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Letters in Issue 21 |
Love letters
What a wonderful production, well done. I love the colours and layout, great information on baby wearing and controlled crying and also loved your editorial, Kali [Kindred, Dec 06 – Jan 07 edition].
Thanks for your insights into the misogyny — hatred of women — that pervades our culture. I agree, and I think it’s getting worse. For example, it amazes me that modern women have accepted our increasingly ‘raunch culture’, even embraced it, without realising that it is basically an imposition of (some) men’s ideas of women’s sexuality. It also adds increasing pressure on women to be sexually available, or at least look like it, 24/7, beginning even before puberty.
I encourage women to consider what they want to look like, sound like and act like, and follow their own impetus, rather than be slaves to a fashion that is not based on women’s needs. One place where we can start to reclaim our sexuality, as well as our feminine power, is in birth. Birth can also teach men about women’s power and sexuality, enhancing respect for motherhood and reuniting our Western split of women into mother or sexual being.
Giving birth can be a powerful initiation into a deeper and richer sexuality for women and their partners. (Physiologically, the hormonal orchestration of birth and sex are almost identical, except for higher hormonal peaks at birth — see my book Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering for more about the hormonal highs of birth, and reclaiming birth.) The power of birth is beautifully illustrated in the Australian documentary Birthrites.
An Inuit community that worked hard to bring birth back to their township also found lower rates of youth suicide, assault against women and sexual abuse of children as a consequence. In birth, we relearn a respect for our bodies, for women and for Mother Nature that can guide and nourish us individually and as a community.
Healing the earth can begin at birth.
Sarah Buckley
Brisbane, QLD
I wanted to write to thank you for publishing such a wonderful magazine! I am a new subscriber and after reading your magazine, I found myself ordering almost all of your back issues. It is the first magazine that I read from top to bottom and sometimes more than once. I’m hooked!
I find that your magazine has given my husband and I the confidence that the choices we have made in parenting are not so strange and out-there, but smart and really right for us. Reading your magazine has made me feel certain and not so alone when we chose to continue to breastfeed, not control-cry and stop immunising.
I was wondering if you may have any information of any groups such as mothers’ groups that are on the Central Coast in NSW that are byronchild /Kindred readers or into natural parenting? I would love to find a (mothers’) group or attempt to perhaps organise one that has the same views and ideas of parenting that I do, that Kindred does.
Keep up the great work!
M Edwards
(Editor’s note: anyone who does know of any mothering / parenting groups on the Central Coast, please contact me and I’ll forward on.)
Gorgeous magazine, Kali.
Congratulations! Stellar contribution to the revolution.
Generations of unborn children are now that much wiser, simply by having Kindred born before them. And what we once took as the sacred spiritual pilgrimage to the East, often to transcend and/or neglect our own childhood, is now found within the pages of your magazine. Long live the new lineage of infant enlightenment — the process by which parents worship the heart of their child allowing both to become free and the baby to grow up as teacher.
Alan Clements
Founder, World Dharma Institute
www.institute.worlddharma.net
Being a new mother in this complex, yet beautiful world is a challenge, to say the least. Finding a publication with such good intention is a gift beyond words. I can only hope to articulate my appreciation.
Wading my way through so many opinions, thoughts, advice and various professionals at first seemed very daunting, but as my baby grew, so did my trust of my mothers’ instinct. Particularly complemented by regular reads of byronchild [Kindred] and your recommended sites and reads, my journey into the wonderful world of motherhood has spiralled into a self-awakening joyful experience.
Your ‘Have Baby Will Travel’ article (June–August 2006) held particular relevance as my husband and I have just started to plan our long awaited trip to his homeland, Libya. This will be my daughter’s and my first experience within his culture and meeting his entire family. The words from other families travelling with small children were fantastic as they reassured us during the planning stage of our trip. Little hints were fantastic and stories inspirational.
We would love to see some articles of bi-cultural families find a home in your pages. I have not come across much literature regarding the harmonious bi-cultural experience of families. I have also great interest in raising and encouraging bi-lingual children. Any information regarding these topics in further issues would be much appreciated both by international families like ours, and many conscious readers likewise.
We wish you much success in the new year and hope to spread the word of natural parenting further along the beautiful chain of humanity and raise our children to become active, aware and caring human beings.
Salem ala goom.
Chelsea, Hassan and Laila
Email
Meet violence with non-violence, please
Thank you for a thought-provoking, informative and nurturing magazine. I enjoy reading each issue very much and appreciate the way that it encompasses so much more than parenting. I believe that it is the best Australian magazine of its kind and love the new name.
I didn’t see the 60 Minutes feature that has provoked such anger, but having previously observed the treatment mainstream media often gives ‘alternative’ viewpoints, I can imagine how attachment parenting was portrayed on the program. However, I was surprised and disappointed with some of the comments in your editorial, Kali.
Whilst I am a passionate supporter of free speech, I do take exception to your comment about the Wicked campervans ... ‘Why aren’t those vans seen in a mangled, blazing pile in the centre of town for all to see?’ I agree that it is essential that we speak out about language that is sexually exploitive, but inciting violence only reflects badly upon those suggesting it. While I realise you don’t mean for anyone to really set fire to other’s property, I believe words are powerful and must be chosen carefully.
I have seen some of the aforementioned hire vans in my town but have never noticed anything inappropriate on them. I did have a look at their website, and they ask for input and suggested designs for the vans. Perhaps a more positive, constructive approach would be to email them, explaining your opinion of the vans you saw, how those words made you feel and suggesting some more appropriate designs.
I agree that we cannot stand by and allow the exploitation of those most vulnerable in our society, and say nothing, but when we do speak out, it must be done with the language of non-violence. I can highly recommend a book, Non-violent Communication. A Language of Love, by Marshall B Rosenberg.
Thanks, once again and blessings on the wonderful work you are doing, long may it continue!
Denise Bullen
Email
To cry or not to cry
I was deeply disappointed to read ‘Dad is a Safe Place to Cry’ (Dec 2006–Feb 2007 #20, letters section, Kindred) in response to ‘Mummy Do It’ (Sept–Nov 2006 #19), and to see the emergence of the so-called ‘Aware Parenting’ perspective in an otherwise sound publication.
Maybe, for some reason (due to unresolved birth or life trauma or stress) the babies of the author and advocates of Aware Parenting did need to cry, and certainly it is better to do so safely and supported in arms. However, it should not be assumed that this is the case for most other babies whose needs are being met.
I feel it is important to stop ‘blaming’ the baby with the claim that generally babies somehow ‘need’ to cry, and instead own and acknowledge that sometimes parents do not have the support, energy or resources to fully respond to the needs of their baby.
Despite being familiar with The Continuum Concept and other related literature, Aware Parenting advocates sadly seem to miss the point — babies whose needs are being met (and who have no trauma/health challenges) are in a state of bliss — and do not even display the psychological, physical or hormonal signs of stress!
Crying is one of a baby’s final attempts to get their needs met, before the next stage: emotional shut-down.
My belief and experience is that, if we offer parents honour and respect, and support them to truly hear their hearts and their babies (and be genuinely aware), parents will naturally parent in a way that fully meets their baby’s needs, and this rarely (if ever) involves letting them cry (even if held).
Toddlers and older children, as they begin to venture out into places and situations that can cause stress (or indeed search for a wider ‘tribe’ that isn’t there) make it absolutely clear when they need to cry or scream out their frustrations, have space to ‘let it out’ or need to be held whilst in distress.
I would hope that no father would ever betray his child/ren’s trust in the manner advised.
To Jeremy Shreider, I applaud you for hearing and honouring your children and their needs. I don’t know your [Jeremy’s] children’s birth/life history, and it could be that they have a particularly intense need for their mother due to birth trauma or separation in their early hours, breastfeeding limitations or sleep separation.
Your situation sounds exhausting and disheartening, but it doesn’t mean you’re not needed. You are, as you know in your heart, absolutely vital. The time when ‘only dad will do’ will come (and I look forward to reading your article about it).
Most importantly, please continue to listen to your children and follow your heart.
Emma Lewis
The Forward Up Foundation
Author responds
Emma, when I read your suggestion that I thought Jeremy Shreider was not needed by his children, I feel confused. My letter was intended to acknowledge how much children need their fathers.
Sometimes, when a child is with dad and is calling for mum, the distance from mum may allow an old hurt (such as mum attending to a sibling) to emerge. Dad helps his little one heal from the past hurt by being present with the child’s crying, until she finishes and is ready to connect with him again. I love Aware Parenting’s trust in the ability of babies and children to heal through laughter, play and crying, when we give them the opportunities to do so.
Instead of seeing Kindred as an ‘otherwise sound publication’, I’d like to celebrate that, through a diversity of models, research and opinions, many of the contributors share a common value: to understand and support the needs of families.
Emma, I believe that we both value supporting parents to ‘truly hear their hearts and their babies and be genuinely aware’ — yet we differ in the way we see that happening. I think that you believe that babies cry only to communicate immediate needs or if they have experienced trauma. I believe babies also cry to heal from daily stresses. Based upon this we interpret their cues differently.
I agree with you, Emma, that babies who have birth trauma or other major stresses do need to heal, and that they can do so through crying in arms. However, I believe that babies experience many minor daily stresses that are often overlooked. Babies face huge changes in their transition from womb to outside world, including the action of their lungs and digestive system, louder noises, the feelings on their skin, visual stimulation, a multitude of new incomprehensible experiences, and their cues sometimes being misinterpreted.
Even if we could meet all of their physical and emotional needs all of the time, we would not be able to prevent the inevitable tension and frustration that arises as they strive to understand their world and learn new skills. This belief is congruent with decades of pre- and peri-natal research that indicates that babies are exquisitely sensitive beings, continually making sense of their environment. They experience a range of feelings, including, but not restricted to, bliss.
Careful observation reveals surprise, excitement, curiosity, frustration and agitation on infants’ faces. One reason that minor stresses and crying to heal are often overlooked is due to the following: as well as being born with an inbuilt ability to heal from stress and trauma through crying in arms, they also have the ability to learn to repress their feelings. Which system is predominantly used depends on the way the parents interpret their baby’s cues and respond to crying once all immediate needs are met.
By six months, babies whose crying to heal has been unwittingly repressed through jiggling, feeding for comfort, or a dummy, will avoid crying to heal. When their stressful feelings start to arise, they push them down, exhibit a blank expression and avoid eye contact. Children brought up without being supported to heal may grow to adulthood enjoying relationships, work, and families. However, the more opportunities we give to babies and children for healing, the less repression they require, and the more awareness they have available for presence, learning, and intimacy.
Most of all, my appreciation for Aware Parenting comes from seeing a baby (whose immediate needs are met) finish crying to heal in the arms of their loving parent, and then melt into a loving and alert gaze. I love hearing comments such as this; “It is such an incredible feeling when he gazes up at me after his cry looking so calm and relaxed just before he falls asleep … I feel so content that he is content.”
Marion Badenoch Rose
www.awareparenting.blogspot.com
Hospital births count too!
I was just reading my Sept–Nov 2006 issue [of Kindred], when I stumbled across the birth article ‘Home is where the birth is’ by Phoenix Arrien.
The opening paragraph made me feel quite frustrated, the way that I have felt with most byronchild [Kindred] ‘pregnancy, birth and babies’ articles. So many times now, articles by homebirthers criticise and even belittle those that choose hospital births, usually with no evidence or experience. Homebirthers in real life too! All I have met, but one friend. I realise Phoenix has had experience with hospitals. This is certainly not about her article; Phoenix raises a lot of important issues. I am not anti homebirth, I encourage choice and therefore education in choices available.
The plans that I had made for the birth of my first baby were also all interrupted, for me by pre eclampsia. The midwife called in my backup doctor and my labour was induced. I had a drip in my arm to restrict me, but I was allowed to move around the room and into any position that I found comfortable — which turned out to be none! On all fours I pushed out my baby boy, held his little body to my naked chest, with my husband, my mum and the midwife, who I had met throughout my pregnancy several times, there by my side.
Plans for my second baby went better. By then my local hospital had opened a family birthing centre. I did not see a doctor, I had one midwife for my check-ups at the hospital. It was her phone that I called when I went into labour. She encouraged me to use the bath for pain relief, and made me move around. Again my husband, my mum, a close friend and my little son watched as I birthed my baby girl.
Four years later I was back in the same room, using the same bath. My husband also in the bath, my neighbour at hand, my two lovely kids looking on, my mum and the same close friend near by. The midwife, I had met for many check-ups during my pregnancy, was at the end of the bath as my littlest boy torpedoed through the water — yes, a waterbirth.
These births all happened with no changing of staff, no bustling in and out of rooms, no drugs, dimmed lights and no restriction to positions, or family and friends. Luckily for me the last two births happened with no bleeping machines! All in a hospital, not like American hospitals in movies, laying on a bed, stirrups, no support people and lots of machines, which is perhaps how the average homebirther assumes it has to be.
Bree Thomas,
Menzies Creek, VIC
Editor’s response
I am pleased to hear that your birth experience was positive and it is my wish that every birth could be announced with such good news.
Kindred upholds that birth — all births, from hospital to home — are sacred. So pure is the act of bringing forth a human being into the world, that nothing could ever rob it of its innate profundity — regardless of outcome. It goes without saying that positive, dignified and loving experiences of birth are had at a hospital every day. To confirm this, you’ll find hundreds of success stories available in the pages of Mother & Baby, Pregnancy & Birth and Practical Parenting. We also know that modern medicine and medical technology, when administered respectfully in the appropriate situations, free from fear-driven and economic agendas, are a life-saving gift.
At the same time, we must admit, based on the evidence, that birth is in its most optimum form for mums, dads and bubs, when it is intervention-free. We also know from the evidence that this is more likely to happen in a home setting. And unlike hospital births, home — and natural — births are victim to enormous and unethical undermining forces — political, economic, social, cultural and corporate. It is for this reason that Kindred gives homebirths more space in its pages than hospital births — to serve as a balance for its exposure (or lack of it) in mainstream media. Such deliberate bias is not out of disrespect of hospital births, but out of respect for all births. Because all births deserve the best of what research and medicine can offer — ie, the opportunity to be intervention-free, whenever possible.
It is not true that homebirth stories in Kindred criticise and belittle those who chose hospital birth — all mothers must be respected unequivocally. However, one would certainly read criticism of a hospital system that has run amok, a system that serves the economy, rather than the babies. Even hospital births themselves are not served by such a system. To keep homebirth alive, and to maintain it in the public eye as much as possible through the pages of Kindred, is to maintain one very important message: birth is not a medical condition.
I want to shake my stick too
I’ve been enjoying your magazine for about a year now. Every page seems to speak about issues that resonate through my life and my mothering journey.
I’d love nothing more than to see Kindred become an important resource for new parents, replacing the Nestle-sponsored glossies advocating controlled crying.
There must be something the attachment parenting community can do to stand against the Tara Browns and Steve Bracks [60 Minutes’ recent debunking of attachment parenting in Being There].
I’ve been breastfeeding solidly since October 2002, and prior to my daughter weaning this year, I was tandem feeding. We are co-sleepers since our first child was 18 months old. I had been following Maternal Child Health Network (MCHN) advice without question and was advised to ‘get her [our first child] sorted out’ before the arrival of my second child. I lasted one night at a ‘sleep centre’. It awakened the feral, instinctive, protective mother in me.
I now resent the ‘information’ presented to me by the health system during that time. I wonder how many other women and their babes are suffering unduly due to this downright dangerous advice.
My question to you is — What can we do? Where can we start? I’ll stand with you and shake my stick, but at who? and how? If there is anything I can do... Handing out information pamphlets at the MCHN centre, whatever — let me know!
Bridie Wauchope
email
Editor’s response
Yes, there’s lots you can do! We are relaunching our fabulous new website at www.kindredmagazine.com.au where we’ll provide info fact sheets, flyers and material that can be downloaded and printed (and handed out at your MCHN!). By the time this edition is published, it should be up. Go onto the main page, and from there click onto the ‘Kindred Toolbox’.
If you have a website, you can sell subscriptions to Kindred there and it’s easy. Just email us and we’ll tell you how — you of course earn money from each sale. We also sell Kindred wholesale in bulk, with a minimum order of 10 copies. You can purchase some and give them to your friends as very inexpensive gifts.
Or, for $10 (if you are a subscriber) you can send a gift subscription to any library — school, public or playgroup library, etc. Another idea is to host a screening of What Babies Want in your local area. It’s a great film about the developmental needs of babies — bonding, love, nurturing.
The best sticks are the armed ones — armed with information and helpful support. Building an aware community is done one mother at a time.
Cervical cancer vaccine alert
Australia has the second lowest death rate in the world from cervical cancer. Less than 50 women a year die of this disease. Will the vaccine cause more injuries and deaths than it is supposed to prevent?
The US FDA (online) has said that anyone allergic to yeast or any other agent in the vaccine should NOT be vaccinated with Gardasil [cervical cancer vaccine]. How is it that the manufacturer’s information leaflet in Australia makes no such statement? There is no statement about the yeast origin of the vaccine in the information either. Also, there were five reported cases of babies with congenital birth defects that were born to women who had had the vaccine within 30 days of becoming pregnant.
There have been no long-term studies of the vaccine’s safety, effectiveness, nor possible interactions with other vaccines administered at the same time. The vaccine was tested on 15- to 26-year-old females, but they intend to give it to children as young as nine years old. The vaccine was produced using a transgenic yeast product.
The US Cancer Institute’s website states: ‘direct causation to cervical cancer has not been established’. How many people will suffer from adverse reactions to yeast, aluminium and borax contained in this vaccine? What will be the price on reproduction given the number of congenital birth defects already reported? Why is vaccine even being considered?
Patricia Bohackyj
Vaccination Information Network, and contact for Vaccination Information South Australia – VISA (Illawarra)
www.visainfo.org.au
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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The Chemical Maze 4th edition
Now in its 4th edition, Bill Statham's shopping companion, The Chemical Maze has been incredibly influential in making people aware of the various poisons and chemicals in every day products and how to avoid them. 'Our mission is to assist people from
Price: $ 20.00
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Nappy Free! DVD
Nappy Free, a half hr dvd, explores a method of baby hygiene called 'elimination communication', which can reduce or remove the need for nappies (cloth or disposable, and all the potential allergens and environmental costs they carry), depending how
Price: $ 46.00
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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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Stand up to your Wife
In this extract from his book Manhood, Steve Biddulph looks at the need for men to stand up to their partners, to value the warrior that protects their emotional castle and to set rules to their passion.
Man As Loveable Dope
Most modern men, when fa |
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Making the Switch
You're the first person to argue for a more sustainable lifestyle for the sake of the planet and also for your own health, but where do you start? And will it really make a difference to the big picture?
Forget trying to change the big picture — that can |
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Healing Birth, Healing the Earth
Birth, She is dying... This primal and unspeakably powerful initiation, the only road to motherhood for our ancestors, has been stripped of Her dignity and purpose in our times. Birth has become a dangerous medical disease to be treated with escalating le |
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Weapons of Mass Induction
How television affects your opinions, your will and your life.
Think you’re a free thinker? Think again, says Dr. Aric Sigman in an excerpt from his newly released book Remotely Controlled |
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Growing Men Commentary, issue 2
Many, many years ago I ran the Youth affairs Council of Tasmania, a non-government peak body and was involved in the bizarre world of lobbying, organising, protest and compromise that comes with that kind of work. Then, I believed that the way to fight fo |
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