Well, Penni, no emails from you, so I have no idea if you got mine yet. I don't know what to say about CW--is he perhaps a Pisces as you are? My goldfish don't seem to close their eyes when they sleep, either.
Being a total pagan, I strongly advocate the family bed as a healthy, workable theory of child rearing. Everyone sleeps together in a big happy warm lump until the children gradually unfold into their own universes out of inner security and fulfillment of their needs, two to eighteen years later. Sugar's own little Sweetie, rapidly growing into a tall strong woman with incredible grey eyes and endlessly long white-blonde hair, still needs to suck up her mommy's feminine power and dream energy many nights. The disturbed sleep a baby brings to the household is obliterated as well, since the baby/child just rolls over to nurse, without waking the tired mommy. Oh, I also advocate nursing until the need is satisfied, which may be several years. La Leche League publishes an excellent book, "Mothering Your Nursing Toddler", which reveals all the life-long benefits of this.
These philosophies are shocking to most Americans, and yet it is we who are aberrant in our child-rearing practices. For most of the history of the world, in almost all countries, babies slept/sleep with their parents, and nurse until they are finished needing the warm nurturing this gives them. In many societies this is five to six years. Children are kept close to their parents' bodies, being carried by one of them in a sling until they are too heavy and mobile for this to be necessary or practical. Most of us see these ideas as primitive, and yet I see Western industrial child-rearing as putting a needy little being into a cage (crib) and then shutting the door on it and going away. We are a little more humane about it now, as the debate about whether to respond to a baby's crying seems to be swinging toward responding when it does so. I find the very discussion barbaric and alarming and absurd!!!
Interestingly enough, the latest research on infant brain development reveals that babies need the continual stimulation of eye contact and human voices and their parents responding to them to grow big, strong brains and develop well physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Of note is that there is almost no neurosis in the primitive societies which follow nurturing child-rearing practices. And you would never have had to degrade yourself, Penni! Why am I writing all this?
Oh, speaking of degrading, I was astonished to discover there is a bondage nightclub, the Trocadero Transfer, in San Francisco, where on Wednesday nights curious straight ("normal") couples, Midwestern conventioneers, and German and Japanese on tour buses come and watch leather-bound, almost naked sadists and masochists of every sexual predilection engage in bondage, behind a fence. The cover charge in only $5-7, and apparently it is extremely popular. According to an article in the "San Francisco Chronicle", bondage is becoming more popular in America, particularly among middle-class, monogamous couples, as we make stronger commitments to exclusive relationships but then have more difficulty keeping the romance fresh and exciting. A discussion in the article with a sex therapist reveals that the primary problem he treats is lack of sexual desire, and that there is an increasingly common search for fresh ideas and experiences within these committed relationships.
Really, why am I writing all this? |
