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Cultural Relativity and Parenting

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    Cultural Relativity and Parenting

    I'm watching the documentary Babies on Netflix for the first time (its funny because Collin and Sophie are getting a kick out of watching it)



    As a film, its really visually stunning--the colors, the differences in the landscape, etc (I proly could have put this int he entertainment reviews, but that isn't so much what I wanted to end up discussed)...its also cool that there isn't any narration, and most of the camera shots (especially at first) are of the baby's view--close to the ground, etc.

    The really interesting part is, the differences and similarities in how parents interact with their children, and how the most essential, but simplest of things like feeding and pooping are handled.

    Some observations...

    all babies get into what ever you *don't* want them to
    the US father (seems to be) the most involved of the dads
    the Mongolian baby had a "pacifier" made out of dumpling and a matchstick
    the "western babies" (Japan and the US) are almost never naked or dirty or outside
    the Namibian and Mongolian babies have less structured interactions with their peers
    Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of HistoryPagan Devotionals, because the wind and the rain is our Bible
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    #2
    Re: Cultural Relativity and Parenting

    I haven't seen it....but wasn't there a German baby on that? That baby would certainly be wandering around naked! (sorry I had to get a joke out of that....over here naked small children are almost a stereotype....they love nudity over here in general).

    EDIT I googled it and no...I must have thought there was because I only saw the preview in German and just assumed that the white child was in Germany. I'd never heard of it so I thought it might even be a German movie (wrong!)

    I want to watch it....it looks cool!
    Last edited by DanieMarie; 26 Jun 2011, 12:47.

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      #3
      Re: Cultural Relativity and Parenting

      Originally posted by thalassa View Post
      the US father (seems to be) the most involved of the dads
      I can't decide if I'm surprized by this or not...

      I was born in '58, so I've seen a lot of big changes in American society. When I was a kid, I almost never saw my dad because he was almost always working, or, if home, relaxing (which didn't include babysitting), or cranky because he had to spend his Saturday doing work at home. We did take family vacations, ate dinner at the table very night (even when dad was at work), and sometimes dad would go to the zoo with us.

      Of course, my experience as a kid were limited, but this seemed to be the usual pattern in my area (suburban Detroit).

      By the time I had kids, though, the general "mood" around me was that a father shouild spend a lot of unstructured (fun) time with his kids, and I did, and pretty much everybody I know of my own generation did also, and subsequent generations seem to be continuing this. It's really surprising to me to see that a social change this sweeping take place so quickly (within a single generation!) - it's definitely a change for the better. Kids are a chore if you raise them, but a pleasure if you know them. It's about time that men got to experience some of that pleasure.

      It's kind of funny where I live now. I actually work in the largest town for hundreds of miles, but most of the area here is farmland. The rural people tend to be a bit more conservative than town people when it comes to adopting social changes. Most farmers that i know don't spend much time having fun with their kids - but then, farming doesn't leave you much time for fun.

      What they do do, however, is spend a lot of structured (work) time with their kids, since the kids pretty much always help their dad wrok the farm.

      When I talk to my dad (he's 80) he tells me that he, his sister, and his seven brothers all spent an awful lot of time with their dad - but it was always work time. His dad owned a bakery, and each kid spent the years between 10 and 19 working the bakery before and after school. My dad probobly spent as much if not more time with his father as I've spent with my kids, but it was a different kind of time, and produced a different kind of relationship.

      Vague idea... it seems as if it were the move from farm to city which broke the link between fathers and children... but it also produced a change in the kind of relationships fathers have with their children...
      Every moment of a life is a horrible tragedy, a slapstick comedy, dark nihilism, golden illumination, or nothing at all; depending on how we write the story we tell ourselves.

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        #4
        Re: Cultural Relativity and Parenting

        I've seen a few documentaries like this. Child-rearing does have quite a few similarities worldwide, and quite a few differences as well. For example, Indian mothers tend to treat their children more like inanimate objects than many others, washing them relatively roughly, clothing them and sort of unceremoniously setting them down someplace out of the way so that they can do whatever tasks they have for the day. Asian cultures go the opposite direction from the Indian ones and the women tend to keep the baby with them most of the time, carrying the child in a sling until it's old enough to walk, regardless of the amount of work that the woman is doing. In what I believe was an African culture, though I can't remember what tribe, babies aren't given a name until long after they're born; in the meantime, they're just referred to as "shit." The idea is that if the baby has a name, evil spirits will be drawn to it and kill it, but if the spirits think it's just a pile of shit they'll stay away.
        "Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others."
        -Thomas Jefferson

        Let a man never stir on his road a step
        without his weapons of war;
        for unsure is the knowing when the need shall arise
        of a spear on the way without.
        -

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