreme parts to all. But I think what makes crunchy moms or parents especially toxic is they will refuse medical interventions for holistic. If holistic ones worked, we wouldn’t need medical. And sometimes that’s just needed because modern medicine has saved countless lives. It’s not an accident I’d medicine cured people, it’s literally science.
Stacey J. Girard 