Mayim Bialik was quick to attack a Similac commercial pushing baby formula, but her critics have been no less vocal about her own views. The View’s Joy Behar blamed the actress’ attachment parenting for the breakup of her marriage, and speculated that she was putting her two sons first and making her husband feel marginalized–even though Bialik refused to comment publicly on the breakup of her marriage. In 2013, Behar still had not given up ridiculing Bialik for her childraising, and wrote on Facebook, “Actress Mayim Bialik says she has finally stopped breastfeeding her four year old son. Her 23 year old son, however, still likes to nosh.” In Haaretz, writer Allison Kaplan Sommer betrayed an almost gloating feeling over the dissolution of Bialik’s marriage: “While I’m sorry to violate Bialik’s wishes by linking attachment parenting and the split, I have to point out that for those of us who were made to feel lesser parents because of our inability and unwillingness to devote all of our waking and sleeping hours to our babies, it really does feel like a measure of turnabout.”
Perhaps one of Mayim Bialik’s most controversial stances has been her disapproval of vaccines. On Kveller, a Jewish woman posted the reasons she felt that it was her duty as a mother, according to Jewish law, to protect her children from potentially deadly diseases by vaccinating them, and Bialik posted a rebuttal on Facebook, but soon deleted it. Her post read, “I find it offensive that Jamie used the broadest brush she can to make people feel not only like bad parents but bad JEWS about this. Jews value life, but non-vaccinating parents don’t? I wish the world and measles were as simple as how she paints it.” Bethany Mandel of Haaretz writes that Bialik’s open criticism of vaccines is not just ludicrous but dangerous, given that she is someone people listen to, as a celebrity, a religious role model, a mother and a scientist. While there were reports linking some vaccines to a higher risk of autism, these have been debunked in recent years, and the persistence of parents to continue to fear vaccines resembles superstition. Stanley Plotkin published an article in the Oxford Journal, “Vaccines and Autism: A Tale of Shifting Hypotheses,” in which he discusses the higher rates of autism as caused by broader diagnostic criteria and increased awareness. Plotkin added that although epidemiological and biological studies fail to support a link between autism and vaccines, parental concerns still persist, regardless of the scientific data.
“No one has ever accused me of being perfect,” said Mayim Bialik at a speech at Tribefest in LA, “Except my mother, and you know you can’t trust your mother when she says stuff like that.” In the speech, Bialik discussed what she loved about Judaism and why it was so much a part of her life. She describes a feeling of belonging, shared obsessions, observations, experiences, as well as the emphasis on the next generation, the insistence on using one’s brain, discussing, arguing or just plain kvetching. “We share DNA, we share history, or maybe we share similarities such as eating the same foods or having the same diagnoses for generalized anxiety disorder or diabetes or extreme enmeshment with one’s parents … This derech (path) I am on winds around a lot, and I sometimes feel lost. But I never give up searching for whatever it is that is ultimately not what I am seeking to find, but what is seeking to find me. A path. My path.”
Mayim Bialik with children / Facebook
