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In The Times of Tuesday 5 January 2010, Anna Shepard wrote an article entitled Keep calm and carry on. It discussed the benefits of carrying your baby in a sling, especially for fathers. I certainly don’t object to this, but I did feel there were disparaging comments about mothers who put young babies in prams. Not everyone wants to carry their toddler/child or thinks that it’s beneficial to do so. So I am going to write about why I preferred to use a pram/buggy and how this did not make me a bad mother.
Shepard cites Dr Ronald Barr who says that using slings reduces crying. “In his 2005 study, he reports that when mothers increase carrying their baby from 2.7 hours to 4.4 hours daily, crying can reduce by up to 43 percent.” I’m sure it does, but does it reflect the realities of being a busy mother?
For many women, carrying their babies is liberating as they simply carrying on doing what they would do, with a baby strapped to their body – as women around the world are forced to do because they don’t have the luxury of maternity leave from their physical jobs.
My issue is that sling carrying was not for me, I didn’t feel comfortable bending and reaching with a tiny baby strapped to my tummy. I resented the implication from this article that such admissions made me a less attentive mother. “…babies are not always ready for the relative independence of their own prams. They like to hear a reassuring heartbeat as well as the motion of their parents’ bodies”.
My babies slept in their own cot from night one (okay, night two, no-one really slept on night one!) and went straight into a fantastic carry cot that clipped to pram wheels. They never complained about it and they didn’t seem discontented or lacking in body contact – I loved cuddling them (and was dedicated to breast feeding, so had a lot of intimate contact that way), I just didn’t want to carry them all the time.
The article moves on from the benefits of dads carrying babies in slings to “In the US, sling-wearing is as much a movement as it is a means of carrying your baby.” Thus we launch into the discussion of attachment parenting. I’m not anti Attachment Parenting. Whenever I read about Attachment Parenting I feel like a monster because I let my babies cry (not all day, but I didn’t always go straight to them). But I couldn’t parent in an AP way. I loved my babies but needed some physical independence to retain my sanity; my own place in my own bed and time to move freely as an individual to achieve things not directly related to baby, like emptying the dishwasher. And I used to enjoy walking with a pram or buggy, especially when we lived in Bishkek. It was therapeutic to rumble around town behind a buggy, and we both enjoyed watching what we passed.
Shepard agrees – “I believe that slings should be taken for what they are, rather than bound up in the politics of parenting…I don’t buy the attitude that to be a good mother you must fasten yourself together for every second of the day.”
Reading this article I did feel a little pang of regret that I’d missed out – maybe I should have ventured beyond the Baby Bjorn and tried a fabric sling, maybe it was the sling I used that was the problem. But I’d not warmed to slings and didn’t want to pay for something I wouldn’t use. Also, nostalgia aside, I know myself and I know that I needed those periods of independence and would have been quickly claustrophobic with too much sling wearing! The women interviewed felt freer, I would have felt more constrained: this is the key to the issue, all mothers are different.
In Saying No, Asha Phillips argues that babies actually need their own space to start learning about who they are as independent beings. “The beginnings of being on your own, of separateness, are very important…With a parent who responds quickly to any cry or communication, the baby may well believe that he is not separate at all…In trying to be the perfect parents…we sometimes interpret too early, before he has had time to taste his own feeling…By wishing to spare the child, we may in fact rob him of his own experience.”
Surely the conclusion is that there is room for many styles of transporting baby and parenting, or preferably, a healthy mix of both. Just because you prefer one or the other, shouldn’t categorise your parenting; pacing the house with a new born in a sling is not the type of parenting all babies and parents want or need.
I found a buggy easier with three children while other mothers swear by the sling. Neither option makes us bad mothers, just busy ones.
While the country was paralysed due to snow, book club met to discuss Rape of the Fairy Country by Alexander Cordell. This had been suggested by D who was introduced to AC’s books by her mother.
Rape of the Fair country is the first of a trilogy following the lives of the Mortymer Family. While the blurb on someone’s copy described the book as “lusty”, I would have used the words “grim” or “brutal.”
The book opens in 1826 when Iestyn, aged 8, starts work in the iron mines. The community the Mortymers live in is dominated by iron; “on the first night of full working I laid on my back beside Jethro and watched the room change from moonlight to red as Furnace One grew into blast”. Everyone works there, including very young children and pregnant women, tapping at the rock face, pulling trams or controlling the dangerous furnaces.
Although the books follow the domesticity and relationships (hence the “lusty” description) of the Mortymers, poverty and politics are strong forces. This is the time when oppressed workers were clamouring for unions and the Chartists were active. In the biography it describes how Alexander Cordell, injured in the British army, was convalescing in Wales when he discovered that “hand in hand with the tale of the mountain town of Blaenavon, went the last bloody revolution, in Britain, the Chartist Revolution.” Thus he found the climax of this book.
Book club members confessed to crying at sections of this book, some pages were almost unbearably difficult to read. Life was harsh. People suffered in a way most of us (in this country) now cannot comprehend. Everyone had to work. They were cold in winter (no-one stopped for a bit of snow!) When the town went out on strike, children died of hunger. Men fought brutally when they disagreed. AC describes workers drinking their pay packet, with children starving at home. One man forces his wife to quote bible passages before he beats her.
Chapel, church and religion, the aristocracy and politicians, corruption and the manipulation of the mine owners, desperate poverty and the extraordinary inequality between workers and upper classes are all mingled into the family story. Men were fighting for a system we would now consider ours by right – the six points of the charter being “universal manhood suffrage, annual parliaments, voting by ballot, equal electoral districts, no property qualifications for members of Parliament and payment of members…Behind this political formula there was the cry of millions suffering under a diseased condition of society.”*
We loved this book. It’s a powerful piece of social and political history. The characters are strong and you are drawn into the lives, loves and deaths of the Mortymers. It was also, for me, an interesting example of how being in a book club can successfully widen your reading horizons. We seemed hesitant when D suggested this book; it was obscure and completely unknown to us. But it gained the highest score of any book we’ve read, and many of us are planning to read the rest of the trilogy. This says to me that sometimes it’s good to be challenged and try something new and unknown.
If you love fiction based on historical fact, and don’t mind grappling with a few Welsh names, I can thoroughly recommend Rape of the Fair Country.
*quote from The Age of Improvement by Asa Briggs
Nick Clegg has been criticised in the media for taking on Gina Ford and her parenting formula. I agree he was unwise to dismiss what does work for others. We all have our own parenting styles and what is right and what is wrong is not always obvious – and a very subjective and emotive matter of opinion. Clegg is a third-time parent with years of practical experience, which I have learnt is the most useful lesson! His comments could also be interpreted as belittling the importance of routine. This is not helpful because some form of structure is very valuable for babies and children and greatly missing in society, to all of our detriment. What I did relate to, however, was his criticism of the effect of being too reliant on Gina’s book. “I subcontracted my parental instincts to this book” Clegg admitted.
I understand that parenting classes, books and endless new government initiatives have sprung up to fill a vacuum – it is recognised that many people do not have positive parenting models in their lives and attempts are being made to break the cycle of bad parenting. The problem is that the help has gone too far. Rather than simply teaching a common sense approach, classes and books have become prescriptive about detail. Parents now feel inhibited from thinking for themselves in fear of getting it wrong. This was what Nick Clegg was criticising, that his wife felt compelled to check a book in the middle of the night rather than assessing the situation and making her own decision about what was right for her child at that moment.
Getting the balance between responding to and “ignoring” babies is very difficult. In Saying No: Why it’s Important for You and Your Child, Asha Phillips explains “research has shown that a mid-range of responsiveness works best for healthy development – that is, when a parent makes errors in interpretation and the parent-baby couple recover. It is reassuring to know that as parents we are not expected to ‘get it right’ every time…what babies need is “good enough mothering””.
This, for me, is positive advice. There is a political will to help vulnerable families, but I often cynically wonder if any of the new, expensive, complicated, bureaucratic schemes achieve the desired results. Anxious/young/first-time parents need to feel empowered to make positive parenting decisions for themselves, rather than just doing what the health visitor, or Gina Ford, says. Or, more sinisterly, not doing anything at all.
The Demos report found that “parents who combine warmth and consistency – a style described in this report as ‘tough love’ – are the most successful in developing character capabilities in their children.” The difficult issue is how best to help parents learn to give “Tough Love”.
I am very excited to have been chosen as the British Mummy Blogger of the week!
It may seem small but to me it’s a huge compliment, I feel very honoured. Thank you Potty Mummy for your support! It helps to know that people are reading and enjoying what I enjoy writing.
Welcome to my new look blog and website.
This would not have been possible without the technical help and support of my husband, M. So a big thank you goes to him.
Thank you to all who have supported my blog so far by reading and commenting. I hope you update your RSS feeds and continue to enjoy the discussions!
Saffia
School was open today and weather forecasters are predicting a big thaw over the weekend. Now I’m starting to panic how I will cope next week without my “snow day”. Despite my objections to the principles, I’ve got used to our days off. It’s become a treat to be protected by the muffler of snow from the normal requirements to chase and chivvy and frantically dash to school. The twilight, ethereal, glowing world of snow has become a sanctuary where we can enjoy being at home and catch up with ourselves.
Joking apart, my whole point in these last few postings has been to highlight the bigger issues behind the decision to close schools. With this in mind I thought this article in The Sunday Times was interesting. Jenni Russell discusses how the state has interfered in our lives to such an extent because Labour don’t trust us to make our own decisions. This goes to the core of my problem with schools closing – we can’t be trusted to decide whether it’s safe for us to get to school and there are endless petty health and safety rules strangling every practical decision. “By putting the state in the middle of everything, we’re destroying society” says a mother whose 15 year old son was forbidden to do work experience with a stockbroker in London because the council’s health and safety officer had to check all premises beforehand and he was not allowed to travel that far.
I appreciate that all these rules are supposed to be for our benefit, but they are actually counter-productive because, rather than protecting people in a practical and pragmatic way, they simply annoy and frustrate, turning people away from what would be sensible behaviour. I’m not launching into politics on this blog but I would love to see a government who can allow society to be responsible and stop marring our lives with petty and nonsensical regulations.
Thank you for visiting saffiafarr. This site is currently being constructed, when we have a quiet few moments in the evenings! Please come back again in a couple of days or find out what I think about schools closing in the snow at saffiafarr.blogspot.com
Okay, so it’s quite hard work getting children in and out of coats, hats, gloves and boots, but I’m quite enjoying living with snow. It’s beautiful; cold and crisp, huge crystals glittering in the sunshine. We are finally experiencing the stereotypical images of winter that are usually only seen in Christmas cards and history books.
Maybe it’s because I got used to this way of life when we lived in Kyrgyzstan where there can be snow for months. Schools stay open (unless it gets to minus 20) and roads are certainly never gritted, so everyone just gets on with it. Dilapidated Ladas, held together mostly by string, keep on sliding over ever thickening ice. Kyrgyz girls refuse to give up their fashion – stilettos. Watching them it occurred to me that this is actually quite sensible footwear for these conditions because the heels act like crampons in the snow and ice.
This morning our brilliant Sunday School was open – on the school site. Lots of people turned up, keen to keep life as normal as possible. We discussed schools closing – there’s already talk of school closing tomorrow, even though the snow hasn’t yet fallen. Twenty-four hour media, we decided, is part of the problem. They keep a story live, updating every hour, squeezing every detail from it – if I see one more report from a gritting depot I will scream! This means we are always on alert about something that we might just calmly get on with if not constantly bombarded by media hype.
It’s also occurred to me that one of the saddest things about this whole schools closing issue is the reflection of our society. Schools close because there is a presumption that if someone falls over and hurts themselves in the playground, they will sue. That says more about the attitude of society as a whole, the blame culture we have created, than the actual decision to close schools.
Tonight I have been to book club – what joy it was to get out of the house and talk to adults! Inevitably, we discussed school closures. Someone made a point I wanted to share – that the fact schools close so easily is actually a sad indictment of society. It’s because we’ve all become too litigious, too quick to cast blame and sue for any upset, that schools have become so anxious to limit risk.
On a positive note, T’s school is open tomorrow! Starting later and requesting children take packed lunches. As my husband said, do they read this blog…?
During the snow in February 2009 I had a rant about how easily schools closed and how this sets a bad example to our children. “…What it says to them is that when things get tough we just give up…” I fear I must vent again!
This morning my 6 year old was crying because, at 7am, there had not been an announcement that his school was closed. There was snow so he assumed that school would close. This is the example he has been set so this is now what he expects. By 7.30 the inevitable announcement had been made.
I’ve just read on the website that the school will be closed again tomorrow and I am disappointed. This snow is not a surprise. We have had plenty of warning. Other people are managing to get around, with care. Why can’t teachers get to work? Why can’t a skeleton staff open up for those pupils who can get in? I know some will say there’s a health and safety risk, someone might fall in the playground etc – but these days there’s always a health and safety excuse if you want one.
Why did the school not spend today preparing, such as gritting the playground and surrounding pavements? Why can’t they show some initiative and be adaptable. For example, why not start later, to give people more time to get in? Why not ask pupils to bring packed lunch? To give up and close with so little effort sets a poor example of perseverance, something I discussed in more detail in my February 2009 post.
The media don’t help. The morning news was full of melodrama and drastic advice – “don’t take your journey unless it’s absolutely necessary…” Do they consider the responsibility of going to work absolutely necessary? With this being said on the news, it becomes too easy for everyone to absolve themselves from even trying.
Maybe I feel like this because I’ve lived in countries where people cope in snow much deeper than this for months at a time. Maybe I feel like this because my parents have always been self-employed so I’ve grown up with a strong work ethic and an understanding of what it means to be entirely responsible for your business, every day, whatever the circumstances. For us, today, work had to go on. We run day nurseries and all three were open – with full credit to our staff who made huge efforts to get in. We feel a duty to the parents to stay open so that they can go to work. Why can schools not show the same care? They close and this impacts on all the working parents.
I am very aware that many of these decisions are taken by the council rather that the schools. But it’s too easy for some distant civil servant to declare all schools closed without any thought about what this really means. I’m sure some of you will tell me that roads are treacherous and it’s irresponsible to be out. That may be so in some areas, but around here, things really aren’t that bad. Most of the pupils could walk to school – something that is endlessly discussed in assemblies when they are promoting the health and environmental benefits of walking to school!
I’m not entirely miserable, I can appreciate that it’s wonderful to be able to spend the day pottering at home and playing in the snow, but I do believe there is a bigger issue and that the collective reaction to snow is unfortunate. Yes, there’s more effort involved when our world is covered in snow, but what is teaching all about? Why, as a society, do we not try and persevere through adversity any more?
Ps, in February 2009 I gave credit to our milkman, Dave, who didn’t miss a delivery. At 4am this morning, Dave was out in the snow leaving our milk by the gate. Well done Dave, and thank you!
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