Mothers breastfeeding their babies in Paris, France, Sunday, Oct. 11, 2008, during a worldwide breastfeeding event. Many French women gathered in Paris, joining other women in other countries, in a bid to raise worldwide awareness of the benefits of breastfeeding babies, as part of the World Breastfeeding Week.In America the only discussion about a mother’s responsibility to her unborn child comes mainly from the pro-life movement. When the topic is a fertilized egg, women often run a gauntlet of taunts and waving placards in many US cities, just to obtain the legal medical services available to them as pregnant women.

As long as the fertilized egg stays safely embedded in the mother’s womb, America doesn’t care so much about maternal health or the mother’s responsibility to bear a healthy baby. Being Americans, the idea that our babies are doomed in advance to a series of health problems and a shrinking brain is not a pill we’re inclined to swallow.

Can you imagine a scene in America, like the one of French women breastfeeding in Paris in 2008? President Clinton signed the Treasury Postal Appropriations bill, which included Rep. Maloney’s Right to Breastfeed Act, into law in 1999.

Yet I recall seeing only one American woman breastfeeding in public, this summer in Union Square New York City. She had four young kids, a buff husband, backpacks galore, and looked fabulous. I told her so, and I truly doubt she had a nanny.

Taking Care of Baby

America has the highest infant mortality rate among developed countries. We also have one of the unhealthiest populations, leading the world in obesity statistics except for American Samoa.

America’s 2010 infant mortality rate is a CIA-estimated 6.22, compared to Cuba at 5.82; the European Union at 5.61; Canada at 5.04; Netherlands 4.73; and France at 3.33. Once again, France — the country we love to hate — rears its different approach to promoting the health of its citizens.

French doctors monitor very closely the amount of pregnancy weight gained by its women, including American women delivering babies in France. In America — land of the free — we argue that a woman should be able to gain as much weight as she wishes while pregnant; eat as much fast food as she desires; exercise or not because it’s her choice.

After all, this is God’s country.

In France, the attitude is very different. Not only is a woman’s doctor involved in monitoring her pregnancy weight gain but equally persistent in guiding her post-pregnancy weight loss and resumption of sexual activities, which is a national priority in living the good life.

Talking with both French women and American women delivering babies in France, I hear that French doctors are very ‘in your face’ about a woman’s responsibility to deliver a healthy baby, with minimal inherited propensities for future health problems.

In America, Sarah Palin and her mama grizzlies say “hands off; we know what’s best for baby.” The question is: do we?

Fat Kids, Shrinking Brains

At the risk of bringing a stampede of angry mama bears pulling at my blonde locks, I wonder if American moms have any human responsibility to bear a child of medically-healthy weight.

Science is one step away from scanning the brains of newborns to measure the brains of obese babies versus healthy-weight ones, and real truth serum — as opposed to pontificating pundits — is showing us undeniable evidence of the impact of lifestyle on brain function.

Brain scans now confirm that Physically Unfit Kids Score Lower on Brain Development Tests. A larger hippocampus is associated with superior spatial reasoning and other cognitive tasks. Non-obese, physically fit young kids have a larger hippocampus and in fact, did perform better on a range of intelligence tests.

Granted it’s politically incorrect to suggest that American mothers who deliver fat babies are impacting their kids’ futures before the child is even born. We all agree that any pressure on American moms to bear a healthy child is considered to be unfair and discriminatory — and frankly stupid, if you’re trying to build a high-traffic website.

Mom’s Maternal Rights

I can imagine a case before the US Supreme Court arguing that it’s against a woman’s right to privacy to scan the brain of her child, regardless of her weight at the time of delivery. If we just make all health care privately owned and get the government out of monitoring the nation’s health, then we can produce any brain quality we desire in our children.

After all, parental rights rule in God’s country.

In France, the doctor is not only having a heart-to-heart with all moms, laying out the research about obesity and health effects in no uncertain terms, but requiring her back in a couple weeks for a weigh-in.

France believes it has a responsibility to unborn children that will actually live in the world, versus the ones who might have been born, if only mom was denied her legal rights. This is socialism in action, say American tea drinkers.

France doesn’t put obese moms in government-run maternity housing, but the pressure is pretty intense not to gain a lot of pregnancy weight. Consider it a matter of national pride and military security.

I trust you know that US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has labeled America’s obesity problem a threat to national security, and not only because we can’t run fast enough from the Taliban.

Long-Term Health Effects on Obese Babies

French and American medical experts know the same research about unhealthy moms and their children, but take different courses of action:

1. Gaining Too Much Weight During Pregnancy Nearly Doubles Risk Of Having A Heavy Baby Science Daily

Researching more than 40,000 pregnancies in America, a study by the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research found that women who gained more than 40 pounds during their pregnancies were twice as likely to have an overweight baby. These babies are programmed to a life of health problems.

In the study 20 percent of the women who gained 40 pounds or more gave birth to obese babies. Even worse, the women who gained more than 40 pounds and also had gestational diabetes delivered a heavy baby nearly 30 percent of the time. When women with gestational diabetes gained less than 40 pounds, the rate dropped to 13 percent.

2. Obesity Prevention Begins Before Birth: Excess Maternal Weight Gain Increases Birth Weight After Controlling for Genetic Factors Science Daily

Researchers examined statewide birth records in Michigan and New Jersey from 1989 through 2003, focusing on women who delivered two babies. After eliminating very low-weight babies as well as high-weight ones, researchers were left with a pool of over 500,000 women and over a million babies.

On average, the women gained an average of 30 pounds during their pregnancies. Note: we can safely assume that the average pregnancy weight gain has increased in America beyond this period 1989-2003.

Compared to moms gaining just 18-22 pounds, expectant mothers gaining 44-49 pounds were 1.7 times more likely to have a high-birth-weight baby; those gaining more than 53 pounds were 2.3 times more likely to do so.

Current estimates are that 1 in 5 American women are obese at the onset of pregnancy, meaning they have a BMI of 30 or above. A key challenge in helping the kids of obese mothers is helping mom to not gain weight. Better yet, all medical experts advise obese women to diet before becoming pregnant.

The Institute of Medicine now suggests that women gain 28 to 40 pounds if underweight at the start of pregnancy, 25 to 35 pounds if they are normal weight, 15 to 25 pounds if overweight, and 11 to 20 pounds if obese.

3. Obesity - Inverse Association Between BMI and Prefrontal Metabolic Activity in Healthy Adults Nature

In subjects considered to be healthy, researchers established significant correlation between BMI and baseline brain glucose metabolism in prefrontal regions and the anterior cingulate gyrus. Scientists also established a negative association between prefrontal metabolism and performance on tasks of executive function and verbal learning.

If I’m reading this study correctly, the impact of obesity appears to not significantly impact motor skills of the brain but the critical thinking ones. This conclusion is supported by many other brain function and obesity studies we’ve quoted at Anne of Carversville.

Moving Beyond Political Correctness

Most of our body image writing has focused on the strong preferences of current fashion designers for a woman’s body to be below recommended average BMI. The healthy, sexy supermodels of the 1990s are verboten, with a few exceptions like Lara Stone and Crystal Renn.

We reject fashion’s current point of view because it’s medically unhealthy for women to be underweight. We are convinced that the intention is to desexualize women into coat racks who shop, but lose their desire for sex. Knowing that low libidos are associated with low body weight, stilettos replace sex as love objects.

Writing in our Sensual and Superyoung channel, we are also attuned to the importance of maintaining a healthy weight, with a recommended BMI of 20-25.

Being fitness buffs ourselves, we understand the vagaries of BMI with muscle weighing more than fat, but BMI remains a quick calculation that’s relevant in accessing a healthy population in large numbers. The more muscular woman is fitness-informed and knows that her muscle tissue is driving up her BMI and weight.

Truth Serum Time

Over the past year, the medical research on obesity and brain function is beyond alarming. In good conscience we cannot endorse the popular view that any size woman will do. We may all be beautiful, regardless of our size, but we’re not equally healthy.

Unhealthy people bring a higher cost to all members of a society, even in God’s country, where miracles are promised but not appearing yet, saving Americans from the perils of our love of bigness and bravado.

It’s politically incorrect — and I’ve been called arrogant and condescending — to acknowledge the medical research piling up concerning obesity’s impact on critical thinking abilities. The problem is that brain scans of women haven’t shown us to have lower brain function than men. The data on obesity is different.

In America, home of the free, we say “basta” to any inference that all minds aren’t created equal, regardless of the science. As an employer I am discriminating if I prefer a healthier person, even reading 100 studies that suggest a positive correlation between obesity and brain function.

My concerns don’t reflect good judgment and reasoning, but a preference for beautiful people. I’m as biased as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates saying obesity is a national security issue.

Having been mildly obese myself (about 33 BMI) for over a decade but not for over 10 years, I understand how much psychology is involved in this entire subject. Being a victim in America has also become part of our national identity and it reigns supreme in this discussion.

Admittedly, I’m equally intrigued by the extent to which Americans loathe the French — and especially American women — when the topic is healthy weight. Forgive me for saying so, but we are simply irrational.

As a feminist, I support a woman’s right to chose and I argue long and hard for a woman’s right to control her own body.

This week’s research report on reduced cognitive activity in unfit 9 year-olds compels me to speak out on women’s rights from a different angle: does an unhealthy mother have an inherent right to determine in advance the brain capacity of her child?

Our lack of concern about obesity shrinking American kids’ brains may be grounded in the fact that America is the great ‘take a pill’ big-pharma nation. We believe that a pill can control our diabetes, health disease, and the host of other afflictions that accompany poor health generated by no exercise and too much bad food.

Can we at least agree that it’s our national decision to bear increasing numbers of children, most likely with reduced brain capacity.

The Tea Party reminds us that we are the divine-right nation, the beacon of wellbeing for the world to admire.

Except that we’re not. Our country is bloated and sick, and now I understand that we’re bearing children with reduced brain capacity, because we’re bad news food addicts, who refuse to exercise. Air circulation in our brains is not high on our list. Who needs it, when you’re a divine-right nation?

I have no answers as to how to move American women (and men) forward on this topic. We know the facts.

Unlike France, we don’t have a doctor and health clinics breathing down our necks, admonishing us to diet. Tough talk is part of French culture; and ‘politically correct’ is a disease, not an aspiration.

I don’t mean to affront any readers in questioning our American divine right to bear children with reduced brain capacity. I, too, have lived a biggie-size life. But I do believe that the facts are clear on this subject, and we seem to lack any will to tackle the challenge in a serious way.

Perhaps big pharma can invent a smart pill to counteract the ravages of bad news food and lack of exercise on our brain capacities. My only caution is that we better hope that France or India or China doesn’t get the patent worldwide.

If America’s obesity and brain-reduced, cognitive-thinking capacity kids are a national security risk, I can’t imagine the power of the smart brain-function pill in the country that invents it.

We shouldn’t assume it will be the USA, based on current high school test scores.

Thinking positively, I suppose there are always robots and artificial intelligence — as long as no smart-alec MIT guy programs them to like McDonald’s, Burger King and Pizza Hut’s deep-dish pepperoni pies. Anne

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