Posts Tagged ‘parenting culture’

by Je’anna Clements, a mother, and certified Aware Parenting Instructor. She helps organise ‘aware parenting‘ support groups,  events for pre-schooled and homeschooled kids in Gauteng plus a new  ‘Kid’s Fun Market’ in Observatory, Johannesburg. She can be contacted on squeakyg@pixelplexus.co.za

For many parents ‘normal’ seems like something real rather than just a relative mental construction. Sometimes so real it’s not even labelled ‘normal’, but simply ‘life’, or even ‘reality’.

Living in South Africa one has the privilege of seeing a different culture to one’s own, and get the gift of realisation: “oh. They do things differently.” Sadly the next thought is often something like “Time we get everyone modern, learn what’s normal, what’s real.”

Quite apart from my luck in being South African, I grew up with an anthropologist. I learned early on that there are countless cultures out there and that each and every ‘weird’ one considers its ways to be ‘normal’, ‘life’, ‘reality’.

I remember reading about some ‘tribe’ that strapped the soft moldable heads of their newborn babies between two wooden planks so the bones would grow into a conehead shape. For them, this was normal. It’s what you did when a baby was born.

This would be weird, maybe even prosecutable if I did it here and now. Instead, in my culture it seems ‘normal’ for newborns to be put in an incubator.

Just as the very first things that happen to babies are prescribed by culture, so is every other parenting practice thereafter – from where and when it is ‘normal’ for kids to sleep, to how they are disciplined, educated, fed.

We might have slightly individual preferences about our chosen parenting practices – our neighbour spanks, we use time out – but how often do we stop to consider that each and every thing we do with our kids is creating not only a personal relationship but also a cultural orientation? That the state and shape of the world we live in right now, is the way it is, as a direct result of past parenting practices?

The above-mentioned ‘tribe’ happened to be intensely warlike, regularly terrorising and invading the neighbours. But I doubt many new moms consciously thought “well these big planks completely stop me picking up or initially even feeding my baby, which will make him so lonely and confused and angry that the perfect foundation will be laid for the cruel violence our culture will require of him as an adult.”

Just as we today seldom stop to wonder what it means for children to spend the most impressionable bonding hours ever, experiencing busy machines and schedules and ‘things’ rather than being quietly close with people who love them.

(Hmm. Just for starters, off the top of my head, maybe a culture where new moms are told it is ‘normal’ to override any yearning for intimacy and quiet being-with that sweet, soft babeling; to go back to the schedules and machines asap, in order to acquire more things?)

And, of course, as with the head-strappers, that’s just the beginning…