I am still looking for the trailer that appears on one of my kid's videos for a late edition of the Dumbo movie that shows happier scenes of mama and baby elephant together. We always take a minute to watch the trailer and cuddle and I sing it to her. (I haven't been able to get her interested in watching the entire Dumbo movie yet.)
This clip here is so touching—it shows mama longing for her baby.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
A flimsy case against breast-feeding
Just out this month in The Atlantic, The Case Against Breast-Feeding attempts to dismantle the science supporting the health benefits of breast-feeding, seemingly in an effort to justify some women's ambivalence. I want to be mad and get snarky, but I just can't. The author seems so angst-ridden and the article so all-over-the-map in it's structure, I just feel sorry for her. As I am always compelled to do, I will say that I think people should do what they need to do to make their lives work and if that means feeding the baby formula, then fine. I also don't want to make those women who want to breastfeed but for whatever reason cannot feel bad. That said, the "case" made by journalist Hanna Rosin—that breast-feeding may not be worth the dent it puts in women's freedom—is both weak and dangerous, if anybody takes it seriously.
I can agree with some of Rosin's observations, but not with the spirit of the article or her conclusions. Yes, people can chose what they want to chose for their lives, however, mis-information driven by malcontent such as that of Rosin's does nothing to elevate the way our society values children, families, and humanity itself. When you make a case against something so natural and so basic to humanity, the very feeding of our babies in the way we were meant to feed them, it seems to me you are throwing in your vote with the capital-driven, work-and-productivity-above-all-else camp. You are saying that things women inherently do are not as valuable as industry. You are devaluing women. How is this real feminism? Women should not have to match men in order to be respected.
Rosin breast-feeds. Dutifully. She doesn't really like it so much, though. She says, "It is a serious time commitment that pretty much guarantees that you will not work in any meaningful way." Well, that's a huge assumption. I breast-feed on-demand and have made a significant financial contribution (30-35 percent) to my household for the past 21 months. I don't think my clients would say my work is not meaningful. Women make it work and should be applauded for their creativity and tenacity—especially those who have to deal with pumping. Women should be supported in their efforts to care for their children, not told that this care is not all that important, and therefore can be cast aside so they can get down to the real work of turning the wheels of industry.
Rosin claims the science supporting the benefits of breastfeeding is inconclusive, noting the dearth of randomized, controlled trials (RCTs). She seems unaware of the growing call among nutrition scientists to look beyond RCTs for evaluating nutrient benefits. Because poor nutrition can't ethically be controlled for—researchers can't deprive a group of study participants something good for them—the RCT is probably not the ideal model for nutrition research. Realistically, we have to rely heavily on epidemological data, that is, studies that track what people do over time and tease out similarities in an attempt to link habits to outcomes. Many of our public health initiatives, in fact, are based on epidemiological evidence, such as the message that fruits and vegetables are good for you, seen in the "5-a-day" campaign, or even the venerable food pyramid itself. Rosin, after presenting her interpretation of the body of scientific evidence, or lack thereof, on the benefits of breast-feeding, says, "Breast-feeding does not belong in the realm of facts and hard numbers; it is much too intimate and elemental." I'd have to agree with that, so why include all the analysis of the journal studies?
I will admit I am not all that interested in the science behind breast-feeding. To me, the fact that my body makes milk and my baby wants to drink it tells me that it's right. It feels good. It's cozy. It just makes sense. Yes, it's often a challenge for a new mom to get started. Yes, sometimes I am just not in the mood to have my now-toddler climbing on me and grabbing for "milkies". But, it's my calling right now. It was since my daughter's birth and it will be until we both decide it's time to move on. (I'm hoping that will be some time between age two and three.)
Rosin's interpretation of the science doesn't really wash for me. It seems like she had this idea in her head—let's discount the benefits of breast-feeding because it's a pain and it ties women down, yeah, that's a new idea—and she went and dug into the journals to support her predetermined notion.
Rosin is one mixed-up woman and I wish she could just let go. She says of breastfeeding, "It contains all of my awe about motherhood, and also my ambivalence. Right now, even part-time, it’s a strain. But I also know that this is probably my last chance to feel warm baby skin up against mine, and one day I will miss it." She is letting this thing she knows she will miss slip through her fingers because of her joyless brand of feminism.
She asks that we weigh the benefits of breast-feeding against all those things a woman must give up in order to do so. "Given what we know so far, it seems reasonable to put breast-feeding’s health benefits on the plus side of the ledger and other things—modesty, independence, career, sanity—on the minus side, and then tally them up and make a decision. "
For me, there's no decision. I just always thought I'd breastfeed, although I never gave it a whole lot of thought. I was surprised in my child birth class that such a big deal was made about breastfeeding, almost to ensure we new moms would do it. I think that's good, from a public health perspective, but to me, it was just assumed that a woman would breastfeed unless she just simply couldn't for very serious reasons. I know now I was a little out of the loop in terms of the difficulty some women have and the politics of it all.
I guess different women process these things differently—modesty, independence, career, sanity—because I just don't have issues with any of these. (Each could easily be the subject of a longer post!) Maybe because I am uninhibited, or because I have small breasts, or both, modesty is not a concern of mine when it comes to breast-feeding. I'll do it any time, anywhere. It's natural, it's me, it's my kid and it's my right. I don't lament any lack of independence, either. The way I see it, certainly the first year of my child's life, and now well into the second, it's kind of my job to put her first, and so, yeah, maybe I can't take off and be away from her for hours at a time. Maybe I'm not supposed to at this point in our lives. Career? I opted out of the office day-to-day in order to stay home with my daughter during her baby years. Other women, who I admire immensely, make it work by pumping (another issue worthy of much discussion). And as far as sanity goes, it's over-rated.
Commenters to the NY Times Motherlode blog had some really good posts...
More of my thoughts on breast-feeding...
I can agree with some of Rosin's observations, but not with the spirit of the article or her conclusions. Yes, people can chose what they want to chose for their lives, however, mis-information driven by malcontent such as that of Rosin's does nothing to elevate the way our society values children, families, and humanity itself. When you make a case against something so natural and so basic to humanity, the very feeding of our babies in the way we were meant to feed them, it seems to me you are throwing in your vote with the capital-driven, work-and-productivity-above-all-else camp. You are saying that things women inherently do are not as valuable as industry. You are devaluing women. How is this real feminism? Women should not have to match men in order to be respected.
Rosin breast-feeds. Dutifully. She doesn't really like it so much, though. She says, "It is a serious time commitment that pretty much guarantees that you will not work in any meaningful way." Well, that's a huge assumption. I breast-feed on-demand and have made a significant financial contribution (30-35 percent) to my household for the past 21 months. I don't think my clients would say my work is not meaningful. Women make it work and should be applauded for their creativity and tenacity—especially those who have to deal with pumping. Women should be supported in their efforts to care for their children, not told that this care is not all that important, and therefore can be cast aside so they can get down to the real work of turning the wheels of industry.
Rosin claims the science supporting the benefits of breastfeeding is inconclusive, noting the dearth of randomized, controlled trials (RCTs). She seems unaware of the growing call among nutrition scientists to look beyond RCTs for evaluating nutrient benefits. Because poor nutrition can't ethically be controlled for—researchers can't deprive a group of study participants something good for them—the RCT is probably not the ideal model for nutrition research. Realistically, we have to rely heavily on epidemological data, that is, studies that track what people do over time and tease out similarities in an attempt to link habits to outcomes. Many of our public health initiatives, in fact, are based on epidemiological evidence, such as the message that fruits and vegetables are good for you, seen in the "5-a-day" campaign, or even the venerable food pyramid itself. Rosin, after presenting her interpretation of the body of scientific evidence, or lack thereof, on the benefits of breast-feeding, says, "Breast-feeding does not belong in the realm of facts and hard numbers; it is much too intimate and elemental." I'd have to agree with that, so why include all the analysis of the journal studies?
I will admit I am not all that interested in the science behind breast-feeding. To me, the fact that my body makes milk and my baby wants to drink it tells me that it's right. It feels good. It's cozy. It just makes sense. Yes, it's often a challenge for a new mom to get started. Yes, sometimes I am just not in the mood to have my now-toddler climbing on me and grabbing for "milkies". But, it's my calling right now. It was since my daughter's birth and it will be until we both decide it's time to move on. (I'm hoping that will be some time between age two and three.)
Rosin's interpretation of the science doesn't really wash for me. It seems like she had this idea in her head—let's discount the benefits of breast-feeding because it's a pain and it ties women down, yeah, that's a new idea—and she went and dug into the journals to support her predetermined notion.
Rosin is one mixed-up woman and I wish she could just let go. She says of breastfeeding, "It contains all of my awe about motherhood, and also my ambivalence. Right now, even part-time, it’s a strain. But I also know that this is probably my last chance to feel warm baby skin up against mine, and one day I will miss it." She is letting this thing she knows she will miss slip through her fingers because of her joyless brand of feminism.
She asks that we weigh the benefits of breast-feeding against all those things a woman must give up in order to do so. "Given what we know so far, it seems reasonable to put breast-feeding’s health benefits on the plus side of the ledger and other things—modesty, independence, career, sanity—on the minus side, and then tally them up and make a decision. "
For me, there's no decision. I just always thought I'd breastfeed, although I never gave it a whole lot of thought. I was surprised in my child birth class that such a big deal was made about breastfeeding, almost to ensure we new moms would do it. I think that's good, from a public health perspective, but to me, it was just assumed that a woman would breastfeed unless she just simply couldn't for very serious reasons. I know now I was a little out of the loop in terms of the difficulty some women have and the politics of it all.
I guess different women process these things differently—modesty, independence, career, sanity—because I just don't have issues with any of these. (Each could easily be the subject of a longer post!) Maybe because I am uninhibited, or because I have small breasts, or both, modesty is not a concern of mine when it comes to breast-feeding. I'll do it any time, anywhere. It's natural, it's me, it's my kid and it's my right. I don't lament any lack of independence, either. The way I see it, certainly the first year of my child's life, and now well into the second, it's kind of my job to put her first, and so, yeah, maybe I can't take off and be away from her for hours at a time. Maybe I'm not supposed to at this point in our lives. Career? I opted out of the office day-to-day in order to stay home with my daughter during her baby years. Other women, who I admire immensely, make it work by pumping (another issue worthy of much discussion). And as far as sanity goes, it's over-rated.
Commenters to the NY Times Motherlode blog had some really good posts...
More of my thoughts on breast-feeding...
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
A traditional mom?
I found out the other day that I am a traditional mom. How can a 21st century, independent communications consultant who is basically online on and off 16 hours a day be a traditional mom? Read on!
In "How She Really Does It", by Wendy Sachs (mentioned in my previous post), it talks about the guilt women have whether they need to go to work or choose to go to work and be away from their babies.
And here's where it gets really interesting, when Sachs cites anthropologist Helen Fisher who explains:
So, we are talking Paleolithic-traditional here, not June Cleaver-traditional. I love the cave-mama characteristics I can benefit from. OK, so maybe I don't have extremely low body fat, but I did (and still do, though to a lesser extent) nurse around the clock and co-sleep. Basically, I have my little one around me all day while I am at home on the computer, aside from our daily trip to the gym, errands and outings (where she is mostly still right there with me). I still haven't had a regular period and my daughter is 20 months old, so old-school biology is working for me, for sure. (Interestingly, the prehistoric paradigm is also used in the popular book "Happiest Toddler on the Block", where author Harvey Karp, M.D., takes kids from being chimps to Neanderthals to little cavemen.)
I guess maybe biologically, we humans are still programmed to work a certain way that hasn't caught up with our technological advancement. Still, as evidenced by the way I managed caring for my baby (and now toddler) while working remotely over the Internet, technology can be a huge boon when it comes to staying close to our babies.
In "How She Really Does It", by Wendy Sachs (mentioned in my previous post), it talks about the guilt women have whether they need to go to work or choose to go to work and be away from their babies.
"In cultures where babies are always burrowed onto their mother's bosoms, moms are never made to feel guilty about leaving their kids behind to go to work because mother and child are literally connected at the hip...
...for centuries it has not been practical for mother and child to be attached all day long, every day...
In the United State, the combination of a rigid non-family focused workplace, children spaced close together, and a lack of familial support stresses perhaps our most intense primordial affiliation—the mother-child bond."
And here's where it gets really interesting, when Sachs cites anthropologist Helen Fisher who explains:
"Fifteen thousand years ago, you would never have two children under four years old. We were not built to have children so close together. For millions of years, the natural spacing was four years apart; the same thing is true in gorillas and chimpanzees and even greater in orangutans...The reason that the four-year birth spacing was maintained was because if you nurse a baby on demand, several times an hour, and sleep with a baby at night who keeps nursing, and combine that with a great deal of exercise and low body fat, you wouldn't conceive until you've really slowed down on the nursing. So a woman was only dealing with one child at a time, and the mother carried that child on her back while she did the gathering of vegetables; that's what she was expected to do. She left the older kids in camp in multi-age playgroups in an extremely secure, social environment with all of her relatives and friends. So there was no anxiety about daycare, and there was no anxiety about leaving the baby because she never left the baby since she was nursing around the clock. So she could do all of her basic jobs simultaneously and comfortably.
What we're lacking today is about fifteen other people around us to help care for the babies. We don't have the other adults, friends, relatives, other children, we have none of that. And women today often have more than one child under four years old, so no wonder we're suffering!"
So, we are talking Paleolithic-traditional here, not June Cleaver-traditional. I love the cave-mama characteristics I can benefit from. OK, so maybe I don't have extremely low body fat, but I did (and still do, though to a lesser extent) nurse around the clock and co-sleep. Basically, I have my little one around me all day while I am at home on the computer, aside from our daily trip to the gym, errands and outings (where she is mostly still right there with me). I still haven't had a regular period and my daughter is 20 months old, so old-school biology is working for me, for sure. (Interestingly, the prehistoric paradigm is also used in the popular book "Happiest Toddler on the Block", where author Harvey Karp, M.D., takes kids from being chimps to Neanderthals to little cavemen.)
I guess maybe biologically, we humans are still programmed to work a certain way that hasn't caught up with our technological advancement. Still, as evidenced by the way I managed caring for my baby (and now toddler) while working remotely over the Internet, technology can be a huge boon when it comes to staying close to our babies.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Let's call the whole thing off
It dawned on me today that I want to officially drop out of any discourse involving "Mommy Wars"...that debate between stay-at-home moms and go-to-work moms and anyone else with an opinion to spout off. I never really wanted to be in such a war, or on one side or another anyway, but just in case there was any confusion, here are my latest thoughts.
I recently read "How She Really Does It" by Wendy Sachs, where Sachs talks with a number of professional women about how they juggle motherhood with work. I enjoyed the book immensely—maybe for the wrong reasons. To be honest, it made me feel so lucky and it made me realize how easy I have it, being a work-at-home mom to one lovely daughter. Now, it's not always easy to be home all day with a toddler and try to get 3-5 hours of office work in as well...but, it beats having to feel guilty about leaving her—which I would. It beats having to worry about her all day. It beats being pissed off that I can't see her cute smiling face and hear her laugh whenever I want.
With my work, I do have deadlines, but for my day-to-day schedule, I can often work when I can, if my daughter is playing independently, work while she naps, or when my husband gets home from work and watches her. Or, I can always put off work til late night when she is in bed and my husband's in bed, too. My preferred time slot, other than naps, of 9-ish p.m. to 12 a.m. I just don't need that much sleep. I realize that this situation is somewhat unusual and I'd love to find a way to talk about it more and maybe encourage others to explore how they could set up a similar situation if they were interested, but I'm not sure of the best venue (continued blogging, book, gatherings?) or the finer points and details of my message.
I intend to either work more hours developing my own business or go back to a full time office job when my daughter is older—school age. But, the infant and toddler years at home are really special to me personally. That's more of a personal choice that makes me happy than anything I want to politicize or lord over anyone else.
Reading about the lives of other women made me feel like not arguing anymore—if I ever did. I don't know, I think I was just expressing an opinion, but now, somehow I want to soften it. The book made me feel compassionate. Whether or not these working women feel sad about leaving their young kids, I feel sad for them because of how *I* would have felt. But that's more about me than about them or anyone's kids. Even if they make a shitload more money than I do. I have enough. I feel like I don't need to judge or comment on anyone else's life choices. But, I can celebrate my own.
I recently read "How She Really Does It" by Wendy Sachs, where Sachs talks with a number of professional women about how they juggle motherhood with work. I enjoyed the book immensely—maybe for the wrong reasons. To be honest, it made me feel so lucky and it made me realize how easy I have it, being a work-at-home mom to one lovely daughter. Now, it's not always easy to be home all day with a toddler and try to get 3-5 hours of office work in as well...but, it beats having to feel guilty about leaving her—which I would. It beats having to worry about her all day. It beats being pissed off that I can't see her cute smiling face and hear her laugh whenever I want.
With my work, I do have deadlines, but for my day-to-day schedule, I can often work when I can, if my daughter is playing independently, work while she naps, or when my husband gets home from work and watches her. Or, I can always put off work til late night when she is in bed and my husband's in bed, too. My preferred time slot, other than naps, of 9-ish p.m. to 12 a.m. I just don't need that much sleep. I realize that this situation is somewhat unusual and I'd love to find a way to talk about it more and maybe encourage others to explore how they could set up a similar situation if they were interested, but I'm not sure of the best venue (continued blogging, book, gatherings?) or the finer points and details of my message.
I intend to either work more hours developing my own business or go back to a full time office job when my daughter is older—school age. But, the infant and toddler years at home are really special to me personally. That's more of a personal choice that makes me happy than anything I want to politicize or lord over anyone else.
Reading about the lives of other women made me feel like not arguing anymore—if I ever did. I don't know, I think I was just expressing an opinion, but now, somehow I want to soften it. The book made me feel compassionate. Whether or not these working women feel sad about leaving their young kids, I feel sad for them because of how *I* would have felt. But that's more about me than about them or anyone's kids. Even if they make a shitload more money than I do. I have enough. I feel like I don't need to judge or comment on anyone else's life choices. But, I can celebrate my own.
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