Meet the Physician: Dr. Michael Powell

Dr. Michael Powell has been practicing as a pediatrician in Huntsville for 24 years. This father of six took time out of his busy schedule to meet with Valley Babies.

VB: You homeschooled your children. Tell us a little bit about your family and what makes you tick.
Dr. Powell: I grew up in the 50s and 60s, there was a pervading consciousness of the nuclear threat – the memory of Kruschev beating the shoe “We will bury you.” There was an interesting sociological observation that my generation, more than any previous generation, distrusted their ancestors partly because of the threat of annihilation and partly because of the overemphasis in school about the bad things in our history from the inquisition to slavery to Hitler and the Holocaust and Stalin. Because of that this generation began to look for their own answers and trust their peers more than their ancestors. There was less and less capacity to be connected with the generations before but also with the generations to come. It has resulted in the “me” orientation that children have as they grow into adults.

CS Lewis says that from the beginning of time as a generation grows into adulthood within almost all cultures there has been an inherent understanding that sacrifice is made for the next generation. In his own lifetime he observed less and less willingness to make those sacrifices and even saw a willingness to rob from the next generation. Even though I didn’t understand all these sociological phenomenon when I began my family, we knew we wanted to be connected, so we homeschooled. About 10 years later it dawned on me that we were like the Waltons when everyone said “good-night.”

The first half of my pediatric practice I couldn’t imagine anything more noble than saving children medically. But the later half of my practice I’ve begun to see that their personhood, their connections with family are a huge part of their health. The things that rob them of personhood like the way they look, the incessant desire to show what you have robs them of who they are. My desire is to take them back to who they are. When you trade your ancestors for your peers, your peers have no ability to judge by anything but the present. A parent is always looking toward the future.

VB: What changes have you seen in pediatrics during the years you’ve been practicing?
Dr. Powell: The biggest change is that pediatricians used to do a lot more emergency and crisis care. Now there are more subspecialties, so now we deal with minor illness and triage major stuff.

VB: You do have some parents in your practice who don’t vaccinate their children. What do you say to them?
Dr. Powell: I recommend to them that they vaccinate. I challenge them that if they are not vaccinating for fear of risk, they may not be looking at both sides of the coin. They are probably underestimating the power of the diseases for which they are declining the vaccine. If they are not vaccinating out of conscience because of concern for the materials in the vaccine, particularly tissue from an aborted baby, I can understand and respect that.

VB: What infant feeding suggestions would you offer to expectant parents?
Dr. Powell: I tell people that formula companies argue, but it’s like Ford and Chevrolet arguing when you could be riding on a 747. Formula feeding is not even in the same realm as breastfeeding. There are two windows into the mystery of life: birth and death. We live in a flat world which covers over the two windows. When you come to the time of having a baby you are coming to a unique opportunity that can’t be duplicated. Here you have a newborn that thinks, but does not think in language. So your newborn is more than a teacher. He is actually someone who can enlarge your capacity as a person. One of the most vital connections through which that enlargement happens is through nursing your baby. Feeding is probably the closest activity to the necessity of survival that we experience. The mother is taking care of the baby, but the baby is teaching the mother, so it goes way beyond nutrition. One of the beauties of nursing is the degree to which a mother is not in control. The formula mom is way more in control, and she imagines what is best from principles that she’s read in books, and then tends to make happen what she thinks is best. Perhaps this relates to the fact that bottle fed babies are 30% more likely to be obese. When mothers do bottlefeed, I recommend that they pretend they are breastfeeding and watch as closely as they can for when baby is finished. When a breastfeeding baby has needs after a feed, the mother has to come up with ways to meet those needs using other mothering skills. A bottle feeding mother needs to duplicate this practice and pretend she can’t just give another bottle.

VB: Many parenting books exist. What do you encourage new parents to read?
Dr. Powell: I like Wendell Berry’s collection of essays, “What Are People For.” You can look up “Work of Local Culture” to learn more about him. I also suggest googling two articles, “Nation of Wimps” an 8 page article out of Psychology from 2004. It tells them what not to do, and “Thank Barbie for Brittany.” The two biggest mistakes parents make is power struggles and lack of supervision. You have to shift your control to their environment –I use the example of car seats. Mothers make their babies use a car seat because the mother doesn’t think there is any other option. Once you allow a kid options, they can broker to get what they want. In early childhood you can do things to keep them from knowing options.

VB: What is the most important advice you could give new parents?
Dr. Powell: It goes back not only to who their child is instead of what he is, but who the parent is instead of what he is. A child by definition believes in today, but does not believe in tomorrow. Children live for today. That’s part of the beauty of childhood, but it is also the danger of childhood. That’s why they desperately need adults. The best adults are the parents, the mother and the dad who can shepherd the child, making the choices for what is in his best interest. They are dependent upon adults who have a vision of how to balance what you should do with what you want to do. We have a culture that is in danger of experiencing the death of adulthood because adults want to remain adolescents.

powellmichaelmd@bellsouth.net