When did we stop listening to our mothers?

I've been spending a lot of time with my mom and my mother-in-law and as they see me day-to-day doing my thing with the babies and facing new problems and challenges, they can't help but offer me advice and stories about what they did with us when we were babies.

I listen to their advice, weigh it against what what the doctors have said, what I've read, my own intuition and then I'll either take it or leave it. I am paving my own path as a new mother, making decisions based on a wealth of knowledge and advice from my moms. I know they respect that but there are some things they hold fast on; after all, "mother knows best". But I'm also a mother... is it contradictory that I know best too?

I imagine a time, place, or culture where new moms like me would take the advice of their mothers and do what they did. When people learned from their elders instead of Health Canada, Google and the millions of other mothers and doctors who write the books new moms read. Feed the babies early or wait until six months? Put them to sleep on tummy or back? Feed them water or don't feed them water? Milk, honey? And don't get me started on sleep training...

I really wonder when we started questioning the knowledge of our mothers and began relying on ourselves to gather information and do it our own way. Probably before Google. I wonder too if we are raising children that are any happier or healthier. And if we are missing something inherent to motherhood because we choose to do it our own way instead of doing as our mothers did. Something that bonds us to our matriarchal line. Maybe though, this world I'm imagining never existed and becoming a mother has always been a right of passage in which we make our own choices for our own babies. Maybe part of becoming a mother, and what really bonds us to our mothers and gains their respect, is doing things our own way.

I will add that many of my moms' tricks and tips are tried and true and when I give them a chance, they work. But I do feel awkward when I say to my them, "that's not what doctors advise these days" and they look at me skeptically. After all, I'm my mother's daughter and I like to think I turned out okay.