Archive for the 'Fair & green' Category

The Boy and the Bread

Published
by
twinutero
on October 15, 2008
in Fair & green and South Africa
. 1 Comment

This post is in support of Blog Action Day on Poverty: October 15, 2008

The boy cupped his tiny brown hands and tilted his head just slightly. His ragged T-shirt fell from bony shoulders into thin air, and his trousers faded into threads below his knees. He looked seven or eight years old but likely weighed little more than Thomas, my three-year-old. His feet were scuffed and bare. I didn’t understand a word he said.

The boy was probably speaking Afrikaans. But I’m English-speaking Canadian and had lived in South Africa less than a week. I mumbled my incomprehension, and the boy repeated his request. His plea and his gestures were well-practiced but genuine. Their meaning, I realized, was perfectly clear. He was asking for food.

I scanned the parking lot for his parents or siblings, but he seemed alone. Once again, he asked for food, moving his hands from cupped to praying. How could I refuse? I was packing groceries from an upscale market into our new Honda. I grabbed a loaf of bread and handed it to him, smiling. He took it, looked me in the eye, and was gone.

It was a minute gift - but I hadn’t considered Thomas. He was perched in the shopping cart, watching the exchange. As the boy fled, Thomas went wild, as if his most cherished toy had been squandered. His legs flailed as I tried to untangle him from the cart. It was five or ten minutes before he found words.

“My bread! I want my bread! No! No!”

I hadn’t imagined that giving away the bread would upset Thomas any more than handing money to the grocery checker or pushing letters across the counter at the post office. Yet Thomas had identified with the boy as – simply – a boy. Not poor, not hungry, just another child who wanted something that was his. The boy hadn’t said please or thank you (that we know of) and he didn’t share. He just took our food and ran. And that, to Thomas, was wrong.

I felt compelled to explain a greater, more complicated injustice. “We have lots of bread. That boy doesn’t have any. He needs the bread more than we do. We can get more bread at home.”

Eventually, Thomas is quiet, and we are driving away from the shop. I hope he understands.

“Are we not going to give our bread away?” he peeps from the back seat.

He doesn’t understand. How could he?

Motherhood: Liberal or Conservative?

Published
by
twinutero
on October 14, 2008
in Books and Fair & green
. 0 Comments

I recently watched a Ted talk by psychologist Jonathan Haidt. Provocatively, he claims to have uncovered deep-seated moral differences between liberals and conservatives.

Liberals are generally more open – to diversity, novelty and experience. They are willing, Haidt says, to accept a certain amount of chaos in exchange for making the world a better place for everyone. A liberal morality emphasizes fairness and care.

Conservatives, on the other hand, are generally less open. They like familiarity, institutions and tradition. They value order, even at the expense those people “at the bottom” as Haidt puts it. While conservatives, like liberals, are concerned with fairness and care, they also include loyalty, respect for authority, and purity (of spirit, body etc.) as part of their moral code.

This was a twenty minute talk on a very complex topic so many questions went unanswered. Nevertheless, Haidt claims to back up his findings with surveys of over 30,000 people across the world. At the very least, it’s an interesting way to think about political differences.

Coincidently, I’m now reading The Maternal is Political. It’s a collection of personal essays by women who became politically active, or deepened their political commitments, after having children. The book is very US-centered and “political” for the most part means Democrat. (I haven’t finished the book, however; perhaps some new mothers became Republican.)

Reading this book, I’m persuaded that motherhood is essentially liberal: it foments a compulsion to make the world better for everyone, and therefore better for your kids. It creates an openness, in Haidt’s terms, to change, diversity, necessary chaos, and a certain amount of risk-taking in the name of a better future.

But I can imagine how motherhood might push toward the other end of the political spectrum if it meant that your kids are better off - toward loyalty (to family), toward order and familiarity, toward deference to authority figures (such as doctors).

So here’s my question as elections loom in both the US and Canada (and South Africa):

Has motherhood made you more liberal or more conservative – or more of something else?

Book review: Twin Set

Published
by
twinutero
on July 31, 2008
in Blogging & writing, Books, Diapers & potties, Fair & green, Feeding, Getting Around, Getting Help and Sleep
. 4 Comments

I read this book with a twinge of nostalgia – and nausea.

My twins have now outgrown all-night breast-bottle feedings, infant bouts of inexplicable crying and multiple poops a day. The toddler years are not exactly peaceful, but that sickening sleep deprivation and round-the-clock care of the first year is over. Reading Twin Set brought back both the difficulties of those first few months as well as the sheer amazement of giving birth to, and caring for two tiny twins.

Twin Set is a practical guide to pregnancy, birth and the first years of parenting twins. The book doesn’t aim to be a comprehensive guide to parenting in general. If you want details on prenatal care, breastfeeding or toilet training, you’ll have to supplement with other books. But Twin Set does a good job of highlighting differences between parenting twins and parenting singletons. And as mothers of twins know, almost everything is different: pregnancy, birth, post-natal care (both for you and the babies), feeding, bathing, getting out of the house, discipline, starting school – and everything in between.

The best part of this book is that the advice is not simply the authors’ opinion but was gathered through a survey. According to the introduction, the authors surveyed 300 mothers of twins “from around the country” (presumably the US). The scientist in me wanted to know much more about this survey: how it was conducted; what questions were asked; how the mothers were chosen etc. Still, there is wisdom among 300 mothers, and that shows in the book.

Twin Set would be most useful for parents about to give birth to twins. No one is reading just after the birth, and within a year or so you will have figured it all out anyway. But for the parents-to-be there are many useful insights: just how difficult bathing two slippery, crying infants can be; the importance of recording all feeding and pooping in the first few months because you’ll forget who did what and when; that grocery shopping will never be as quick and easy, partly because most shopping carts have only one kid’s seat.

I do have a couple of gripes with the book.

The information is very (although implicitly) US-centered. Some things, like a “Snap ‘N Go” or leaving your kids in the car while you run back to the house, may not make sense outside America.

I also got tired of the book’s cutesy language and general dumbing-down. Consultant pediatricians, for instance, are called “Mommy Doc” and “Daddy Doc”. Really, we can handle a real name and title! And I’ve yet to meet a mother who would spend precious alone-time getting a manicure or doing word-puzzles.

My biggest gripe was with the book’s slant on the environment. Buying bottled water by the case-load (or at all) is simply irresponsible. Trying filtering. And, sorry, teaching your kids to play with empty toilet rolls does not negate thousands of disposable diapers in the land fill. Yes, there is debate on cloth versus disposable diapers (see The Great Disposable Diaper Debate) but telling parents to just “stop worrying” rather than make a conscious and informed decision seems, again, irresponsible (as is failing to disclose Twin Sets partnership with Pampers!).

Gripes aside, this is a useful and realistic book for parents embarking on the head-spinning adventure of raising multiples.

(Thanks to Random House for the review copy.)

Update on bisphenol A

Published
by
twinutero
on April 16, 2008
in Fair & green and Feeding
. 0 Comments

Our children may be among the last to consume bisphenol A (BPA) with their milk and formula. Or so we hope.

Since I wrote on using Medela baby bottles, public pressure to ban BPA has heightened and the availability of BPA-free baby products has soared.

And then… one of the biggest producers of polycarbonate bottles and the strongest defender of BPA safety, Nalgene, launched a line of BPA-free drinking bottles. Read more commentary on Z Recommends.

And now… Health Canada has announced that it is “taking action” on BPA. The department has completed its risk assessment, which focused on infants and newborns, and is proposing a ban on polycarbonate baby bottles.

Here is the story according to the Globe and Mail.

Here is Health Canada’s offical news release of April 18. Make of it what you will.

Also see information on BPA from the Canadian Partnership for Children’s Health and Environment.

The day we gave the bottles away

Published
by
twinutero
on April 6, 2008
in Fair & green, Feeding, Guilt and Sleep
. 0 Comments

It was overdue, long overdue.

Last weekend we finally rid the house of all baby bottles. Alex and Jon are over two, after all, and Thomas is three and a half. It was embarrassing to have them ask for a bottle in public or have visitors pass a load of empty bottles in the kitchen sink.

Mostly, we were tired of the dependency. Whenever the kids were sleepy, or upset or awake in the night, they would ask for a bottle of milk. They didn’t always get one, but they were rewarded often enough to keep asking.

Why did we wait so long? Because there never seemed a good time to take away something so obviously comforting. Had Thomas been an only child, or more than fifteen months older than his brothers, we would have weaned him long ago. But I don’t think he sees himself as older at all (well, except when it’s convenient) so it was hard to say yes to the twins and no to Thomas. We decided to wait until they were all ready to leave the bottles behind.

That, of course, could have been long ago. All three kids started drinking from sippy cups before they were one and from real cups before they were two. They didn’t need a bottle to have a drink. They sometimes needed a bottle to settle down, however. It was a habit, and with all the changes of the past six months (i.e., moving to a different hemisphere) we were reluctant to break the habit and further rock their world.

Last weekend, however, after a string of wakeful nights, we said enough. In the morning, we told the kids that today was a special day. We were going to pack up all the bottles and give them to some babies who need them more than we do. Everyone helped, Jon most enthusiastically. The bottles went into a bag; the bag went to “the babies”. In fact, the bottles went to the basement until we were sure we could handle life without the bottle crutch. Yesterday, they did go to less-fortunate children in a nearby township.

The transition was surprisingly easy. We always have an answer to “I want a bottle.” Jon usually pipes up with, “Some babies.” They have seen the bottles go into the bag and they know that babies, not boys, have milk in a bottle.

We’ve replaced nightly bottles with Klean Kanteen sippy cups. Klean Kanteen products are stainless steel, free of bisphenol-A, odorless and dripless. We bought them in Ottawa before we left (at Arbour). They are pricey however and the kids objected to the chill of holding a steel cup. So we found bottle insulators and now have the most expensive sippy cups on the planet.

But… we have no bottles.