In the few minutes of spare time I have here and there, I’ve been reading Our Babies, Ourselves; How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent, by Meredith Small. I admit I haven’t finished the book yet, but if I wait to finish before sharing my thoughts, it might never happen. I am a voracious reader, and in the olden days (aka pre-M), it was not unusual for me to read an entire book in one day. These days it’s hard for me to finish a magazine. In a month.
I also admit that calling this a “review” may be a little pretentious on my part. Let’s just consider it a string of disjointed, semi-coherent thoughts spewed by my five functioning brain cells, that may or may not have been provoked by reading this book.
According to the jacket cover this book is the first “to explore to what extent the way we parent our infants is based on our biological needs and to what extent it is based on culture – and the startling consequences ignoring nature’s imperatives can have on the well-being of our children.” It appears to answer at least some of my questions about how our species has survived thus far.
I find that occasionally the statistics could use some more explanation (but isn’t that always the case?). For example, in the introduction she states that “even today 90% of the babies around the globe sleep with an adult.” Whereas on page 111 (yes! I actually made it to page 111!), she states that in an anthropological study of 136 societies, 66% of them had babies sleeping with the mother or both mother and father. I don’t know if this contradicts the first statement, because no further qualification of either statistic is provided (so far, at least). Despite this, it has been a very interesting read. The author theorizes that how people parent is tied closely to how they get food. Hunter/gatherer societies encourage self-reliance, agrarian societies encourage responsibility, America’s “every person for themselves” society encourages independence, etc.
There’s some interesting information on how our anatomy changed as a result of walking upright – the pelvis and birth canal are shaped differently from our primate relatives, and this is one of the reasons childbirth is so long and painful for humans. It’s also why babies are born in such an “undeveloped” and helpless state – our brains/heads are so large that if babies were to stay in the womb longer, they wouldn’t fit on the way out. All of this is just a fancy way of explaining why human babies don’t stand up and run around right after they’re born, like horses.
She explains that different ways of parenting have to make sense socially. For example, in societies with high infant mortality rates, much effort is put into keeping the child alive, and developing its “future potential” is not even considered until the child is several years old and past the greatest danger. Whereas in places with low infant mortality, there is little worry of death and from day one babies are encouraged to develop their intelligence and creativity, and there is much made of the meeting of milestones, etc.
The author describes studies of several “traditional” hunter/gatherer cultures, which probably exist under conditions most similar to those under which we evolved. Her discussion of the !Kung San of Botswana was revelatory. Here is what I found most interesting: despite the fact that they hunt and gather to survive (the method of subsistence for the vast majority of time our species has been in existence), their “work life” is less time-consuming compared to an agrarian or industrial lifestyle! (!!) On average, adults work two or three days a week gathering food, and children and the elderly do not work at all (I am clearly in the wrong line of work). Everyone sleeps outside at night and there is no concept of privacy. Food is shared in a reciprocal manner, and no one goes hungry. Women’s garments include a sling for their babies, and babies are kept with their mothers pretty much all the time. More than 90% of a San baby’s “crying events during the first nine months last less than thirty seconds.” Stunned, I tell you. Stunned. “San breasts are long and flexible, and it is up to the baby to manage its feeding by holding on to the breast and sucking whenever it is hungry.” (So I guess that National Geographic look has a purpose after all. Sorry M, but I hope my boobs never look like that, and you should too since your boobs are bound to look like mine someday.) Children are weaned once a mother becomes pregnant again – usually after 4 or 5 years. There is much more, of course, but this is what I found to be most interesting.
She also discusses the Ache of Paraguay, who are hunter/gatherers, although their lifestyle is rather different from the San. They live in a forest that has many dangers, so the primary concern for babies is keeping them protected and alive. As such, “for the first year of life, mothers sleep sitting up with their infants in their laps, hunched over to protect the baby from danger.” And I thought I had it bad. “Anthropologists found that during the first year, infants spend 93% of their daylight time and 100% of the night time in contact with their mothers. Even toddlers over one year of age spend 40% of daylight time being held by their mothers, sitting on their laps or standing right next to them.” Obviously, we don’t have to worry about those kinds of dangers, but it’s interesting to think we might have evolved at a time when those dangers were present, and our biology is therefore programmed for this kind of constant contact. Not that I relish spending 93% of my daylight time and 100% of my night time in contact with M. Even though I love her dearly, I really do.
For industrialized societies, she chose to highlight Japan and the U.S. The discussion of Japan was very interesting, as their parenting approach is markedly different from ours, despite the fact that they are a modern, western, capitalistic society. She explains this with, “the Japanese have achieved modern economic success not with a philosophy of personal ambition and individual achievement, but with a sense of collectivity. … It is not that individual Japanese have no sense of self or personal ambition. It is just that these individual values have been incorporated into a larger sense of a social self that is connected to others.” The Japanese therefore parent in a way that fosters dependence on and connection to others. “Japanese babies and older children sleep between their parents to symbolize their position as a river between two banks, a being that is intimately connected to each parent as a river is to its riverbed.” “Japanese mothers see infant and child dependency as an indicator of a good and healthy bond between mother and baby that fosters emotional security, rather than something pathological that has to be ‘dealt with,’ ended, severed.”
Her discussion of the U.S. highlights our emphasis on independence and self-reliance, which “matches neatly with the economic, social, political, and geographical structure of American society.” She also mentions something I hadn’t really considered before: “Most American parents believe in an inborn temperament, a set of personality traits that can be molded somewhat by parenting and society. … They believe the job of a good parent is to uncover that set of latent abilities and talents and then encourage the ‘good’ potential while discouraging the ‘bad’ potential.” “Control over the baby is a major issue for most parents; responses to both crying and feeding are guided by a hope of controlling the baby’s behavior and a fear of spoiling or indulging what are seen as the baby’s manipulative ways.” “Sleep is also a major concern of American parents. How long and how hard babies sleep is used to determine developmental maturity by both parents and pediatricians. And babies are judged as ‘good’ when they sleep through the night.” These statements helped me realize the somewhat hidden context that my sleep expectations reside in. It also points out the obvious but often unstated – how well your baby sleeps at night is considered a reflection of the “goodness” of your baby, and by extension, the “goodness” of your parenting. I visited my former workplace the other day and a co-worker asked if she was sleeping through the night and I replied, “oh, god, NO!”, and he said with surprise “Really???” And I had this sinking sensation in my stomach, even though I know it’s totally normal for a seven month old to not be sleeping through the night. I just couldn’t help feeling like it reflected poorly on me in some way.
Small goes on to discuss the sleep patterns of mothers and babies when they sleep together and apart (as measured in laboratories), and how sleeping together may help a young baby learn how to regulate its breathing. I also found this quote interesting: “Infant sleep evolved against a background of being jerked up and down in the back of a sling.” This may explain why M sleeps so much better when she’s in the sling and we’re on the move.
I know the following quote might make some people mad, but I’m still going to put it out there: “There is a physicality in [the sleeping] relationship and we can’t go on assuming that there are no physiological consequences to sleeping alone. … the Western pattern of putting babies to sleep alone in their own bed and in their own room is not only odd, it goes against the grain of how babies were designed to be cared for.” Despite my ambivalence about co-sleeping, I cannot help but agree with this statement. It doesn’t mean that mothers who put their babies to sleep in a crib are bad. Hell, I wish my baby would sleep in a crib, so I could have some time to myself sometimes. But I just can’t argue with the logic that human babies evolved sleeping with their parents (and spending much of their waking time in physical contact with them as well), and there may be some important biological aspects to co-sleeping that are currently not considered (by the mainstream, anyway).
I think the most important aspect of this book is the realization that many of the parenting philosophies we consider “right” are really rather arbitrary from a biological perspective, although they may make sense culturally. Other cultures do things other ways, and think we’re crazy and wrong. I personally think there are very few things in life that can accurately be labeled “right” or “wrong”. We all have to figure out what’s best for ourselves and our babies, and there is no one “right” solution that works for everyone. But don’t we deserve to make informed decisions? How can we choose what’s best, when “expert recommendations” are based on cultural norms instead of science?
I still have almost 100 pages to go, so I will probably be back with more thoughts and comments. If I ever finish the book, that is.