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

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