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Letters in issue 14 |
Ambivalent and scary feelings
First of all I would like to express my deep appreciation for your moving and eloquent editorials every issue — I always look forward to the next one.
Secondly, I have a suggestion for an article about a subject I would dearly love to see openly discussed. I am a big supporter of attachment parenting and aware parenting and many things that your magazine draws attention to.
Something that never seems to be discussed in any publication is the ambivalent feelings that go along with motherhood.
I am really struggling in this area right now, with my three- and four-year-old children. I adore my children to bits; which makes it all the more disturbing when I can all of a sudden feel intense resentment and hatred whenever things get a bit stressed and frenzied. And I am not talking about a bit of mild annoyance, but full-on sickening waves of hatred and urges to hurt them. Now, I would never actually hurt my children; and so I am able to have a bit of perspective about these feelings. I also know I am not alone in these feelings; but even among close friends it is very difficult to discuss something that has long been taboo in our society.
There is so much written about how motherhood awakens deep feelings of love; and this is true. But what is rarely mentioned is the shadow side of this. I would love to see some really open and frank discussion on this topic; because I think it could be enormously freeing for us mothers who feel burdened by the shame of such feelings; and are terrified they mean there is something deeply wrong with us.
Rachel
email
Thanks heaps
I just wanted to say your mag has restored my faith in parenting. Whenever I feel we are all being fed a load of crap concerning our children, families and community’s needs, I just need to reread any byronchild magazine and can feel at peace that there are others out there that think like me. Thanks heaps.
Samantha
email
I find your information EXTREMELY interesting and timely!!! Australia is ahead of its time!!!
O. C. Jung
United States
I love your magazine. It continues to inspire and challenge me in dozens of small and large ways — our household is evolving to be a better place partly thanks to your magazine. It is the only publication in this house that gets read from cover to cover (with a 9-month-old son that is a feat in itself!) and then gets passed around for those friends whose one-income budgets don’t stretch to magazines!
Jodi
email
Dragon of an article
As parents of two children, with our youngest not immunised, we would like to take this opportunity to thank byronchild for the article ‘A Dragon by the Tail’ by Lisa Reagan (March – May 05 edition), and for bringing such information into the open. This article will give so many parents the power of choice, which is something so many don’t realise they have.
Heather
New South Wales
As a parent of an autistic child, I wish to thank you for your article, ‘A Dragon By The Tail’ by Lisa Reagan (March – May 05 edition). The world needs more investigative research like your article.
Andy Hines
United States
Your article on the vaccine cover-up is truly excellent. I have referred to it in a British Medical Journal online response site, where a battle has been raging for years now.
Lisa Blakemore-Brown
United Kingdom
Vaccine discrimination
After reading your article on childcare (‘Who Cares? Making Informed Choices about Childcare’, March – May 05 edition), I called to find out what was available in family daycare in my region. It was painful to learn, however, that in the Maroochy region (South East Queensland) children who have not been medically vaccinated will not be accepted for council listed family daycare! These children are, however, able to access in-home daycare. I do not meet the criteria for this as I am not in a remote area. I also have access to centre-based care in my area, which will accept all children, regardless of vaccination status.
It is interesting to note that children who have a medical exemption will be accepted! So if a doctor states that my child may not be vaccinated for medical reasons (surely all children fall into this category. Exposure to unsafe levels of thimerosal being the first reason that comes to mind...) they will be allowed to attend.
Although vaccinating our children is NOT mandatory in this country, exclusion of this type is legal, according to my local council.
The supervisor of the family daycare information centre was quite helpful, sympathetic and did advise me to get together with other like-minded parents and write to our MP about this situation. She told me she runs into this discussion with parents of non-medically vaccinated children on a regular basis.
So any other parents of non-vaccinated children within the Maroochy Council area who would like to make contact with me to register their dissatisfaction with our local MP, my email address is found below.
Thank you, byronchild, for pushing the boundaries of what parenthood means in a time of great transition for us all.
Jane Little
Queensland
janelittle@gmail.com
Australian Vaccination Network responds:
Unfortunately, you live in one of the two shires in all of Australia which discriminate against unvaccinated children — Noosa Shire right next door is the other. It is amazing to me that this situation has persisted for so many years but it is mostly a matter of lack of money to take these shires to court which has allowed this to continue.
There is a bit of history here. In the mid 1990s, Greg Beattie tried to get his child into a council-run childcare facility and ran into the same situation you have now found yourself in. He decided to do something about this since it is completely illegal to discriminate against anyone in Australia on the basis of their vaccination status.
Greg took the Maroochy Shire to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Tribunal. He had an expert witness, Dr. Viera Scheibner, who appeared on his behalf and Greg, who ran an organisation called the VINE (Vaccination Information Network) had a very considerable level of knowledge on this issue himself. Both Dr. Scheibner and Greg Beattie turned up on the day of the hearing with reams and reams of medical journal information to prove that Greg’s unvaccinated children would not place others in the centre at risk of disease. In fact, in that information, there was data on the risk that the VACCINATED could place others under since anyone who receives a live virus vaccine (oral polio, measles, mumps, rubella and chicken pox) is infectious for up to 90 days after vaccination.
The person who heard this case did not let them present ANY of their information. He simply stated that there was no time and that they should leave their references there and he would look at them later. The three expert witnesses for the council included Dr. Gus Nossel (now Sir Gus Nossel) and two other doctors. Between the 3 of them, they did not bring a scrap of information nor were they able to answer Greg’s questions about vaccination.
In fact, Greg had carefully studied one of Dr. Nossel’s published papers and had it with him at the time. He questioned Dr. Nossel on the results of this paper and Dr Nossel had to admit that he could not remember nor could he answer Greg’s questions.
Despite this, when the result came back several months later, it was decided that the council was within their rights to discriminate against unvaccinated children because they could harbour within their bodies the diseases which could be spread among the community. This result was ludicrous and had no basis in scientific fact since healthy people do not spread disease. None of the information presented on the day would have given this impression — it was simply a matter of ignorant prejudice.
Now, since this case was heard in the Human Rights Tribunal, it never set a legal precedent. But the councils have been using it as justification of their illegal and discriminatory policies ever since
I have to say that this situation has been a personal bugbear to me since Greg lost that case. Both myself and the AVN (Australian Vaccination Network) would love to be more involved in overthrowing these policies but would definitely not be able to do this on our own. I believe that a properly coordinated media and political campaign involving as many parents as possible would be able to shame both Noosa and Maroochy Shires into changing their rules.
If you are willing to work with me on this, and if you are willing to help get together a group of local parents who feel the same (perhaps we can help to fund a series of small ads in the Sunshine Coast daily for example?), that would be great. This situation has gone on for far too long — it is time now for the people who live in these areas and who are affected by what their paid representatives are doing to withhold their legal rights to stand up and say they won’t take this sort of treatment any more.
Please let me know if you are willing to be involved in this and we can get the ball rolling.
Meryl Dorey
Australian Vaccination Network
www.avn.org.au
Childcare — how much is too much?
With regards to your article, ‘Who Cares? Making informed choices about childcare’ (March – May 2005), I enjoyed the content and layout, but have one query.
Specifically, how many hours per week of childcare is considered detrimental to a child’s wellbeing? And starting at what age? I am sure there are studies which give such a figure.
My daughter has been in family daycare, whilst both of us worked. From age 1 – 5, her average hours in FDC was 18 hours per week and then 6 hours in her preschool year.
I am a committed parent, and have always opted to working minimal hours to ensure that my daughter did not become a ‘day-care kid’. I don’t believe in all day, every day childcare. Our family daycarer helped us enormously over the years, giving us tips on all sorts of childcare matters.
To this end, my daughter, Sian, is a happy, well-adjusted seven-year-old-girl.
Narelle Blessington
New South Wales
Peter Cook, author of Early Child Care – Infants and Nations at Risk, responds:
Narelle Blessington disarmingly writes: ‘…but I have one query. Specifically, how many hours per week of childcare is considered detrimental to a child’s wellbeing? And starting at what age? I am sure there are studies which give such a figure.’
This looks like a straightforward question, but it isn’t. There is no good, simple answer. You could ask many ‘experts’ and get many opinions. I could write a book about it … in fact, I already have — Early Child Care — Infants and Nations at Risk. There was a picture of it in the last issue of byronchild on the editorial page. This book would help you to understand for yourself how to evaluate any answer you might receive. I know of no other book which does this. You can read some of it on the net.
To understand the issues behind your question we need to know what is the species-normal experience for human infants. I have described this from a biological and cross-cultural perspective in the opening chapter of my book and you can read it on the website of The Natural Child, run by Jan Hunt in the US. See www.naturalchild.org/peter_cook
If you accept that basis for the normal experience, then the question is really asking: ‘How far, and in what ways, can we depart from the biologically normal environment for a baby/infant/toddler without having any detrimental effect?’
If you had read the book by Gay Ochiltree Effects of childcare on young children: forty years of research, published in 1994 by the Australian Institute of Family Studies in Melbourne, you might have concluded that Australian childcare was mostly of high quality and that there was no research relevant to Australia to show ill-effects of our high quality childcare — in fact it could be good for you. It was this book that prompted me to write my book, and I devoted chapter 6 to a critique of Ochiltree’s review.
A basic issue you can’t honestly sidestep is that of breastfeeding. To the extent that non-maternal childcare precludes breastfeeding for, say, 9 months (or more) there is a wealth of evidence of detrimental effects — both in the short- and long-term development of the child. In Feb 2005 the American Academy of Pediatrics updated their Statement on Breastfeeding, and the evidence and their recommendations are very strong. Some conclusions from that and the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council will be summarised briefly in the next issue of byronchild.
Meanwhile see:
http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/pediatrics;115/2/496.pdf
Also
http://www.breastfeeding.asn.au/advocacy/030804abastrategy.pdf
A rigorous study in the Journal of the American Medical Association 2002 reported (amongst other things) that adults who had been breastfed for nine months averaged six points IQ above those breastfed for less than one month.
Another way to tease out the question is to follow the practice of Professor Joad, the philosopher, who became famous on the BBC ‘Brainstrust’ program years ago. ‘Well, it all depends on what you mean by “childcare”, and also on what you mean by “detrimental to a child’s wellbeing”.’ Each of these in turn depends on very many variables: a) in the child b) in the family, and c) in the childcare, and only a few of these are measurable in research terms.
The (US) National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD) set up a multimillion dollar study to answer some of these questions. The study is outlined in my chapter 5, which also describes five other bodies of relevant research. Surprisingly, they did not record any data about breastfeeding in the children they are studying for so long. The postscript in the May 1997 reprint of my book summarises some research findings of the NICHD study up to age 36 months. Some later findings are summarised in some of my other writings on the same website as my book.
If you want to understand proper research-based answers, the ‘detriment’ you are looking for is an ‘outcome’, or ‘dependent variable’ — so called because it ‘depends’ on the presumed cause. The latter is called the ‘independent variable’ because it does not ‘depend’. It has a variety of qualities that are ‘givens’ and you try to hold them constant, so that you can measure its ‘effects’, if any, on the child, and perhaps on the child’s family, and later peers (and even teachers!) at school. But, these are not yet proven ‘effects’, just outcomes (statistical associations!). The differences may be due to other factors that you have not considered. In rigorous terms, the causal link still remains to be established, before they can be accepted as ‘effects’. For more detail, see chapter 3 in my book; ‘The design and interpretation of research studies’.
The non-maternal childcare experience can vary in many ways. We can record some variables: eg type, quality, stability (many changes?), age of entry, duration in hours per week, or duration over time in months, years. There can likewise be many variables in the family, and, again, in the baby, infant or toddler. No two are the same. It’s not easy to get meaningful results. And what are you to look for as outcomes? And when? If you find differences, how long do they have to last for you to regard them as detrimental?
Today, everyone knows of bonding and attachment. But do you know a reliable and valid way of measuring love? If it’s not valid (ie truly measuring what it purports to measure) and reliable (giving you the same results on repeated measurements), then would you rely on it? Come to think of it, do babies, infants and toddlers in long daycare need to be loved by their carers? It can’t be part of the requirements for a childcare worker’s job to love the children she cares for.
In 1988 Karl Zinsmeister wrote: the deepest problem with paid child-rearing is that someone is being asked to do for money what very few of us are able to do for any reason other than love. Competent baby-sitting, that is not so hard to hire. What will always be difficult is finding people who feel such affinity with the child that they will go out of their way to do the tiny things that make children thrive...’ (Brave New World: how day-care harms children. Policy Review, Spring 1988: Washington, DC. Summarised in The Readers Digest and cited in my book, p.149).
In my book on pages 102-106, I summarise a Swedish doctoral study by Ingrid Harsman, and I would be glad to know of any others like it. Sweden is reputed to have the highest quality childcare in the world. Harsman studied infants’ reactions over five months, before and after admission to a childcare centre, and compared the outcomes with a mother-care home control group. Whether the ‘effects’ lasted beyond the five-month duration of the study I do not know. I hope not. To my knowledge, no one has ever made a movie — over time — showing what happens to an infant placed in long daycare. There are closed-circuit TVs all over the place, but none in childcare nurseries, so far as I know. Does anybody know of one?
And what about measurable duration of effect? Do you regard any possible effect as ‘detrimental’ if you can measure an adverse difference in some way at 18 or 36 months, as compared with an infant who has been in mothercare, but by age seven or eight you can’t measure any difference? Does that mean there isn’t any difference, or has it become ‘latent’? And what if some other group of researchers were to re-analyse the NICHD findings and come to different (more serious) conclusions about what the findings meant? Interesting!
My book chiefly focuses on institutional daycare for children under three, not on other types, such as family daycare: you can’t cover everything at once. If you have to get non-maternal, non-familial care, Dr. Burton White has put the alternatives in his order of preference. These are listed in my book on pages 53-4, under the heading ‘When childcare is unavoidable’, and they were reproduced in the last issue of byronchild. It sounds as if Narelle’s child had a limited quantity of care in the third choice; clearly a great deal depends on the personal qualities of the carer, the hours and the ages during which the child was there. Nobody can say that a given happening will always produce a given result, because infants and toddlers vary in resilience; in simple terms, some are tender and some are tough.
The evidence as it comes in on early brain development, including the Canadian Early Years Study — Reversing the Real Brain Drain, together with the evidence for the importance of longish breastfeeding (and exclusively, without any formula etc for 6six months), all seem to me, to commend the precautionary principle: try to keep near to nature’s well-established infant mothering and familial pattern for all primates, including humans.
Peter Cook
Australia
(to obtain a copy of Early Child Care – Infants and Nations at Risk, call Freedom Publishing at 03 9326 5757)
Sovereignty
byronchild has come into our lives through the gentle and yet persuasive hands of Anna Jahns (byronchild contributing editor).
Based in Mumbhai, India for the last 15 years, our mission at the Health Awareness Centre is to awaken ‘sovereignty’ — the responsibility to take care of our health. Your editorial (Issue 13, March – May 2005) so powerfully put this into perspective.
Our slogan is ‘Health Care is Self Care is Earth Care’, by which we vision a harmonious, pro-active, co-existence with the laws of nature. We believe that health care is the fundamental tool to creating caring communities — all over.
We are excited by the prospect of seeing byronchild available to other parents/health seekers/activists who can be affirmed in their own choices and actions here in Mumbhai. We see the real possibility of byronchild ‘supporting the evolutionary imperative of conscious parenting’ — and living.
The articles and well-researched, real, living stories in byronchild provide motivation, inspiration and courage to live according to one’s natural instincts. Can we in some way integrate our efforts, so that the increasing dependence on government measures and policy-dictated models of health care are reversed? Two outstanding examples in India are that of immunisation and medical birthing.
The onus of health care in the hands of the individual (with the support from the community at large) is something that we are constantly working towards.
The biggest hurdles are:
• Lack of choices
• Fear and isolation
• Little or no availability of alternative medical literature (ie the capacity for informed refusal)
Every issue of byronchild (we have all 13 glorious issues!) celebrates our own beliefs and values — and we take this opportunity to feel and share our blessings. We completely support your honest, clear-sighted vision for our collective future. May the truth always prevail.
Dr. Vijay Venkat
The Health Awareness Centre
Mumbhai, India
Kindred strives to adhere to strict advertising guidelines. Please help us keep our Google Ads in alignment with Kindred's values. Contact us with the URL of any ad on this page if you think it is contradictory to our content.Thank you. |
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