Product Description

In every culture baby care issues are the same - from crying babies to sleepless nights, breastfeeding problems to weaning worries. But when it comes to solutions, there is much that we can learn from other country's traditions. There are cultures, for example, where babies rarely cry, where breastfeeding is routine for grandmothers as well as mothers, and where babies always sleep with older family members. Looking beyond our own narrow approach is not only fascinating but hugely enlightening too. Tackling all the topics of modern baby care, theme by theme, this is a treasure trove of positive ideas, combining the unusual and the universal, the unexpected and the commonplace. Reassuring for parents everywhere, it shows there is no one way of bringing up baby.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #143780 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

Daily Mail, February 22, 2002
This is the best book on bringing up babies I've ever read, and that's saying something. by Georgina Metcalfe

About the Author
Deborah Jackson is a parenting author and freelance writer for newspapers and magazines including the Independent, Daily Mail and Guardian. She writes a regular column for Natural Parent. She has three children.

Excerpted from Baby Wisdom by Deborah Jackson. Copyright © 2002. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
It was D.W. Winnicott, paediatrician and psychiatrist, who made us all appreciate the importance of the transitional object. A transitional object, he said – whether it be a blanket, a teddy bear or a scarf – is invested with magical powers by the baby.
The child fixes on the object because he must fix on some reliable comfort source, and the 'blankie' or 'teddy' does not leave him while he sleeps. Adults understand this attachment and they respect it. If you have ever seen a child in panic over a lost teddy bear, notice the seriousness with which everyone takes this loss, and the energy they put into finding the treasured toy.
With an interest in encouraging solitary infant sleep, western culture has for years promoted the use of transitional objects. Attachment to people is judged negatively (the child is deemed 'clingy'), but attachment to things is considered natural and acceptable.

Better than lying with your toddler or young child until he falls asleep at night is for him to fall asleep with a 'transitional object' – a stuffed animal, a doll, a toy, a special blanket. The toy will often help him accept the night-time separation from you and can be a source of reassurance and comfort when he is alone. It will give him a feeling of having a little control over his world because he may have the toy or blanket with him whenever he wants, which he cannot expect from you . . .
But if you always allow yourself to be used in the manner of such an object – to lie with him, to feed or rock him, to be held, cuddled or caressed by him, or let him twirl your hair whenever he tries to fall asleep – he will never take on a transitional object, because he won’t need to.

Dr Richard Ferber, American paediatrician

This circular argument is a classic of modern paediatric thinking. The doctor advises parents to help their child 'animate' an object, so that the parents do not become 'objectified' as sources of comfort. We get the sense that Ferber will be disappointed if babies do not invest strong emotions in a soft animal. There is no mention of the loss that a child must experience in order to transfer his affections to a piece of material that doesn't argue or love back or, indeed, offer any quality other than that of being tactile. Nor is there any sense that, in encouraging children to choose these special toys, we might be creating an unhealthy and lifelong reliance on inanimate objects.
Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud said that 'animism' – the transference of human attributes to material objects – is our first system of thought, our first psychology. It is a process which allows ordinary items to hold special meanings, a tendency which lasts throughout our life. Some child care experts reverse this argument to imply that the evolved interactions of parent and baby may somehow steal the limelight from the teddy bear.
Have we, like the child, forgotten that the bear is just a bit of fabric with a face sewn on?
Attachment objects are the recourse of babies who are being trained for independence before they are ready to take it.
Whether it is an expensive teddy bear or a ragged bit of stuffing makes no difference to the baby. It is the familiarity he seeks: the same smell, the same feel, the same fibres pressed against his skin, as he tries anxiously to inhale some of the human associations for which he is programmed.
Western babies seek comforters between the ages of nine months and a year – around the time of weaning, according to Winnicott; or 'as babyhood draws to a close', according to zoologist Desmond Morris. In fact, of course, neither babyhood nor breastfeeding are over by nine months in traditional cultures. The attachment object is entirely a symptom of our own child care practices, at this point in our cultural development.
In a study of London mothers whose babies were born at home, birth researcher Dr Michel Odent discovered that one main factor predicted babies' use, or non-use, of security objects.
Children who were breastfed at night for more than a year did not need them. At the other end of the scale, children who are severely deprived of human bonding experiences (babies in old-fashioned foundling homes and orphanages, for instance) do not seek comfort objects, either. They have withdrawn too far to attach to anything. Michel Odent suggested that 'the need for a transitional object is a healthy reaction of a normal child to a special situation'.
Needless to say, you can't have transitional teddy bears in a world with minimal possessions. Children evolved to attach primarily to their mothers and secondarily to any other humans who presented themselves with affection. Hunter-gatherer tribes did not have to search the bush for their babies' lost 'blankies' when they should really have been searching for berries.
Babies of rural Egypt, for instance, receiving non-stop nurture and attention, by night and day, have no choice but to attach themselves to people:

In large extended families adults and children, who are consistently loving and nurturing, surround infants and engage them in almost constant social interaction.These infants do not have toys to play with and do not form attachments to blankets or dolls as do American infants. They learn to play with people, not inanimate objects.

Judy Brink, anthropologist, in Giza, an area one hour’s drive from Cairo

Babies who are separated for sleep are likely to become attached to the paraphernalia around them: some Skagit Native American children in Washington, for instance, drag their cradleboards around while they play, in the manner of a security object. But there is absolutely nothing 'fundamental' about the use of mother-substitutes when there is a mother or other willing to play the role. Many children around the world grow up without beanies, bears, blankets and crucial bits of bedding.

Customer Reviews

An overview of world babies
I ordered this book after hearing the author interviewed about it on 'Woman's Hour'. I had visions of her having travelled to all these far flung places to do her research. However instead 'Baby Wisdom' trawels through all the literature on baby care, both historical and anthropological. A disappointment? No, for this is no mean feat, and it certainly does a thorough job of it. Infact Deborah Jackson's book must be one of the most comprehensive overviews of its kind.

If you liked the Body Shop's "Mamatoto", you will love this. It's a similar idea, but gives us much, much more. I particularly valued the quotes which gave names and voices to women from around the world, rather than just relying on the anthropologists' reports.

The book sets out to describe the 'difference and sameness' between babycare practices around the world. It does this without giving way to the temptation to take the moral high ground over issues which we know are close to the author's heart. There is no preachy tone, just some witty, some humourous, and some thought provoking remarks. (Not least the revelation that in a Somerset hospital there was a correlation between birth weight and net chocolate weight of y=3349+0.52058x, where the chocolates were the thank you present.)

One regret is that Baby Wisdom is not illustrated. I have some of the books sourced, and find the old black and white photos the anthropologists took as fascinating as the texts. However, any interested reader could follow up the references if they wanted to find out more about the cultures featured.

One thing is for sure: however quirky your baby is, however far you stray from the health visitor's advice, you need not feel alone in the world. You can take comfort from the wisdom that somewhere in human evolution there's a reason for every baby's babyness.

Baby Wisdom
Deborah Jackson has been the most influential author for me as a mother since having my son four years ago, when I saw this book in the bookshop I automatically bought and it does not disappoint. As usual, Jackson has produced a book which encourages and celebrates a mother's instinct when caring for her baby and small child. The amazing variety of baby care practices from around the world are presented clearly and serve to encourage western mothers and fathers to examine the "wisdom" of some current baby care advice. I was struck by the way in which babies are viewed by the different cultures around the world, most seeing babies as normal, necessary participants in a family's/society's life, mothers and babies are generally not separated either from each other or from the society within which they live. I think we have a lot to learn in the west, where separation from all that is familiar and reassuring is the experience of many new mothers, it is no wonder that "routine, parent-directed baby care advice" has found such a ready market here.
If you want to re-examine western attitudes to babies, mothers and their care, read this book, it will help to set you free to be the mother/father that you instinctively want to be.
I am expecting our second child in October and this book has strengthened my resolve to do it "my way". With a back up of millions of other mothers around the world!

Browse through 'Baby wisdom'
I did not read "Baby Wisdom". You cannot peruse such a rich non-fiction book from page one to page 500. I put it somewhere on my desk and, now and then, I open it at random. Each time I start reading I need a pen to take notes. The more I explore this inimitable source of information, the more I am amazed by the art Deborah Jackson has developed to widen our horizons. On the first page that caught my attention, I came across the story of a mother gorilla in a zoo who had been unable to give the breast to her baby until the day when she saw a group of breastfeeding human mothers. Via such a story you are immediately conditioned to interpret many current breastfeeding difficulties and to accept the key sentence in that page: "Western humans are born and raised in an environment as artificial as any zoo". You unreservedly agree that we cannot make assumptions about human infant feeding in general by looking at our very special cultural milieu.
'Baby wisdom' cannot be compared with any other book or manual about babies and child rearing. Let us take as an example the chapter about crying babies. Most baby books focus on recipes in order to calm a colicky baby. Deborah Jackson first helps us to realize that crying is the universal language of infancy. Thanks to her highly concise style she just needs one line: "Rhesus monkeys coo. Ape babies scream. And human infants cry". After that we are curious to know about the interpretation of infant crying in different cultural milieus. When our curiosity has been amply fulfilled, we are ready to accept that our western interpretations set us apart from most of the world.
Browse through 'Baby wisdom' and you'll learn about human nature from an authentic expert...the mother of three children.
Liliana Lammers
Doula and grandmother