Great Leap Backward

This morning on BBC Radio 4’s Today Show, there was a feature on a Chinese family and their privations under the new economic system. The reporter told the very sad story of a family with multiple health problems and the struggle to make ends meet. They were separated by great distances and the father was working in the precarious black economy in order to keep bodies and souls together.

But the reporter kept going on about how this family were the victims of the new China, the losers in China’s booming new economy.

I’m not saying that this family weren’t suffering. I’m not even saying that a little bit of socialist intervention might not have made their lives a little easier (like, you know, socialised health care or universal access to good education, or even an agricultural extension agent). But let’s not compare the realities of present day China with the rosy, lies of China’s Maoist past.

Sure the dad might be working all the hours coming in a Chinese boomtown and Granny might be gleaning wheat from the side of the road. But in the Great Leap Forward, they wouldn’t have even had that much to eat. During Mao’s time there wasn’t even the freedom to travel to the city of your choice to have your labor exploited. China’s Communism didn’t even attempt a proper welfare state – it was just grinding, totalitarian misery.

Bringing up baby

Channel Four has been showing a series called Bringing Up Baby, which features six sets of parents trying three different baby care methods.

• The 50s method of Truby King which is all about strict routine, seems similar to Ferber or BabyWise methods.
• The 60s method of Dr Spock – trust your instincts.
• The 70s continuum concept – basically hard core attachment parenting, wearing the baby all the time, co-sleeping, etc.

The parents were supported by mentors who espoused these approaches. Each of these women was completely nuts on her own approach, so although this was called an experiment it was really about pitting these opinionated women against each other. It was supposed to stir strong feelings, and it did. (For example, two of the three mentors though that breastfeeding in public – even discretely, was simply beyond the pale.)

The 50s method, which involved only cuddling your newborn for 10 minutes a day and letting the baby cry it out from birth, and leaving the baby in the garden for “fresh air” for four hours unattendend made people on my British parenting forum go insane. And rightly so. To me it seemed like the sort of treatment doled out in Romanian orphanages. But if you keep the baby to a strict routine but painful routine at first, apparently you can get it to sleep conveniently from 7pm to 7am and take naps and generally not cause too much bother. That does sound tempting in a way, but the whole thing strikes me as a bit pointless. Why did you have a baby if you were simply planning to shut it up in some other room like some pet you don’t like?

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One of the things that’s surprised me about the whole child rearing lark is that there actually isn’t any consensus on the best approach. That it seems like doctors and health visitors and everyone else have a variety of conflicting information that they’d like to force upon you. Feeding, schedules, weaning, bedtime routine. There are no answers. I know that every baby is different, but we have been having babies for quite some time and we’ve also had the scientific methods of observation and even experimentation at our disposal for a while now, too. So why haven’t we actually put the two together to come up with some decent answers. It seems like the only thing there is some scientific clarity on is breast milk is the best thing you can feed a baby – advice which most of the population in the English speaking world ignore. Of course, that’s probably because you get so much conflicting advice about what’s the best way to go about it.

Anyway, I’ve decided that it’s probably more about what the parent finds appropriate than what the baby will thrive on. After all, the little mite knows no difference.