16 livros irresistíveis para iniciar os seus filhos na leitura

Depois de um post em inglês
e sobre livros em inglês,
aqui vai a nossa lista ;)

Os escritores Alice Vieira, Ana Maria Magalhães, Luísa Fortes da Cunha e Álvaro Magalhães recomendam leituras que prometem agarrar as crianças da primeira à última página. As idades são indicativas, os títulos uma escolha subjectiva mas conhecedora. (i online)

A partir dos 4 anos

Versos de Fazer ó-ó
José Jorge Letria e André Letria
Editora: Terramar
Ano: 1999
Preço: €12,47
“Há uma fada azul marinho/ Com varinha de condão/ Que põe pós de magia/ Nos olhinhos do João/ Quando o sonho de mansinho/ Já o leva pela mão”. Este é apenas um dos mais de 20 poemas de embalar que encontrará nesta espécie de arma secreta para lidar com crianças enérgicas. Com tantas referências a “ó-ó”, “soninho”, “pestana” e por aí fora, o risco será adormecer também os graúdos. Venceu o Prémio Nacional de Ilustração.

Livro com Cheiro a..., Alice Vieira
Editora: Texto Editores
Ano: desde 2005
Preço: €12,99
Um cheira a caramelo, outro a morango, outro ainda a chocolate e há um quarto de baunilha. Cada um inclui vários contos, em que Alice Vieira brinca com as palavras, com a gramática e com a acentuação. Estes “livros com cheiro” são “um apelo aos sentidos”, diz Luísa Fortes da Cunha, que os recomenda para crianças de cinco, seis e sete anos. O próximo deverá ser um livro com cheiro a ananás.

A partir dos 6 anos

Canta o Galo Gordo
Inês Pupo e Gonçalo Pratas
Editora: Caminho
Ano: 2009
Preço: €12,90
Do primeiro dia de aulas a seguir ao Natal, passando pelo São Martinho, este título sugerido por uma das criadoras da série “Uma Aventura”, Ana Maria Magalhães, inclui poemas para todas as épocas do ano. “Pode ser lido com o professor, com os pais ou ouvido no carro”, diz. Isto, porque contém um CD com todos os textos. Indicado para crianças “no fim do infantário e no princípio da escolaridade”.

As Andanças do Senhor Fortes
António Mota
Editora: Gailivro
Ano: 2000
Preço: €9,45
“Comerciante de coisas finas, delicadas, que transportava na sua mala, o solitário senhor Fortes resolve deixar a cidade”, diz o livro. Parte para a aldeia, onde a amizade com um pastor os vai levar a uma “extraordinária aventura”. A obra é uma espécie de sucesso instantâneo entre os mais pequenos. “Já fiz a apresentação deste livro para miúdos do 2.º e do 3.º ano e eles adoraram”, garante Luísa Fortes da Cunha.

A partir dos 8 anos

As Aventuras de Joanica-Puff
A. A. Milne
Editora: Terramar
Ano: 1926
Preço: €6,28Não só “um clássico da literatura”, mas também “um dos melhores livros de sempre, que pode ser lido muitas vezes, como se fosse sempre a primeira”, diz Álvaro Magalhães. Desde 1926 já terão sido vendidos 70 milhões de exemplares. “Em tempos violentos e incertos, Puff, com a sua sabedoria desconcertante e terra-a-terra, representa a melancolia de um mundo simples e seguro, onde nada terrível pode acontecer.”

A História Interminável (check!)
Michael Ende
Editora: Presença
Ano: 1979
Preço: €20

Qualquer leitor “se fecha num qualquer lugar para poder ler este livro sem interrupções ou entraves, apenas desejando, a cada página que passa, que ele não acabe nunca e seja, como o título promete, interminável”, assegura Álvaro Magalhães. A história de um rapaz que, “depois de viver a mais extraordinária das aventuras, descobre que o real e o imaginário” são “metades de uma totalidade mágica.”

Colecção Teodora
Luísa Fortes da Cunha
Editora: Presença
Ano: desde 2002
Preço: €8
Diz a tradição popular que a sétima filha de um casal se transforma em fada aos 12 anos. Assim nasce a história da Fada Teodora, que vive grandes aventuras com os amigos. “Explora o filão criados pelos livros do Harry Potter mas com um toque diferente”, salienta Alice Vieira. Em pouco mais de sete anos, Fortes da Cunha criou e escreveu sete títulos daquela que já é uma das mais bem- -sucedidas colecções na área.

Colecção Os Primos
Mafalda Moutinho
Editora: Dom Quixote
Ano: desde 2007
Preço: €7,75
As crianças gostam de livros de aventuras, que as prendam do princípio ao fim. A título de exemplo, Luísa Fortes da Cunha sugere esta colecção com três personagens reais: as irmãs Ana e Maria Torres e o primo André. Como são filhas de um embaixador, as manas passam a vida a viajar. Muitas vezes convidam o primo e acabam em cenários tão sugestivos como o Egipto, a China ou a Jordânia, a resolver suculentos mistérios.

A partir dos 10 anos

A Ilha do Tesouro (check!)
R. L. Stevenson
Editora: Relógio D’Água
Ano: 1883
Preço: €12
“Agarra o leitor pelo pescoço logo na primeira frase e lança-o, sem remédio, na aventura da leitura”, elogia Álvaro Magalhães. “Quando lemos a prosa de Stevenson, esquecemo-nos de que estamos a ler, que é o melhor que pode acontecer.” Alice Vieira concorda e acrescenta: “Mete muito medo, mas não é como aquele medo artificial dos feiticeiros. As crianças precisam de o sentir. Depois passa e é um grande alívio.”

A Menina do Mar (check!)
Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
Editora: Figueirinhas
Ano: 1958
Preço: €8,5

Um clássico da literatura portuguesa. Se pudesse, Alice Vieira recomendaria todos os livros da poetisa. Tendo de escolher um, prefere “A Menina do Mar”, a história escrita há mais de 50 anos sobre a amizade impossível entre um rapaz e uma menina que vive no fundo do mar. “Tem uma riqueza linguística fora de série. Há poucos adjectivos. É tudo muito substantivo”, justifica a escritora. “É extraordinário.”

O Sonhador (check!)
Ian McEwan
Editora: Gradiva
Ano: 1994
Preço: €11,50
Muitos pensam que Peter Fortune é um rapaz estranho. Calado, calmo (demasiado calmo, pensarão os adultos), vive nas nuvens. Mas ele é o único que sabe “o que é estar dentro do corpo de um gato, como desmascarar o rufião da escola ou tornar toda a família invisível”, conta Álvaro Magalhães. Peter vive num mundo imaginário. O primeiro livro para crianças de McEwan mostra, diz, uma “imaginação meticulosa e vibrante”.

Coração
Edmundo De Amicis
Editora: Bertrand
Ano: 1886
Preço: €8,98
Lembra-se da série de animação que contava as dramáticas aventuras de Marco? O pequeno órfão que comoveu a geração de 70 nasceu num conto deste livro. Não é por isso que Alice Vieira, depois de o ter comprado para os filhos, continua a oferecê-lo, mas sim por causa da “crença na bondade e na solidariedade” transmitida por este diário de um rapaz de 10 anos escrito no final do século XIX.

A partir dos 12 anos

Alice no País das Maravilhas (check!)
Lewis Carroll
Ano: 1865
Editoras e preços: Relógio D’Água, €14; Dom Quixote, €4,99 Leya, €5,95; Civ. Editora, €7
A máxima aplica-se a este e a todos os outros clássicos para crianças: ler uma e outra vez, mas sempre o original. Mesmo que a “versão Disney” pareça mais fácil, o melhor é não menosprezar as crianças. “Regra geral, retiram aquilo de que os miúdos gostam: a loucura, o nonsense”, defende Alice Vieira. “Este livro tem uma coisa rara, transgride-se tudo: na linguagem, na imaginação. A escrita é de grande qualidade.”

A Ilha do Chifre de Ouro
Álvaro Magalhães
Editora: Edições ASA
Ano: 1998
Preço: €13
“Prende-nos logo à acção. A linguagem é acessível e remete-nos para a fantasia, para outros mundos. Os miúdos gostam”, assegura Luísa Fortes da Cunha, que recomenda as obras de Álvaro Magalhães, o criador da série Triângulo Jota, aos jovens do 7.º ao 9.º anos. Ponto de partida: um distribuidor de pizzas e uma ruiva misteriosa vão parar a uma ilha que não vem nos mapas. Do mesmo autor: “O Último Grimm”.

Clarissa
Érico Veríssimo
Editora: Ambar
Ano: 1933
Preço: €18
“A minha neta está a lê-lo agora”, conta Alice Vieira. “Eu li-o em criança. Em parte, determinou ter começado a escrever.” Talvez por isso tenha a fotografia do autor, o brasileiro Érico Veríssimo, na mesa de trabalho. “Clarissa” conta a história do despertar para a vida de uma rapariga de 13 anos. “Pode ler-se hoje. Tem a ver com sentimentos”, diz Vieira. Infelizmente, está esgotado e a Ambar ainda não sabe se vai reeditá-lo.

As Aventuras de Tom Sawyer (check!)
Mark Twain
Ano: 1876
Editoras e preços: Edições Nelson de Matos, €13; Europa-América, €6,90

Mais um caso de transgressão pura. As crianças adoram. Do ponto de vista literário, “As Aventuras de Huckleberry Finn”, também de Twain, será melhor, diz Alice Vieira, mas “As Aventuras de Tom Sawyer” vence aos pontos com os jovens. Esta obra intemporal narra as peripécias de um rapaz desobediente e aventureiro no Sul dos EUA, ao longo das margens do Mississípi.

Como, quando e porquê: as estratégias dos especialistas para pôr as crianças a ler

A leitura é importante para o desenvolvimento das crianças?
Sem dúvida. É um pilar essencial da aprendizagem ao longo de toda a vida. Se o aperfeiçoamento da “competência de leitura” cabe à escola, defende a psicóloga educacional Isabel Festas, a construção do “prazer da leitura” compete aos pais. “Na vida, têm mais sucesso os que lêem mais, por gosto ou com objectivos específicos”, assegura outra psicóloga educacional, Dulce Gonçalves. O psicólogo Eduardo Sá vai mais longe: “quem não lê não sabe pensar, nem interpretar aquilo que sente.”

A partir de que idade?
O mais cedo possível. “Uma das chaves do sucesso é a leitura antes da aprendizagem”, garante Isabel Festas. “A leitura feita pelo adulto.” No entanto, não vale a pena tentar pôr os miúdos a ler antes dos primeiros anos de escolaridade. “Existe uma epidemia atípica em Portugal”, comenta Eduardo Sá. “Os pais acham que as crianças devem ser todas sobredotadas.” No final do 2.º ano, avança Dulce Gonçalves, “devem ser capazes de ler cerca de 60 palavras por minuto”.

Como podem os pais motivá-las?
Primeiro, lendo-lhes histórias. “O importante para as crianças é verem o brilho nos olhos de quem conta”, diz Eduardo Sá. Ao mesmo tempo, é preciso deixá-las folhear, brincar com o livro. Quando já sabem ler, deve-se optar pela leitura partilhada. “Ora lês tu, ora leio eu”, diz Dulce Gonçalves. Pode fazer-se da leitura um jogo, antecipar o final. “E depois ler e confirmar quem adivinhou ou descobriu”, avança a psicóloga. Nos adolescentes, as regras são outras. “É preciso provocá-los, desafiá-los”, avança. Um exemplo: um livro proibido. Os próprios pais têm de dar o exemplo. “Na infância aprendemos quase tudo por observação.”

O que não devem os pais fazer?
“O pior é dar a leitura como óleo de fígado de bacalhau”, começa Eduardo Sá. Ou seja, confundir o prazer com uma tarefa escolar. Os pais “não devem ter a preocupação de avaliar o entendimento que a criança tem do que leu”, sublinha Isabel Festas. Nem, acrescenta o psicólogo, obrigar os filhos a ler obras que não lhes agradem só porque são referências literárias. Importante é perceberem os interesses dos filhos e a partir daí seleccionar as leituras.

Existem livros desaconselhados?
“Aqueles que pareçam repetitivos, obrigatórios, com os quais não sentimos afinidade ou empatia”, adianta Dulce Gonçalves. Isabel Festas acrescenta: versões simplificadas de clássicos. Ao tentarem facilitar a leitura retiram à obra as características literárias mais prazenteiras.

Onde posso ler mais sobre este tema?
“Como um Romance”, Daniel Pennac (Edições ASA) (and check!)

Nesta casa há aqueles assinalados com check!,
tal é a vaidade :)

O Daniel Lucas aos 18 meses

Adora água, é mesmo Aquário (ninguém me convence que se chama signo do ar), água no banho, água na piscina, água na praia, água a lavar as mãozinhas no lavatório, água na cara do spray refrescante (sei lá!);

Adora bolas e bolinhas para brincar, de todos os tamanhos e materiais, e rouba-as no jardim e na praia, e assim conhece outros meninos;

Prefere meninas mais velhas, a sua primeira paixão é a Madalena, colega na Ama, que vai em Setembro para a escola;

Não anda, corre;

Corre descalço pela relva fora;

Saltita quando corre e até as bochechinhas abanam;

Corre tão depressa que fecha os olhinhos;

Entretém-se muito com os seus livrinhos;

Faz pose para a fotografia, o vaidoso;

Já gosta de andar com óculos de sol;

Sorri para toda a gente;
mas parece ter pavor que lhe levem a Mamã ou o Papá, donde, choradeira que por vezes afugenta amigos e conhecidos;

Ri-se com os disparates e as figuras tristes que fazemos, e que repetimos para o ver rir mais, como diz a Ana, «é mesmo menino»;

Come sozinho e faz hum-hum, nham-nham;

Gosta de animais – o cão dos avós, a gata da Filó, todos os que veja na rua;

Entrou na montra de uma loja de puericultura para espreitar o manequim infantil que estava lá sentado;

Levanta-se da base do escorrega sem pôr as mãos no chão;

Levanta os bracinhos e diz Eehhhh quando entende que fez uma proeza;

Quer calçar as peuguitas, lavar-se com a esponja no banho, descalçar os sapatos, subir as escadas;

Gosta de brincar às escondidas;

Canta e dança com grande satisfação;

«Fala ao telemóvel» com pausas e aparentes modulações de voz;

Pega nos telecomandos, e noutros objectos que lhe pareçam adequados, e mexe neles como se telecomandos fossem, apontados para a televisão;

Mede 80 cm, acho que pesa menos de 15 kg, e tem 12 dentinhos;

Compreende a mesma ideia em duas línguas;

Está neste momento com o Papá e a Bisavó no Alentejo.

Elephants in Malawi

Two male elephants play in a river in Malawi’s Liwonde national park.
All Creatures

Ser pequenino

Koda, an American miniature horse that was born with dwarfism, walks with Yarrambat Veterinary Hospital's cat...


Koda, an American Miniature in Yarrambat , Australia, was always going to be small but shortly after birth Koda was diagnosed as being a dwarf. Koda weighs only 35kg and is smaller than a labrador

Telegraph

Xixi no Banho ;)

Para ver ao VIVO

Não se esqueçam de clicar em Watch Footage! ;)

Cabecinha pensadora

Wishlist: Volta a Portugal para Crianças

Descubra o que Portugal tem de melhor para os seus filhos!

Portugal é um país repleto de encantos... e não só! O nosso país tem muito para oferecer, nomeadamente aventura, diversão, cultura, história e ciência... de tudo um pouco para os adultos, mas mais ainda pelas crianças! Vai ver como os seus filhos se divertem pelos trilhos que lhe propomos ao longo de cada um dos dezoito distritos: de norte a sul de Portugal continental, quer seja na praia, no campo ou na cidade, descubra em família monumentos, parques temáticos, jardins e actividades lúdicas ou pedagógicas. E como o entusiasmo vai ser grande, torne um simples passeio numa estadia mais prolongada – nós sugerimos-lhe alguns alojamentos.

Não desperdice o seu tempo ficando em casa. Saia e partilhe bons momentos com os seus filhos: Portugal espera por vocês!

ArtePlural

Are you a different person when you speak a different language?

People who are bicultural and speak two languages may actually shift their personalities when they switch from one language to another, according to new research in the Journal of Consumer Research.

"Language can be a cue that activates different culture-specific frames," write David Luna (Baruch College), Torsten Ringberg, and Laura A. Peracchio (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee).

The authors studied groups of Hispanic women, all of whom were bilingual, but with varying degrees of cultural identification. They found significant levels of "frame-shifting" (changes in self perception) in bicultural participants-those who participate in both Latino and Anglo culture. While frame-shifting has been studied before, the new research found that biculturals switched frames more quickly and easily than bilingual monoculturals.

The authors found that the women classified themselves as more assertive when they spoke Spanish than when they spoke English. They also had significantly different perceptions of women in ads when the ads were in Spanish versus English. "In the Spanish-language sessions, informants perceived females as more self-sufficient and extroverted," write the authors.

In one of the studies, a group of bilingual U.S. Hispanic women viewed ads that featured women in different scenarios. The participants saw the ads in one language (English or Spanish) and then, six months later, they viewed the same ads in the other language. Their perceptions of themselves and the women in the ads shifted depending on the language. "One respondent, for example, saw an ad's main character as a risk-taking, independent woman in the Spanish version of the ad, but as a hopeless, lonely, confused woman in the English version," write the authors.

The shift in perception seems to happen unconsciously, and may have broad implications for consumer behavior and political choices among biculturals.

David Luna, Torsten Ringberg, and Laura A. Peracchio. "One Individual, Two Identities: Frame-Switching Among Biculturals" Journal of Consumer Research: August 2008.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by the University of Chicago Press Journals

Found by Daddy

Parenting advice: wit and wisdom from writers

We all need help to be happy. From the age of 16, my little helper has been a battered blue book in which I have written poems and aphorisms that express simple or complex truths in a beautiful way. With careful rounded letters in my teens, scrawling writing in my busy thirties, it is an autobiography written in the words of other people, always there to jolt me out of moments of self-pity.

On the top of one much-thumbed page is David Campbell’s Praise Life:

“Men and boughs break,

Praise life while you walk and wake,

It is only lent.”

As I’ve grown older, the words in my little blue book have been the building blocks to a sturdier self. After all, when the going gets tough why not cut out the middlemen, the therapists and counsellors, and go straight to the great wordsmiths for help? Shakespeare, Laurie Lee, Winston Churchill, Ian McEwan and Gerard Manley Hopkins are always ready to explore the shaky, extraordinary moments of human existence with quiet lines to help your troubled heart.

Purists would say that literature is there to enlarge the imagination and to be admired as, well, literature. The idea that good poetry or prose should primarily be used as an emotional crutch is considered far too practical. I say let’s grab literature to us like a comforting pillow. Let’s pillage it for help.

I have burrowed through literature for poems and prose that actively comfort or inspire for my three anthologies about the great family turning points: love, death and birth, and have come out immeasurably more cheerful. I look for writing that helps life to be lived with more meaning and understanding. The latest anthology, on birth, New Life, An Anthology for Parenthood, is the most joyful.

New mothers and fathers are knocked sideways by the unexpected emotions of parenthood, and it takes writing of genius to capture the complex balance of wonder and fear. Anne Stevenson, describes in Poem for a Daughter how a baby’s first “razor-sharp cry” delivers a mother to her baby . . .

“The child,

tiny and alone, creates the mother”.

Peter Redgrove, another 20th-century poet, brilliantly expresses in Early Morning Feed how a new baby taps into the most powerful and primitive of emotions. After an early morning feed the father

“returns to bed

And feels like something, with the door ajar,

Crouched in the bracken, alert, with big eyes

For the hunger, death, disaster”.

For any parent struggling with the peculiar emotions of new parenthood it is reassuring to know that you’re not crazy, but actually quite normal.

You need inspiration, too, to cope with that puzzling contradiction of parenthood: that you love your children so much that when they are old enough you want them to leave. In Walking Away, the Irish poet C. Day-Lewis has just watched his son play his first game of football and then walk away with his friends. He describes the pain as

“the small, the scorching

Ordeals which fire one’s irresolute day”.

He goes on to explain in this fierce and powerful poem how

“selfhood begins with a walking away,

And love is proved in the letting go”.

It is hard to imagine a professional counsellor leaning over and saying: “That is the human condition, and what is most painful often enriches you most.” A poem such as Walking Away, with the beauty of the language and the distress fighting within the lines, leans over and tells you that the significance of your life lies as much in the twists of pain as the pleasure.

Sleepless nights, postnatal depression, dealing with grandparents, coping with the poignancy of a second child eagerly following his adored sister down “babyhood’s brief corridor”, all these need processing. Robert Hayden’s moving Those Winter Sundays describes how he took his father for granted as a child:

“Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?”

How helpful this is to others who took their parents for granted. As the Victorian writer Edmund Vance Cooke points out: “Children do not know how their parents love them, and they never will till the grave closes over those parents, or till they have children of their own.”

Similarly, compiling an anthology about death was a turning point in my own life. I lost the grey net curtain of fear which I realise must have clouded my days, and since then life has seemed quite miraculous. Dear friends had died, my parents were getting older, I had no iota of belief in God or an afterlife, I needed help. No clumpy self-help book could have done it. I needed the greatest writers to assist with this one. And they did.

In the first section of In Loving Memory: An Anthology for Memorial Services, Funerals and Just Getting By, Dylan Thomas demands that his father does not go gentle into that good night. W. H. Auden cries out his Funeral Blues, insisting that all the clocks stop. But, if you know where to look, the great authors can take a reader through anger and grief to a sense of resolution. To Churchill’s calming and direct letter to his wife in the event of his death, for example: “Do not grieve me too much . . . death is only an incident, and not the most important which happens to us in this state of being. On the whole, and since I have met you my darling, I have been happy . . . If there is anywhere else, I shall be on the lookout for you. Meanwhile look forward, feel free, rejoice in Life.”

After the death of my grandmother when I was 17 I went through a strange, disconnected period, and curiously a poem by Emily Dickinson, After Great Pain, helped me to recover because it defined my state of mind. Knowing what you feel and why is half the battletowards recovering your spirits:

“After great pain, a formal feeling comes . . .

The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs —

The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore

And Yesterday, or Centuries before.”

We live in a visual age but the shape and weight and sound of words have a great capacity to uplift. The right words in the right order can transform lives. When you are fretting about the future or tormenting yourself about the past, try remembering this Sanskrit proverb: “Look to this day! For it is life, the very life of life. For yesterday is but a dream. And tomorrow is only a vision. But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness. And tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore, to this day!” It may sound rather pat, but it works for me.

One of the greatest therapies, of course, is to know that you are not alone in your distress. The ceremonies that accompany the turning points of birth, love and death (christenings, weddings, funerals) of course honour the potency of words. These ceremonies are a kind of group therapy, a way of marking the transition from one state to another; a baby coming into the world and being given a name, a couple marrying, a person leaving the world. But what are these ceremonies without the words of great writers to quote?The greatest self-help is love — feverish romantic love, long-lasting romantic love, love for children, love of friends, love of parents. It soothes like honey, filling in cracks, raising spirits. It is the magic elixir. But it also causes nervous breakdowns galore, in part because we don’t understand it. Poetry is especially good at encapsulating the paradoxes of love and expressing complex emotions in a few lines. As Catullus wrote in the 1st century BC:

“I hate and love. And if you ask me why

I do not know. I only feel it, and it is agony”.

Robert Graves wrote that

“Love is a universal migraine,

A bright stain on the vision

Blotting out reason”.

Unrequited love? Read Beatrice de Die, a 12th-century female troubadour deserted by her lover. Bogged down in self-analysis? Writing in the 1800s Honoré de Balzac chides: “There are no little events with the heart. It magnifies everything; it places in the same scales the fall of an empire of fourteen years and the dropping of a woman’s glove, and almost always the glove weighs more than the empire.”

At different times, different words will come forward to comfort. I love the sense of gratitude just for being alive conveyed by Wendell Berry’s low-key poem The Peace of Wild Things. In despair about the world and its future, the poet goes to where the wood drake and the heron feed on the water.

“I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

The essential reading list

The moment you discover that you’re pregnant:

Knocked Up: Confessions of a hip mother to be, by Rebecca Eckler (2004). Eckler is a Canadian author and journalist who became pregnant on the night of her engagement party and has written numerous articles, books and columns about motherhood.

“27 Jan. How could I have been so stupid? I have ruined my life. I am never having sex again. I mean, I am never having unprotected sex again. Unprotected sex, like that black dress I wore the other night, is a bad idea. Ten minutes of great sex and my life is over. But another life has just begun. Life apparently does not happen when you’re busy making other plans. Life is what happens when there is an open bar . . .

28 Feb. I am never studying another pregnancy book again until I absolutely have no choice. It will be just like high school. When I start having contractions, I’ll cram.”

On Labour:

Yosano Akiko (1878-1942) was the pen name of a Japanese author, poet, pioneering feminist, pacifist and social reformer. Her poem Labour Pains evokes the fear of childbirth.

“There is only one truth.

I shall give birth to a child, truth driving outward from my inwardness.

Neither good nor bad; real, no sham about it.

With the first labour pains, suddenly the sun goes pale.

The indifferent world goes strangely calm.

I am alone.

It is alone I am.”

On sleeplessness:

Rachel Cusk (1967-) is a Canadian novelist. Her novel A Life’s Work contains “a valediction to sleep”.

“I remember the night sleep left me. It happened in hospital. I had suspected nothing. Several hours earlier I had had a baby; people had come and gone, flowers had been brought. Darkness fell. Presently it was half past ten or so, time to go to sleep. I wrapped the baby up in blankets like a new purchase, a present that I would unwrap and look at again in the morning. I slept. When I woke again some time later, it was to realise with real surprise that the terrible, persistent wailing racketing through the ward was ‘me’, as people now say of their mobile phones. My new purchase had gone off in the dead of night like some alarm I didn’t know how to disconnect.”

Night feeding Laurie Lee (1914-97) was an English novelist and poet. Here in an extract from Two Women, a tribute to his wife and daughter written in 1983, he describes bonding with a new baby at midnight:

“She was of course an ordinary miracle, but was also the particular late wonder of my life. So almost every night, at first, I’d take her to bed like a book and lie close and study her. Her dark blue eyes would stare straight into mine, but off-centre, not seeing me.

Such moments could have been the best we would ever know, those midnights of mutual blindness, while I was safe from her first recognitions, and she’d stared idly through me, at the pillow, at the bedhead, at the light on the wall, and each was a shadow of indifferent importance.

Here she was then, my daughter, here, alive, the one I must possess and guard. A year before this space had been empty, not even a hope of her was in it. Now she was here, brand new, with our name upon her, and no one could call in the night to reclaim her.”

When a father feels neglected by the arrival of a new baby:

Sally Emerson’s novel, Separation, (1993, Abacus) charts what happens when neither a cosmologist nor his management consultant wife is prepared for the momentous effect their new baby has on their lives:

“Lovers — beware of babies. The baby wants the mother all to itself. It doesn’t want the father with their bristly chin. Go away father. Go back to your work. I shall wake my mother at night. I shall stare searchingly into her eyes. I will need her so much she will forget all about you. And you will be left alone in your bed. She will cease to buy clothes for herself. She will buy them only for me.”

On growing up too fast:

Alexander Herzen (1812-70), was a writer and thinker, known as the father of Russian socialism:

“We think the purpose of a child is to grow up because it does grow up. But its purpose is to play, to enjoy itself, to be a child. If we merely look to the end of the process, the purpose of life is death.”

When you can’t afford the latest trainers:

Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837) was an Italian poet and philosopher:

“Children find everything in nothing, men find nothing in everything.”

TimesOnline

Virginia Apgar

In the 1950s, babies named Linda and Bobby came home from the hospital in Studebakers with Fats Domino on the radio. Many were given a new score a minute after birth to assess how well they made the transition from womb to room. Today, the Apgar score is still given to nearly every baby born in a hospital world-wide.

Many parents know Apgar as an acronym for what it measures: Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity and Respiration. But the score was first named for Virginia Apgar, the gutsy anesthesiologist who, in 1949, scribbled it on the back of a card in a hospital cafeteria that read "Please Bus Your Trays."

Dr. Virginia Apgar, circa 1950

The score laid the foundation for the field of neonatology, and Dr. Apgar became a legendary figure in medicine. She died in 1974. She would have been 100 years old next month. She was also my friend.

The score came about, indirectly, because of the sexism long rampant in medicine. The cash-strapped graduate of Mount Holyoke waited tables and caught stray cats to sell to the lab while earning her medical degree from Columbia University in 1933. She excelled at surgery, but a mentor convinced her she'd never make a living that way. "Even women won't go to a woman surgeon," Dr. Apgar said.

She went into anesthesiology and helped build it into a medical specialty. But she was passed over for a man to head the new department at Columbia. So she threw herself into teaching and patient care, becoming the first woman full professor at Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons. She was particularly drawn to obstetrical anesthesia, and was increasingly concerned about what she saw.

As late as the 1940s, delivery-room doctors focused on mothers and paid little attention to babies. Those who were small or struggling were often left to die, since doctors assumed little could be done for them. "It was considered better not to be aggressive. You dried them, you shook them, and some doctors patted them on the backside and that was it," says Alan Fleischman, medical director of the March of Dimes.

In the cafeteria one morning, a med student asked Dr. Apgar how a newborn might be evaluated. "That's easy, you'd do it like this," she said, dashing down heart rate, respiration, muscle tone, color and reflexes. Then she rushed off to try it, according to Selma Calmes, a retired anesthesiologist who has written about her. After testing the score on more than 1,000 newborns, Dr. Apgar presented it at a conference in 1952 and it caught on quickly.

As simple as it was, the score transformed deliveries by requiring staffers to carefully observe and assess each baby, assigning a score of 0, 1 or 2 to each of the five categories. Then, as now, few babies get a perfect 10 one minute after birth, since most have bluish toes and fingers until oxygenated blood starts circulating fully. Some doctors became competitive about the scores, and many hospitals began repeating the test at five or 10 minutes to measure whether newborns had improved.

Most importantly, babies who needed care started to get it, gradually spurring the development of newborn-size resuscitation tools, infant heart-rate monitors and neonatal intensive-care units. Thanks to all those efforts, and the philosophy that came with them, U.S. infant mortality dropped from 58 per 1,000 in the 1930s to 7 per 1,000 today. By the 1970s, it was said, "every baby born in a hospital around the world is looked at first through the eyes of Virginia Apgar."

Dr. Apgar, who never made any money from the test, moved on to become a senior medical official at the March of Dimes in 1959, devoting the rest of her life to preventing birth defects and other conditions that caused newborns to have low Apgar scores. She was among the first to recognize and warn pregnant women about the dangers that infections, viruses, RH incompatibility and certain medications could pose to unborn babies. After a rubella outbreak in 1964 caused 20,000 birth defects and 30,000 fetal deaths, she helped win funding for widespread vaccinations. Dr. Apgar was also one of the first at the March of Dimes to look for ways to prevent preterm birth, the organization's current focus, and coined the slogan, "Be good to your baby before it's born."

I knew Dr. Apgar because she co-authored a book to help would-be parents avoid birth defects, entitled "Is My Baby All Right?," with my mother, Joan Beck. Dr. Apgar was in her 60s then, with a corona of white hair, a wicked sense of humor and more energy than anybody I've ever met. This eminent physician sometimes met me at the school bus. She would regale us with tales of resuscitating collapsed strangers; she carried a pen knife and an airway tube just in case. "Nobody, but nobody, is going to stop breathing on me," she'd say.

Another of her favorite sayings was, "Do what is right, and do it now."

Dr. Apgar took up flying in her 50s, and also played -- and made -- stringed instruments. One night, she and a colleague famously snuck into Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital and stole a maple shelf from a phone booth that she thought would make a splendid violin. She died in 1974, having never married. "I never found a man who could cook," she often said.

These days, there are many high-tech ways to evaluate newborns, and some doctors say they would assign more importance to heart rate than the other conditions if the score were being designed today. But much of its genius was its simplicity: the Apgar score can be taught quickly and administered almost anywhere, from a remote hospital to a mobile emergency van. And despite other innovations, The New England Journal of Medicine concluded in 2001 that the Apgar score "remains as relevant for the prediction of neonatal survival today as it was almost 50 years ago."

Apgar scores are also listed on birth certificates, used in epidemiological studies, and bragged about, so they have taken on social as well as medical value. "Moms want a good grade. Doctors want a good grade, too," says the March of Dimes's Dr. Fleischman. That's just what Dr. Apgar would have wanted.

Melinda Beck

As Guerras dos Lavores (?) / The Stitch Wars ;)

The Guardian

26 Things No One Told You About Life as a Parent

(What no one tells you: Babies rarely look like this!)

1. Many, many mornings at 5:30 a.m., you will spend inordinate amounts of time bargaining with God for just one more hour of sleep.

2. There is no painless way to extract a baby from a womb. You will spend lots of time arguing with other mothers about which is less painful, a C-section or a vaginal birth. In reality, they both hurt more than any other hurt you’ve ever experienced in your entire life. But it’s the kind of pain that’s worth it, for the most part.

3. You will become so used to touching your child’s bodily fluids-snot, urine, poop, spit, and blood-that they will no longer gross you out.

4. You will become an expert at the art of “poop reading,” which is the ability to tell whether your child is sick based on the size, color, shape and frequency of his or her bowel movements.

5. You will develop a condition known as “momnesia” at the moment of conception. Experts say it lifts about a year or two into parenthood, but any honest mother will tell you that it lasts a full 20 years, at which time you will develop senility instead.

6. During pregnancy, you will find all sorts of crud in your underwear, crud that makes your worst yeast infection ever seem very, very, very tame.

7. After you give birth, you will begin to hate your spouse and wish he or she would just drop dead.

8. Your child will embarrass you on a deeper level than you’ve ever been embarrassed in your life, especially when you are standing in line at a store and your 3 year old exclaims, “Whoo-wee Mommy, you farted! It stinks in here!”

9. Your boobs will look Pam Anderson fantastic during breast-feeding. Love it while it lasts. As soon as your child weans, your boobs will deflate faster than a balloon with a hole in it. And they will get saggy, too. This is the single most common reason why many women decide to have more than one child.

10. Not long into parenthood, you will trade off your goal of being the “perfect parent” for the goal of “just help me survive this experience.”

11. There will be a day at some point after parenthood when you find yourself out in public and realize any or all of the following: a) your shirt is inside out b) there is food on your shirt c) you forgot to brush your teeth… and your hair d) you forgot to put on your pants.

12. All of those expressions you learned from your parents that you swore you would never repeat? You will say them to your child, and you will say them many, many times.

13. If you did not curse before parenthood, you will afterward. If you cursed before parenthood, you will curse even more.

14. Your child will start to manipulate you starting around 4 months, a process that will last until your funeral. You will learn to see this for what it is: how your child displays his or her love for you.

15. You will find yourself Googling all sorts of oddities, from, “How to teach a kid to poop on the potty” to “I have a crush on my pediatrician. Is this normal?”

16. You will ask yourself, “Is this normal?” many, many, many times, and you will never really know the answer to that question. For instance, while eating dinner at a restaurant, your child might slip his or her hands up your shirt and exclaim, “I’m touching your nipples!” Is that normal? I’m still not sure.

17. You will realize just how much you really do not know, especially when your child asks you, “Whose head is on the quarter?” and “Why do Zebras have stripes?” and “Why can’t I put my hands up your shirt when we are out in public?”

18. You will constantly worry that someone will call Child Protective Services on you, even though you are truly a good parent. Your child is just clumsy.

19. Time will become your most precious commodity, and you will haggle with your spouse over it as if it were gold.

20. You will learn to fear birthday invitations.

21. Grocery shopping will never quite be the same experience again.

22. If you had extra money before you became a parent, you won’t have it afterward.

23. Diapers cost more than you would ever imagine. Daycare costs even more, and don’t even think about the cost of a college education. If you do, you will probably decide not to have children.

24. The expression, “All shit stinks” is inaccurate. The poop of newborn breast fed babies doesn’t stink. Poop only starts to stink once babies start eating solids, and some solids make it stink more than others. You will soon become an expert at sniffing poop and knowing exactly what food led to that precise odor.

25. You will find yourself throwing away all sorts of things that make you feel guilty, such as your child’s artwork.

26. The day you give birth, your hair will start to gray and you will start to grow a mustache. It happens to the best of mothers. Thankfully, there are plenty of cheap hair removal products, not to mention dye.

Project Happily Ever After

Older Moms: What Are Their Critics Really Afraid Of?

This is too good to let pass:

Giving birth at 67 (...) has its problems, but the reason people are so up in arms may not have to do with an altruistic concern for the children. Belkin posted the NPR interview on her New York Times blog, and a commenter responded thus:

I think that if women gain the ability to bear children in their later years (thus truly retaining youth and vitality), society in general will find it much harder to brush older women off as irrelevant and unneeded. Older males will have fewer excuses for sniffing around skirts of women half their age, and will no longer be seen as logical opportunities, but rather selfish perverts. If women can still have babies in their 50s and 60s as men do, we'll have taken a giant step toward closing one of the most significant gender gaps that exists. True equality is the real fear.

In conversations about gender inequality, especially regarding relationships and age, people frequently throw up their hands and cite "biological realities." These realities are why women are supposed to consider their "market value" and settle down young, while men can do whatever they want. But if technology allows us to change biology, extending women's fertility, it will become less tenable to assert that a woman's "value" is tied up with her youth. The paradigm that women lose worth just as they become wiser, more experienced, and better able to speak up for themselves, may be subverted. And that, for many people, may be a scary thought.

Jezebel

De l'amour et de l'eau fraîche ;)

All Creatures

Férias! ;)

Just in case you've missed the Slow Loris ;)

There is only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it.

Chinese Proverb



Found in My Feng Shui'd Life

Gazoon

Uma maravilha no canal JimJam ;)

Barrigas de Amor

No próximo domingo, Parque dos Poetas, Oeiras

O Quartinho das Crianças...

Para conseguir um quarto divertido e ao mesmo tempo propiciador do sono, tenha em consideração aspectos como a localização, iluminação, janelas, soalho, cor das paredes, mobília, camas, tecidos e espaços de armazenagem.

Localização: idealmente, os quartos das crianças deveriam estar virados para nascente, de forma a absorverem a energia ascendente do sol (representativa do crescimento). Oeste (poente) é também uma boa direcção para crianças muito activas (energia descendente).
Iluminação: as luzes devem ser focos virados para cima, dado que fornecem uma iluminação mais global e bem distribuída, ampliando o espaço. Devem evitar-se candeeiros de metal, que conduzem de uma forma mais acentuada a energia electromagnética e a electricidade estática. É importante que a luz seja a suficiente para que a criança não tenha dificuldade em ver os brinquedos, nomeadamente quando está a brincar no chão, mas que não seja demasiada, permitindo redução à hora do deitar. Uma luz de presença pode ser uma boa companhia, mais pela referência que representa do que pela iluminação que produz.
Janelas: devem ter cortinados de algodão, de preferência de enrolar para levantar durante o dia, criando uma atmosfera mais activa, e descer durante a noite, para que a criança possa dormir melhor, sem luzes exteriores.
Soalho: evitar o uso de alcatifas, dada a acumulação de pó, ácaros e bolores. O soalho de madeira é o mais saudável e o mais fácil de limpar. Poderá haver uma zona de linóleo ou material equivalente, para certas brincadeiras que requerem superfícies deslizantes.
Cor das paredes: os tons de azul (claro) são particularmente bons; nuances de verde ou amarelo podem também ser utilizadas. O uso de duas cores é bom.
Mobília: os móveis devem ter cores alegres e os cantos arredondados, para diminuir o risco de acidentes.
Camas: é importante que as crianças durmam com a cabeça virada para o mesmo lado, com a cabeceira encostada à parede; as camas devem ser de madeira. Não se deve deixar as camas por fazer durante o dia.
Tecidos: utilizar lençóis ou fronhas de almofada de algodão. Os cobertores devem ser de materiais naturais. O colchão, se em algodão maciço, permite que o sono seja mais reparador e que a transpiração se dê de uma forma adequada. Os edredões são uma boa opção, mas há que atender ao material interior (pode a criança ser alérgica às penas, por exemplo), e ao grau de aquecimento e absorção da humidade e suor. À noite as crianças suam mais.
Guarda-brinquedos: colocar umas quantas caixas (de madeira, se possível), de modo a que a criança aí guarde todos os brinquedos antes de dormir, de forma organizada. Durante o dia os jogos poderão estar mais disponíveis.

A evitar
Tendo em conta tudo o que se sabe, não será mau tomar algumas precauções:
material eléctrico e electrónico – é essencial que a criança não durma perto de uma aparelhagem de som (a distância mínima deverá ser superior a um metro e meio); as colunas de som contêm um íman que altera bastante o campo electromagnético; o mesmo é verdade para relógios digitais e computadores que, mesmo desligados, criam um campo de electricidade estática nociva para a saúde – o melhor é, caso existam, desligá-los na tomada, durante a noite;
cabeceiras por baixo de janelas – não se deve colocar a cabeceira da cama debaixo de uma janela, pois cria energia muito activa que pode dificultar o sono;
portas abertas – durante a noite, o ideal é fechar a porta do quarto, assim como as cortinas, acalmando assim o fluxo de energia e favorecendo um sono profundo, a menos que a criança reclame por se sentir amedrontada;
mobílias pesadas – o mobiliário do quarto deve ser «leve» e simples, para não o tornar opressivo ou dar uma ideia de redução de espaço, que torna o «animal» que há em nós naturalmente mais agressivo e inquieto;
espelhos – mesmo sem ir às teorias que dizem que os espelhos impedem de nos livrarmos das emoções antigas, sabe-se que amplificam as ondas electromagnéticas e a electricidade residual, interferindo com o processo de acalmar.
Atenção: nada do que escrevi é garantia de noites totalmente tranquilas – isto é um aviso para os pais que já não dormem há dois ou três anos e que poderão pensar que os seus problemas se vão resolver com meia dúzia de medidas, até porque os factores que interferem com o sono são múltiplos –, mas pensando que o sono é uma fase do dia em que se deve receber um mínimo de estímulos externos e ter a máxima segurança para o cérebro se dedicar «de corpo e alma» à gestão da informação e bom arquivo dos estímulos, com a construção de uma memória eficiente, todas estas indicações fazem sentido e apontam na mesma direcção.

Ponyo, o peixinho dourado que quer ser Criança

Google para Miúdos

Encontrado em La Double Vie de Véronique

Comidaaaaa

NurtureBaby is an online community for parents and parents-to-be that features homemade baby food recipes, baby nutrition tips, and time-saving techniques to make delicious and nutritious baby food. NurtureBaby is an inspirational and informative resource for creative, healthy baby food recipes that serve as an alternative to the traditional store-bought food.

Baby Panthers, Black Cats ;)

Newborn baby panthers Larisa and Sipura stare at photographers during a media presentation of the cubs at the Tierpark zoo in Berlin, Germany.

A Baby is «Useless on Purpose»

Now that I got your attention :)

Seed: You describe children as being “useless on purpose.” What do you mean by that?
AG: It’s related to one of the basic things that came out of our research: Why do children exist at all? It doesn’t make tremendous evolutionary sense to have these creatures that can’t even keep themselves alive and require an enormous investment of time on the part of adults. That period of dependence is longer for us than it is for any other species, and historically that period has become longer and longer.

The evolutionary answer seems to be that there is a tradeoff between the ability to learn and imagine — which is our great evolutionary advantage as a species — and our ability to apply what we’ve learned and put it to use. So one of the ideas in the book is that children are like the R&D department of the human species. They’re the ones who are always learning about the world. But if you’re always learning, imagining, and finding out, you need a kind of freedom that you don’t have if you’re actually making things happen in the world. And when you’re making things happen, it helps if those actions are based on all of the things you have learned and imagined. The way that evolution seems to have solved this problem is by giving us this period of childhood where we don’t have to do anything, where we are completely useless. We’re free to explore the physical world, as well as possible worlds through imaginative play. And when we’re adults, we can use that information to actually change the world.

Read all in SEED

Partly Cloudy já está no YouTube

Cliquem e maravilhem-se ;)

Here, Kitty Kitty

Dia Mundial do Ambiente

Home - O Mundo é a nossa Casa, de Yann-Arthus Bertrand

Why Children Turn out the Way They Do

It’s time to move beyond the nature/nurture divide:

Earlier this year, on the tenth anniversary of its first publication, The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out The Way They Do by Judith Rich Harris was revised and updated. The book is a welcome antidote to the increasingly shrill voices lecturing us today about the ‘right’ ways of parenting. But as an insight into what it means to be human, and what shapes our development, Harris’s book raises more questions than it answers.

Ler tudo na Spiked, bless you ;)

Dia Internacional da Criança

Iniciativas:

Lifecooler TimeOut

Madagascar, Escape 2 Africa

Uma mariquice pegada, e mais um filme que ganha em ser visto em casa, para não se perder o mais ínfimo pormenor ;)

Sítio na Web

A azáfama dos nossos pequenitos

Por uma amiga e mãe de três ;)

São dias bons, longos, cheios de mimos e sorrisos, uns chorinhos por aqui e por ali, umas elevações de voz e muitas repetições porque quando se tem 3 e 5 anos é difícil ouvir (e fazer) à primeira. Se até com 35 é complicado, quanto mais quando temos uma data de brincadeiras agendadas e um adulto com a mania que manda e organiza e dita, que nos diz para lavarmos as mãos, os dentes, arrumar isto e aquilo, sentar à mesa, calçar sapatos, vestir casacos, pegar na lancheira, apertar cintos, sentar, sentar, sentar, falar baixinho, não correr, ajudar a irmã, ficar no passeio, fechar/ abrir a porta, comer, dormir, escolher livro para ler ao deitar . Meu Deus, agora que escrevo, vejo a quantidade de coisas que "debitamos" nestes seres tão pequeninos e que já tanto têm de fazer. E isto entre o português e o inglês, para ajudar à missa.

Calais Pedro World

Os Bastidores do Zoo

Num belo e divertido texto de Tiago Salazar para a revista Notícias do DN:

Nos 125 anos do Jardim Zoológico de Lisboa a nm foi ver como se vive o quotidiano nos bastidores, para lá das jaulas, gaiolas e aquários. Descobrimos, por exemplo, que as palavras amizade e amor são possíveis entre homens (tratadores) e répteis, ocapis, gorilas ou baleias.

Mais...

Partly Cloudy, a nova curta da Pixar

Que será exibida antes de Up - Altamente! (dizem...), a próxima estreia.

Chamam-lhe Terra

Website

Sita Sings the Blues

Um achado!
Grátis!
Disponível no Youtube, for pete's sake!
Prémio Especial do Júri no nosso festival Monstra!*
Delicioso!
Baseado no Ramayana! (tradução inglesa)
;)

Dear Audience,

I hereby give Sita Sings the Blues to you. Like all culture, it belongs to you already, but I am making it explicit with a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License. Please distribute, copy, share, archive, and show Sita Sings the Blues. From the shared culture it came, and back into the shared culture it goes.

You don't need my permission to copy, share, publish, archive, show, sell, broadcast, or remix Sita Sings the Blues. Conventional wisdom urges me to demand payment for every use of the film, but then how would people without money get to see it? How widely would the film be disseminated if it were limited by permission and fees? Control offers a false sense of security. The only real security I have is trusting you, trusting culture, and trusting freedom.

* Cujo website é uma seca, desculpem lá :(

The Princess and the Frog

First black princess ever? From Disney?





Official website

The MessMaker ;)

Perspectivas: The Case Against Breast-Feeding

One afternoon at the playground last summer, shortly after the birth of my third child, I made the mistake of idly musing about breast-feeding to a group of new mothers I’d just met. This time around, I said, I was considering cutting it off after a month or so. At this remark, the air of insta-friendship we had established cooled into an icy politeness, and the mothers shortly wandered away to chase little Emma or Liam onto the slide. Just to be perverse, over the next few weeks I tried this experiment again several more times. The reaction was always the same: circles were redrawn such that I ended up in the class of mom who, in a pinch, might feed her baby mashed-up Chicken McNuggets.

In my playground set, the urban moms in their tight jeans and oversize sunglasses size each other up using a whole range of signifiers: organic content of snacks, sleekness of stroller, ratio of tasteful wooden toys to plastic. But breast-feeding is the real ticket into the club. My mother friends love to exchange stories about subversive ways they used to sneak frozen breast milk through airline security (it’s now legal), or about the random brutes on the street who don’t approve of breast-feeding in public. When Angelina Jolie wanted to secure her status as America’s ur-mother, she posed on the cover of W magazine nursing one of her twins. Alt-rocker Pete Wentz recently admitted that he tasted his wife, Ashlee Simpson’s, breast milk (“soury” and “weird”), after bragging that they have a lot of sex—both of which must have seemed to him markers of a cool domestic existence.

From the moment a new mother enters the obstetrician’s waiting room, she is subjected to the upper-class parents’ jingle: “Breast Is Best.” Parenting magazines offer “23 Great Nursing Tips,” warnings on “Nursing Roadblocks,” and advice on how to find your local lactation consultant (note to the childless: yes, this is an actual profession, and it’s thriving). Many of the stories are accompanied by suggestions from the ubiquitous parenting guru Dr. William Sears, whose Web site hosts a comprehensive list of the benefits of mother’s milk. “Brighter Brains” sits at the top: “I.Q. scores averaging seven to ten points higher!” (Sears knows his audience well.) The list then moves on to the dangers averted, from infancy on up: fewer ear infections, allergies, stomach illnesses; lower rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease. Then it adds, for good measure, stool with a “buttermilk-like odor” and “nicer skin”—benefits, in short, “more far-reaching than researchers have even dared to imagine.”

In 2005, Babytalk magazine won a National Magazine Award for an article called “You Can Breastfeed.” Given the prestige of the award, I had hoped the article might provide some respite from the relentlessly cheerful tip culture of the parenting magazines, and fill mothers in on the real problems with nursing. Indeed, the article opens with a promisingly realistic vignette, featuring a theoretical “You” cracking under the strain of having to breast-feed around the clock, suffering “crying jags” and cursing at your husband. But fear not, You. The root of the problem is not the sudden realization that your ideal of an equal marriage, with two parents happily taking turns working and raising children, now seems like a farce. It turns out to be quite simple: You just haven’t quite figured out how to fit “Part A into Part B.” Try the “C-hold” with your baby and some “rapid arm movement,” the story suggests. Even Dr. Sears pitches in: “Think ‘fish lips,’” he offers.

In the days after my first child was born, I welcomed such practical advice. I remember the midwife coming to my hospital bed and shifting my arm here, and the baby’s head there, and then everything falling into place. But after three children and 28 months of breast-feeding (and counting), the insistent cheerleading has begun to grate. Buttermilk-like odor? Now Dr. Sears is selling me too hard. I may have put in fewer parenting years than he has, but I do have some perspective. And when I look around my daughter’s second-grade class, I can’t seem to pick out the unfortunate ones: “Oh, poor little Sophie, whose mother couldn’t breast-feed. What dim eyes she has. What a sickly pallor. And already sprouting acne!”

I dutifully breast-fed each of my first two children for the full year that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends. I have experienced what the Babytalk story calls breast-feeding-induced “maternal nirvana.” This time around, nirvana did not describe my state of mind; I was launching a new Web site and I had two other children to care for, and a husband I would occasionally like to talk to. Being stuck at home breast-feeding as he walked out the door for work just made me unreasonably furious, at him and everyone else.

In Betty Friedan’s day, feminists felt shackled to domesticity by the unreasonably high bar for housework, the endless dusting and shopping and pushing the Hoover around—a vacuum cleaner being the obligatory prop for the “happy housewife heroine,” as Friedan sardonically called her. When I looked at the picture on the cover of Sears’s Breastfeeding Book—a lady lying down, gently smiling at her baby and still in her robe, although the sun is well up—the scales fell from my eyes: it was not the vacuum that was keeping me and my 21st-century sisters down, but another sucking sound. (...)

Lengthy article from The Atlantic

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