Subtitled "How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent", this book is a look at the initial findings of the field of ethnopediatrics, which is an interdisciplinary crosscultural study of child development and childrearing practices. After an initial look at some of the variety of parenting practices worldwide, Small devotes chapters to the big topics of infant sleep patterns, crying, and breastfeeding.
Although this book is presented as a summation of scientific research, Small seems to be clearly arguing that some practices are better than others. In particular, it's difficult to avoid seeing an implied syllogism in much of the discussion here:
While attachment parenting and instinctive parenting advocates may rejoice in this conclusion, others might take a more critical view of the evidence. Professional readers in particular may note that although Small provides an extensive list of references, judging the soundness of those references is left as an exercise for the reader. For instance, picking a footnoted sentence at random, "The Dutch also feel that when children have sleep problems it is because their routine has been interrupted." The footnote refers this back to a 1995 AAAS study, but there's no way to tell from Small's work how many Dutch children were included in the study or what answers prompted the researchers to assign that attitude to the entire Dutch people.
It's difficult to read this book without being reminded of the Rousseauian ideal of the Noble Savage. Just as Rousseau saw primitive society as being attuned with nature and thus better for human life than modern society, Small sees primitive society as being attuned with evolution and thus better for human life than modern society. The mapping between the two notions is very close, although to Small's credit she does have more evidence for her views than Rousseau had for his. But bearing in mind that research, and especially research in the social sciences, is constructed by the interaction between the researcher and the universe, it's hard to know how much weight to attribute to these studies.
Another troubling factor here is that Small makes some claims that do not stand up well, even though this book was first published in 1998. In particular she promotes co-sleeping as a possible factor in preventing SIDS. Although co-sleeping has many other benefits, this one does not seem to be accepted by any of the SIDS advocacy or research organizations I've been able to find, and may represent an early misreading of evidence based on an ideological bias.
There are serious problems with the Noble Savage theory, of course. In particular, I don't believe that individual facets of a culture stand or fall in isolation. Cultures are by definition a collection of practices. While some of the practices of people such as the Ache Indians or the !Kung San may strike us as exemplary and useful, I doubt that any of the readers of this web page would wish to join those cultures. Western industrialized life includes, for many children, detached parenting -- but it also includes antibiotics and access to a rich intellectual heritage. Are there connections between the two? I don't know, but it seems clear that one cannot simply identify a part of a culture that's not working well and substitute an interchangeable-looking part from another culture. Feminists and anarchists have long experience with the cultural inertia that makes such change difficult.
And yet, it is just in promoting such change that I find this book most useful. When you come right down to it, I agree with the ideology being promoted, consciously or otherwise, by its author. I believe that co-sleeping, attending to infant needs and avoiding the torture of "cry it out", and extended breastfeeding are practices that ought to be promoted. I think that a more attached style of childrearing would be good for our culture, if only because it might scare some unqualified people out of the business of being a parent. (I think there are other benefits besides, or I wouldn't be supportive of these practices.) So, even though I recognize some of this book as an exercise in building a new myth to support a different style of parenting, that doesn't mean I disapprove of the book. Mythmaking is a necessary part of cultural change.
A final minor note: I'm somewhat annoyed by the title of this book, which seems to be a straightforward attempt to associate it with the classic work on women's health Our Bodies, Ourselves. This book really has very little in common with that one, beyond questioning our basic assumptions. What I would have expected based solely on the title would be a book of home pediatric advice worked out by mothers and their advocates.
Despite the flaws, I'm glad I read this book. With our own first child on the way, Dana and I have been doing a lot of thinking about parenting. This book helped provoke some of that thinking, and offers useful validation for many of the decisions we've made. Of course it remains to be seen how well those decisions will survive the presence of an actual infant.