People of Today, Part Two: Happy Babies
“It takes a village to raise a child.”
(African proverb made famous as Hillary Rodham Clinton’s book title)
A recent article in Psychology Today’s Moral Landscapes blog by Darcia Narvaez, PhD, entitled “Where are the Happy Babies?” bemoans the lack of “happy, confident, socially-engaged babies” as compared to the “distracted, unhappy, dazed, and pretty uninterested in others” babies the author sees around her. She makes a strong case for the importance of the “external womb” for proper brain development—development that not only includes the things we typically value as “intelligence” but also the development of a social intelligence, as evidenced by those happy, engaged babies.
Her solutions to raising these happy babies fall into two categories, starting with what the baby wants/needs. The baby wants/needs list includes such things as constant touch, responsiveness to needs, avoiding distress and discomfort (including crying), and on-demand breastfeeding. Had the article stopped there, I would have already been a fan of her message.
Narvaez goes further with her second category: Societal-level questions, asking “How does what babies need affect those who are not parents?” Here she steps into the broader look at what it takes to create a society/community that makes meeting those baby needs and wants even feasible—that “village” in the proverb.
Parents aren’t parents in a vacuum. They live in a world that requires income from somewhere—most often from paid employment, and generating that income generally means at least being busy and otherwise occupied, if not physically away from their babies. And that separation/work potentially affects everything from family well-being and health, to time and availability.
Narvaez said, “We need to focus on prevention and fostering good health, instead of interventions after things have gone wrong.” This, in a nutshell, is the basis for a relatively new way of thinking about health and wellness: Life Course—that the choices we make throughout life affect our ongoing health and wellness throughout life. By putting more emphasis on preventive strategies, starting from preconception and continuing through to old age, we save time, money, and grief later on. By looking at health and wellness across the lifespan, we can begin to look at ways that we need to restructure society to make those healthy choices possible.
Knowing something is a healthy choice isn’t always enough. Too many families live in “food deserts” where even if they wanted to increase the number of fresh fruits and vegetables they eat, there are no good places conveniently located to purchase them. Or knowing that outside activity is good for children and adults doesn’t guarantee a safe place to play.
Understanding that these things are important, however, in allowing parents and caregivers to provide what babies (and children and adults) need at least opens the door for meaningful conversations, conversations that include how to adapt all these health and wellness choices for children and adults with special health care needs and/or disabilities.
It’s not that we expect the “village” to raise our children and make them happy. It’s just that a strong village—a community that values health and wellness and the sanctity of the family—allows parents to raise their children in ways that will likely lead to happy, socially-intelligent babies.
Imagine how the world might be different if we were all so intelligent!
“I believe that the community—in the fullest sense: a place and all its creatures—is the smallest unit of health and that to speak of the health of an isolated individual is a contradiction in terms.”
― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
Note: That obviously happy baby in the photograph? That would be my grandson…
© Melissa Clark Vickers 2013; Photo © Merrilee Vickers Graf 2013
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