On Gary Ezzo and Babywise

There are a couple of things that have made me want to write about Mr. Gary Ezzo.  The first is is derived from Matt on Survivor: Redemption Island.  Matt will likely go down as the worst player in Survivor history.  He seems to be a likeable enough guy, is certainly intelligent (Pre-med student) but his religious convictions and insistence in putting his fate into the hands of a higher power lead him from stupidity to stupidity.  He is a perfect example of what happens to good people when they abandon logic and common sense in favour of the freedom to not think as encouraged by extremest forms of religion.

The second came as a result of Ken Gallinger's most recent ethics column in The Star.  The relevant section being:

Where the notion of sacrifice goes bad — very, very bad — in Christianity is when people start to believe that Jesus died to mollify an angry God, a deity so vicious “he” would wipe out every sinner on earth unless his anger was sated by the death of an innocent victim. This idea, such as it is, was introduced by the church long after Jesus died. It was then refined until it became a sharp and dangerous instrument for inducing gratitude, then obedience, from the faithful. It’s an idea that would have horrified Jesus, as it should horrify us. Such a god, so hopelessly out of control that he requires the death of one child before he can deal with the wrongdoings of the rest, would be worthy not of worship, but of utter contempt and loathing.

This is not just a matter of obscure religious belief. Its ethical dimensions are obvious. Ordinary people wonder how religious leaders who name themselves “father” could abuse young children. Such abuses are easier to understand against a religious background in which the “Heavenly Father” allows his own son to be abused just to mollify his own raging passions.

And so we come to Gary Ezzo and his Babywise technique.

In a nutshell - and I will keep things to a nutshell, there is plenty of information readily available on him - Mr. Ezzo was complimented on how well behaved his kids were in church.  This led him to create the Babywise publishing empire.  Babywise, as a method to raise your baby is very similar to that of the Baby Whisperer.  The main difference, however, is that instead of getting to know your baby's signals & cues and respond to it's individual needs, you actively avoid learning its signals and cues and make it respond to your own personal needs.  This is generally done through starvation and abandonment.

You see, Gary Ezzo feels that children need to be raised the Christian way.  And by Christian, he means his way.  Looking beyond the fact that such 'fringe' groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics site him as putting babies not just at short term risk of malnutrition, failure to thrive and develop emotionally. Looking beyond the documented long term risks on mental and emotional instability, this is a man who has views so extreme that he has been excommunicated from three extremist evangelical denominations.

In all fairness, I don't know much about the processes involved in excommunication but I'm fairly sure it's quite a difficult feat to accomplish.  People rape babies and don't get excommunicated, yet Gary Ezzo has managed to achieve this three times.

The baffling thing about all this is that when a person is freely (Well, not so free - his parenting starter packs will set you back over a hundred bucks) giving advice (And by advice, I mean abuse), one would look to their own family as an example of how well this persons techniques work.  The Ezzo's personal webpage , which they claim has nothing to do whatsoever with Babywise (In spite of their name being so closely linked with their program.  This is like McDonalds asserting that their webpage has no marketing link whatsoever to the Big Mac.), shows plenty of photos of the Ezzo's posing with lots of people who look like they're family, the only problem is they're not.  Babywises' website, ezzotruth (Hint #1 that someone might be selling snake oil: Their website's domain name is on the defensive from the get-go.) reassures us the Ezzo's are married and there is mention that two of his daughters are married and all together the Ezzos have something like eight grandchildren.  What isn't mentioned is that the Ezzo's have three daughters and are estranged from all of them and their husbands (One of whom embezzled a half million dollars from Babywise).  One is left wondering just how effective a program this is and why the Ezzo's are lying to people.

I'm not going to go on.  This website has loads of resources including a timeline on the controversies surrounding Babywise and an index of articles supporting its stance.  I'll let the Amazon reviews speak for themselves.

I've also realized I've not gotten into the so-called Christian message behind Babywise.  In essence, it is about denying a baby's needs and instincts as these are sinful.  It's an outdated daddy-knows-best mindset filled with nostalgia for an age that never existed.  The theology behind it is totalitarian and it's message and methodology has been closely linked to the grooming practises that cults use to indoctrinate others.  It is what happens when normally good people cease thinking for themselves and allow a perverse and twisted interpretation of love to justify hurting children.