"Our Babies, Ourselves" by Meredith Small

Review by Shannon Jones

Written by an anthropologist, this is an intriguing account of how humans care for infants, from a cross-cultural and evolutionary perspective. It begins by providing a fascinating summary of infant care in several diverse cultures including three hunter-gatherer societies and the modern industrial societies of Japan and the U.S. The variety of practices described, not only of caring for the young, but also related to social structure, mating, pregnancy, and birth made for some interesting reading. While I would have been interested to learn about the customs in even more cultures, these summaries served the purpose of illustrating both the great variety of the practices in existence across the world, as well as how unusual the practices that we take for granted in the US (and Western civilization) actually are.

For instance, in our society we take for granted that babies should sleep in cribs and often in their own rooms, but it is startling to realize that this practice has only been around for the last 200 or so years in Western civilization, that babies still sleep with their mothers in the vast majority of cultures in the world today, and that this is what humans have done for ages over the course of our (successful) evolution. It points out the contrast between our cultural practice of infant solitary sleep and how infants have evolved biologically to sleep in close proximity to their mothers. This data leads us to question whether our modern cultural practices are actual compatible with the biological needs of infants, and what is actually best for meeting the needs of infants.

This relationship between culture and biology is the theme that guides the rest of the book. In addition to sleep, two other topics which are central to the lives of infants are covered: eating and state (crying, temperament, etc.) Each of these chapters was packed with interesting information from historical, evolutionary, cultural, and scientific perspectives. Some of the parts that stood out to me in the "eating" section were learning about weaning ages from a biological (looking at humans within the spectrum of other primates) and cross-cultural perspective (ranging from 2.5 to 7 years old), as well as the history of breastfeeding and formula in Western culture. I was also interested to learn that "insufficient milk" syndrome only has a physical cause in 5% of the reported cases and is not found anywhere other than Western industrialized nations. Rather, its cause is usually associated with separation from the mother at birth, interval feeding (rather than feeding on cue or "demand"), and artificial milk presented as a reasonable alternative. Such insights, if properly applied, could help us to prevent this frustrating problem for many mothers.

Another eye-opening topic was crying. Crying is accepted in Western culture as normal and expected for babies, but in many cultures babies hardly cry at all. Studies have shown that what helps babies to cry less is human contact- picking up a crying baby, promptly feeding a baby that is crying out of hunger, and carrying the baby for more hours of each day. This may sound like common sense, but it is not the mainstream way that babies are cared for in Western culture. Rather, babies' cries routinely receive delayed responses and "cry-it-out" is a popular and widely accepted sleep training method for infants.

It frustrates me that as many advances as have been made in Western civilization, in many ways it has failed us so miserably. I wish I lived in a culture in which I could trust the mainstream cultural practices for infant care (and everything else), but unfortunately that's not the reality we live in. By broadening our perspective on infant care to cultures across the world and our evolutionary history, this book allows us to view our own culture in a new light and begin to look more closely at what is actually best for our children.

The information and perspectives shared in this book went well beyond what you would find in a normal "Parenting" book, and it kept me interested from beginning to end. I highly recommend this book for parents and non-parents alike.