Babies Around the World

Ever since I saw the movie “Babies” a little while ago, I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s a short, wordless documentary about 4 babies growing up in different parts of the world, from birth to age 1. It’s visually stunning, and of course the babies are cute, but that’s not what struck me most.

Rather, it’s how differently babies are raised in other cultures. There’s Ponijao in Namibia, who rolls around in the dirt naked and has to put up with livestock drinking his bathwater. Then there’s Bayar, a little moon-faced boy in Mongolia whose mother births him with little fanfare and then hops on the back of a motorbike for the bumpy ride back to their yurt. The life of Mari in Tokyo isn’t drastically different from her counterpart Hattie’s in San Francisco, with their diapers and strollers and baby music classes.

But the scene that had the most impact for me was one with Hattie and her mother. The baby has become a toddler, with all the behaviors that go along with that—namely, fussing and swatting at her mother. So the mom—obviously an educated, upper-middle class woman in her 30’s, I’d say—does what many moms I know would do. She turns and takes a book off the shelf, titled “No Hitting.”

Isn’t that so AMERICAN? We can fix any parenting problem with the right book! Let’s consult 6 experts and then mirror correct behaviors for our offspring! Better yet, let’s take our baby to a child psychologist so we can understand the emotional causes of her hitting! Perhaps it’s because our peaceful, lute-accompanied water birth went awry and we needed a C-section?

OK, I’m mocking. But you have to admit it’s a little funny, especially in comparison to the mother in Africa who, when her children are fighting, distracts them with a wild dog or her own hair. The Mongolian baby is left alone constantly, either swaddled up to his eyeballs in yards of fabric or tied to a bed post. (Yes! He was literally tied to a bed post by his waist while his mother was outside tending the sheep or something. And he seemed perfectly happy.)

We American moms pour so much time and energy and angst into parenting. We debate the pros and cons of disposable vs. cloth diapers and when and how to potty train, while in the rest of the world babies are crawling around bare-bummed. The African mom, when her newborn poops, WIPES HIS BUTT ON HER KNEE and then scrapes it off with an old corn cob! No organic wipes, no wipe warmer, no Diaper Genie, no antibacterial soap. Can you imagine??

Now, I’m not going to chuck all our educational toys and books and diapers and let my baby crawl shoeless all over a rusty metal drum in the middle of a field of horned cattle. (Not that that makes the Mongolian woman a bad mom; let’s not be judgy.) But it is a good reminder that maybe we don’t need all the stuff we think we do to raise a child. Little Ponijao in Africa seemed pretty darn happy to me.

So, tell me, readers in America and around the world, what parenting differences do you notice where you live?