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A thought-provoking combination of practical parenting information and scientific analysis, Our Babies, Ourselves is the first book to explore why we raise our children the way we do--and to suggest that we reconsider our culture's traditional views on parenting. New parents are faced with innumerable decisions to make regarding the best way to care for their baby, and, naturally, they often turn for guidance to friends and family members who have already raised children. But as scientists are discovering, much of the trusted advice that has been passed down through generations needs to be carefully reexamined. In this ground-breaking book, anthropologist Meredith Small reveals her remarkable findings in the new science of ethnopediatrics. Professor Small joins pediatricians, child-development researchers, and anthropologists across the country who are studying to what extent the way we parent our infants is based on biological needs and to what extent it is based on culture--and how sometimes what is culturally dictated may not be what's best for babies. Should an infant be encouraged to sleep alone? Is breast-feeding better than bottle-feeding, or is that just a myth of the nineties? How much time should pass before a mother picks up her crying infant? And how important is it really to a baby's development to talk and sing to him or her? These are but a few of the important questions Small addresses, and the answers not only are surprising, but may even change the way we raise our children.
Syracuse, New York, in the late 1980s led U.S. cities in African American infant deaths. Even today, in this "all American city," infants of color die more than two times as often as white babies. Infant mortality is too often addressed as if it were an isolated problem, rather than part of a systemic and repeating pattern of embedded racism and structural violence. The clearing of whole neighborhoods during urban renewal, coupled with the collapse of industry, brought unintended consequences. Dilapidated rental housing, abandoned houses, and empty lots provide the conditions for lead poisoning, gonorrhea, and illicit drug use. Inadequate education, unemployment, and racially biased arrest and sentencing underpin the epidemic of African American male incarceration. Inmate fathers cannot provide financial support and only limited emotional support during collect calls from jail or prison. Supermarkets fled the inner city, where corner stores sell cigarettes, malt liquor, lottery tickets, and drug paraphernalia in place of healthy food. The stories and the data in this book show that low birth weight, premature birth, and infant death are a part of life patterns resulting from systemic discrimination increasing risk over a lifetime and, in some cases, reaching the next generation.
Illustrating the myriad ways that mothers provide for their children—piloting airplanes, washing floors, or dancing at a strip club—this book is the first to depict a sex-worker parent. It provides an expanded notion of working mothers and challenges the idea that only some jobs result in good parenting. We’re reminded that, while every mama’s work looks different, every mama works to make their baby’s world better.
For the last forty years, J. Ronald Lally has worked with state and federal agencies to improve services for infants and toddlers in the United States and abroad. In this new book, Lally paints a stark picture of how our babies have been forced to shoulder the fallout of massive societal changes over the past 60 years—changes that have resulted in less access to their parents, longer time spent in child care, and substandard child care and services. For Our Babies features the resonant voices of American parents speaking of their hopes, worries, and frustrations living in a country with too few parental and child supports. It describes American parents’ general lack of awareness about how little they receive from their state and federal governments compared to parents living in other countries. This important book includes crucial testimony from developmental psychologists, child care providers, health and mental health professionals, economists, specialists in brain development, and early learning educators about how policy and practices must change in the United States if parents are to raise children who will become healthy, productive members of society. This book is part of the For Our Babies initiative. Visit the website, which includes an author blog, at www.forourbabies.org. J. Ronald Lally is the co-director of the Center for Child and Family Studies at WestEd, an educational research and development laboratory in San Francisco. He created the Program for Infant and Toddler Care and is one of the founders of Zero to Three: National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families. “Lally is right. Our economy and our society will be stronger if public policies do more to help raise healthy babies. I applaud his tireless efforts to increase national awareness about the critical importance of improving early childhood development for all families.” —U.S. Congressman George Miller (D-CA-11) “Dr. Lally’s book sensitively captures the tension in knowing that infants at birth are both full of unlimited developmental potential and at the same time desperately dependent on their surroundings. And, thankfully, it is filled with ways to act on his informed and urgent plea for action to change policy and practice.” —Carol Brunson Day, President, Brunson Phillips & Day, Inc. “Professor Lally draws on a lifetime of working with infants to review and synthesize the research about the importance of the first 3 years of life, and what babies need—especially from their relationships with parents and caregivers—to thrive developmentally and socially. He then paints a disturbing picture of how present policies are failing young children—the invisible neglect. This book is a ‘must read’ for all who care about young children and their future.” —Frank Oberklaid, Director, Centre for Community Child Health, Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne “This is a clarion and moving call on behalf of our most vulnerable and valuable citizens, our amazing babies. It gathers together the freshest and broadest knowledge of what they need to flourish and contrasts this to the myriad ways our policies and practices consistently fail them. For Our Babies is an energizing, enlightening, and wholly loving book.” —Jeree Pawl, Clinical Pyschologist, Board of Directors, Zero to Three “Lally and others, including some of the economists cited in this book, have shown how investments in quality early education and preventive healthcare will more than pay for themselves when children reach adulthood. . . . This book is a starting place for urgently needed dialogue that will finally lead to action.” —From the Foreword by T. Berry Brazelton and Joshua Sparrow, Harvard University
Abstract: A 1981 expert report to the US Congress and the Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services of a major study to develop strategies for improved child health is presented in 4 volumes. Volume 1 summarizes the major findings and recommendations; Volume 2 outlines the analysis and recommendations for selected federal programs (Title V of the Social Security Act; Medicare and EPSDT; WIC program; the Handicapped Children Education Act; community health pr ograms; and major federal maternal and child health programs); Volume 3 presents a statistical profile of the most compr ehensive compilation of data on child health in the US to date; Volume 4, Part 1 comprises a set of commissioned papers prepared for working groups of the Select Panel for the Promotion of Child Health concerning health care and health poli cy toward childrenand pregnant women; and Volume 4, Part 2 presents a detailed comprehensive description regarding the f inancing and organization of federal health care services. The recommendations of the overall report reflect a realistic analysis of serious unmet needs in child and maternal health, a recognition of past sucesses and future challenges for meeting these needs, a detailed consideration of the weaknesses and strengths of current federal programs and policies, and a pragmatic assessment of the capacity of the US to provide parents and health care professionals the scientific, fi nancial, and organizational support required to improve child health. The total report covers 1839 pages.
California has the highest rate of teenage pregnancies in the nation. The birthrate is increasing, and nearly 1/4th of teen births are repeat births. The majority of fathers of children born to teenagers are adults. This report was a part of a Town Hall meeting to provide a form in which H.S. students, educators and legislators could engage in face-to-face dialogue about problems of mutual concern. Contents: the causes and conditions of adolescent pregnancy (excerpts from "Teen Girls Learning to Survive as Moms", the causes of adolescent pregnancy); public policy in CA and responses to it (prevention, intervention). Tables.