Monday, November 24, 2008

Feedback Results

Thanks for all the feedback, readers.

I appreciated knowing that there was indeed an audience for my pregnancy-related fat-acceptance/HAES writing. I had been wondering if people felt the blog was a little too one-note and needed diversifying, but glad to know people are appreciating the unique niche I've carved out. Rest assured, I plan to keep writing extensively about pregnancy-related topics.

I do still plan to write also about general FA stuff; I have too many thoughts about fatness in the media and size bias in general to ignore. I've been so busy for so many years writing about pregnancy and birth and FA/HAES that I've had to suppress many of my other ruminations, and some of those are just bursting to get out. I'll also write about general medical stuff for fat folk, general birth stuff and birth politics, and maybe even the occasional fluff or cute kid/pet story.

One thing that was requested a lot that I hadn't gotten around to quite yet was to write more about fat parenting....that is, parenting as a fat person. Rest assured, that was definitely on my to-do list. It's a topic much on my mind as the fat mother of four kids who may or may not turn out to be fat also.

However, I have so much to say on the topic that I've had trouble dividing it up into smaller, more digestible bits. I need to narrow my focus and take things a little bit at a time.

So my question to you all is this: As a fat parent (or a future fat parent), what are your strongest concerns? What are you most worried about? What do you most want to hear about?


Of course, the focus doesn't have to be negative either. So I'd also ask....What has surprised you most about parenting as a fat person? What would you most want to share with other fat parents to help them, reassure them, and inspire them in their future parenting?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think this is a fantastic topic and will enjoy hearing your thoughts...

As a fat parent, I am always and forever paranoid that people will look at my son and think that, because I'm fat and "must" be an unhealthy eater, that I'm teaching him to eat unhealthily too. When he was an infant and moved up his weight percentile at all (even though he never went above the 50th centile and was a VERY skinny newborn) I was paranoid someone was going to tell me that he was getting fat. They never did (I wonder, sometimes, if that's because I was in the UK rather than the US at the time?)

I also worry that my son will pick up on my disordered eating and struggle very hard to model healthy behaviors for him (ie, not calling foods "good" or "bad", allowing him treats in moderation, etc.) I am always, always worried that he will end up fat like me and have to face the jeering and ostracization that I felt so keenly as a preteen and teenager.

Anonymous said...

I love breastfeeding, natural birth, attachment parenting from a fat POV, personally.