Wow, you go away for a few days and come back to find a new listserver or whatever it's called! Yikes! Anyway, here I am, back again...apparently I figured out what to do to get my mail re-started, 'cause here I am. Spiffy new set-up! I don't think that Nikki's posts on the Ezzo/violence/multiples thread are necessarily contradictory, as Laurie Wheeler implies. I haven't read "Ghosts in the Nursery", but it seems to me that we certainly don't know everything about violence and what causes violent behaviour in some individuals. We certainly don't know enough to use it as a bludgeon against parents or their "parenting styles" (a very modern industrialized-nation concept). On the other hand, we do know that across cultures throughout all of human history, all kinds of "parenting styles" have produced children who adapt to the conditions & values of their time & place. Always there have been some who just "aren't right" - whose brain chemistry or spiritual aura or endowment from the divine powers or whatever we choose to call it leads them to be violent. And always *most* of the children turn into members of the community who reflect the "community values", whatever they may be. It's absolutely clear to me that there are many, many ways to parent, and to do it "well" (a definition that may shift depending on sociocultural context). Think of the contributions to the world made by people from vastly different cultures throughout time - they surely were not all "attachment parented"! And never mind the big names & the well-known contributions - just try to imagine all the people that have ever been on earth, giving birth, raising their young, carrying on in ways that are both remarkably similar to each other and remarkably different! It scares me whenever we seem to forget that there are other cultures, other ways, other values; it looks to me like once we start down that path, we risk going into the dangerous side of the "us vs. them" equation. So what does this have to do with bfing and parenting? Well, it's a mistake to posit "us" (attachment parenting advocates) vs. "them" (ezzo parents, for example). We may think that ezzo parenting is wrong, and that it will not lead to an outcome we desire in our children, and that it doesn't serve our children well, but it's a perilously small step from there to blaming parents who disagree with our perspective for all kinds of ills, including biochemical malfunctions. Is there science to prove what we "think" about early attachment and violence? Maybe, maybe not. In the meantime, let's treat all parents with the love and support we would like to see them giving to their kids. I spent my time away visting my sister in CA; she has 2 young boys (ages 8 & 6). The older one clearly has some little "glitch" in his make-up; don't know what the name for it is (although I suspect Asperger's Syndrome), but he's clearly not right in some ways. Smart, verbally brilliant, loving, talented, but no social skills, and something in him is just "off". Her other son is the very model of what any parent would want their child to be - brilliant, happy, cheerful, agreeable, charming, and "easy". She's a wonderful parent to both of them (and BF them both for a good long time), but we worry an awful lot about the troubled one. And always with her is the awful feeling that she did something "wrong" to make him the way he is, while it's clear to me that he just came "different". Cathy Bargar, RN, IBCLC Ithaca NY *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html