*sigh*

[rivka]

Someone just came onto a message board I read, seeking guidance for a friend. Her friend, who is in her early 40s, just had a miscarriage when she was four weeks (i.e., just barely) pregnant and wants to try again. The poster is looking for a list of recommendations she can give her friend about ways to change her diet and do healthier things so she can prevent future miscarriages.

Here's my Public Service Announcement:

Don't ever do this.

No matter how well-meaning you are - and this woman seems to be very well-meaning - there is no loving way to say, "I figure that you probably killed your last baby. Please straighten up so you don't kill the next one, too."

Especially when you are probably wrong. The vast majority of miscarriages, especially early ones, are caused by profound chromosomal or genetic abnormalities in the embryo. That's even more likely for miscarriages in women over 40. Unless your friend is a crack addict, or something, the odds are overwhelmingly high that she didn't do anything to cause her miscarriage and won't be able to do anything to prevent another. Conception and embryo formation are high-error activities.

I know this woman doesn't mean to imply that the previous miscarriage was her friend's fault. But she's skating reeeeeal close to that, and vulnerable grieving people are awfully susceptible to guilt. It's just... yikes. Just don't.

Comments

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

Awful, yes.

Also part of the basic American psyche/value system, which has a lot of the "bad things that happen to you are because you weren't perfect" mentality in it. This kind of behavior is on a par with how we use "good attitudes help cure cancer" (which may be true, but is still used as a club to beat people who are scared and/or angry), the Kubler-Ross phases of dying ("Why haven't you gotten to acceptance yet?") and much more.

Thanks for calling it out; discussing these things matters.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Yes. Psychologists call it the "just world" hypothesis. A lot of people are unconsciously driven by it, probably as a protective thing. If bad things happen because of something the victim did, then I don't need to worry that bad things will happen to me.

From other things this woman said in her post, it looks as though she's trying to conceive. So she probably has a lot invested in the idea that miscarriages are preventable.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

Exactly! Thanks for giving me a name for it.

Privately, I call it the "Linda McCartney phenomenon" because of the level of "she did everything right!" outrage when she died of breast cancer.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

YES. Americans are particularly bad about this. Britons will say "Oh, bad luck" when an American is trying to say "You could have prevented this." Note that when an obituary says "She died of lung cancer", they are always careful to say "even though she was a lifelong non-smoker", if it's true. "LUNG CANCER WAS NOT MY FAULT. REALLY." Ditto heart attacks and exercise.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

I can't count the number of times we had the conversation of "My father had another heart attack." "Why? Did he start smoking again / did your mother drag him around to too many meetings?/ Did he go off that diet?"

And when my sister-in-law was dying far too young of lung cancer, people who didn't even know her wanted to know about her risk factors before they even said it was awful.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

People in our church kept telling Mother that she got cancer because she didn't have enough faith in god. So I was prepared when I got sick, and got similar. Fortunately, I don't believe in gods, but it's still pretty annoying to be told you made yourself sick when you didn't.