To the woman who is dealing with the woman who has an unenlightened psychologist,
and Cynthia Mojab:
I am married to a psychologist. He is 48, I am 30. He talked the talk of being
enlightened, pro-breastfeeding, earth-man, modern feminist. Until we got pregnant
and his mommy got involved. As I recall, it feels like we fought for the whole
first year of my child's life. Notice, we have only one child. Apparently, we
still have issues to work out before I have another with this man. But I'm here
to say there is hope. I also must say that he defended me to his mommy. When he
got off the phone with her, though, he would say, "Well, why don't we just give
her just one bottle? Why don't you just train her to sleep through the night?
etc."
I took the dear man grudgingly to the 1998 La Leche League of Florida Conference
in Gainesville. Our daughter was one week shy of her first birthday, and I had
not yet applied to become a LLL Leader. Just before lunch, he came to the door of
the session I was attending and signalled for me to leave. I went out into the
hall and he apologized. He said he was sorry that he had fought me on my
instincts, that parenting this way had integrity and most importantly for him,
the kids he was seeing wall-to-wall were turning out OK. He said it was all his
cultural baggage that had held him up.
He is in practice with his best friend. When my child was 4 months old, his best
friend took it upon himself to call me up and try to speak authoritatively on why
I should let my child cry it out, to prepare her for the woes of the world.
That's what he'd done with his child, who was then 4.5 and "doing great" already
on ADHD meds. Even this guy has finally apologized, as he and his wife were able
to conceive another child and this time the mother is still nursing her and
allowing her into bed. The baby will be 2 in a couple of weeks, and is an
entirely different person from her older brother. The parents say it's night and
day when you go with the flow. The man says that he cannot relate to his now 7
year-old son, but that his daughter is entirely different. Now, I know we are
dealing with different genders and that every child is different. But even he has
apologized, and last week, my husband told me that his partner has a father in
his office who admitted that his 6 year-old son was sleeping with him again after
a trauma in the family. The father was concerned that was "wrong," and my
husband's partner assured him it was not. He would have threatened to notify the
Dept. of Children & Families a few years ago. They can be trained!
And my in-laws have said that my kid, the last of 5 grandchildren, is the best
adjusted. So, though they are incapable of apologizing, they have admitted that
perhaps our parenting style worked out.
There are psychologists out there who are willing to look outside of their
culture. It's a matter of finding them or "training" them. Cynthia G. Mojab has
suggested some wonderful literature, especially the Meredith Small book.
Maybe the best thing to do, if the psychologist is unwilling to look outside the
culture, is to find another one.
Good luck,
Natalie Rawlings Kraut
LLL Leader, Plantation, FL
Area Conference Supervisor, LLL-FL (any surprise there?)
Book Evaluation Committee, LLLI
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