Babies Around the World

I watched this documentary called Babies. It follows 4 babies from different parts of the world through their first year of life. It was very interesting to me to see the differences in childrearing and yet the similarities of experiences the babies go through. I highly recommend the movie, but be aware that there is nudity, especially in the family from Namibia.

One thing I didn't like was the American family. I didn't think they were a very good representative of an average American family. They were from San Francisco, in their 40s, and only had the one child. They were major "yuppies". I can tell you that they didn't raise their child the same way I raised any of my children. For example, they went to a class where they sat around on the floor singing about Mother Earth taking care of us, the mom swam with the baby outside in the hot tub naked (both of them)during daylight(?!), and there was never any noise at their house. When the girl got upset with her mom and smacked her in the face, the mom pulled a book off the shelf, titled Bad Hitting, and reminded the girl (about 9 months old) that she was not to hit.

The other babies were from Tokyo, Namibia, and Mongolia. The Mongolian boy had a big brother (about 18 months old) who always hit him until he cried. One day he put him in his stroller, rolled him out to where the cows were, and left him. It reminded me of when M was tiny and I was holding her on my lap. S brought over the bouncy chair, patted it, and said "Put Baby here." Just goes to show how those relationships are the same the world over.