note the reference to breastfeeding past 1 year causing ear infections  from
Eisenberg - has anyone ever seen that before?
deborah sowery-quinn



The Globe and Mail, Saturday, March 17, 2001

The parent trap
  In today's climate of anxiety around child abuse and pornography, U.S.
author Noelle Oxenhandler is stirring controversy by arguing that the
parent-child bond is sensual, even erotic. But if our children are being
starved of intimacy,asshe suggests, how far can we go to change that? KIM
HONEY reports on one offamily life's deepest dilemmas
By Kim Honey


Lynn Morley is an "attached" parent. After a miserable experience trying to
breast-feed her first child, the British Columbia mother of three was
determined to succeed the next time around.

Not only did she breast-feed her two youngest well past toddlerhood, she
transported them in a carrier strapped to her body. For almost six years,she
spent most nights in a double bed with whichever child she was nursing as
herhusband slumbered away on the other side of the room.

For Morley, the experience was exhilarating, allowing a physical
intimacywith her children that she never had. In fact, she can't remember
the last timeshe hugged her parents, even as a child.

Any parent knows that physical bonding with a baby helps ensure the fragile
newborn's survival. But moreover, a primal attraction awakens in the
parentsa pleasure that is previously unknown, yet oddly familiar. It is
total consumption, drinking in deep pools of eyes, curlicues of ears,
rosebud lips and snub noses; it is an obsession, a fixation on smooth skin,
the smell of thetop of the head, and the curve of the bottom.

These "thousand small intimacies that weave parent and child together"
compelled California author Noelle Oxenhandler to explore the sensual side
of the relationship in her new book, The Eros of Parenthood. This dance
between parent and baby, she says, parallels the duet between adult lovers.

Oxenhandler's ideas have stirred anger south of the border, she says,
largely because of confusion over the meaning of eros. "They're thinking of
sexy underwear and pornographic films," she says from her
northern-California home. "I'm using the word in its much more ancient sense
as . . . a form of intimate connection that is intensely physical, which the
love between parents and small children is."

In North America today, though, that thought makes us queasy -- we are
inhibited by our awareness of child sexual abuse, and by a fear of what
other people might think. And that paranoia is well-founded, as evidenced by
the recent case of an Ottawa father arrested for manufacturing child
pornography.

Andrew Minsk (not his real name), a European immigrant to Canada, had been
documenting his son's development with a camera since the baby was two hours
old. Last year, when father and son came in from playing in the snow, the
four-year-old stripped off his snowsuit and sweaty clothes and started
cavorting naked in the living room. His dad thought it was funny, reached
for his camera and squeezed off four frames.

The photo technician who developed the films didn't think it was so funny --
he called the police. Minsk was arrested and charged with making porn; the
Children's Aid Society accused him of sexual exploitation. The boy was sent
to a foster home for four days, while his teenaged sister was sent to stay
with a neighbour. The charges were eventually dropped, but Minsk said his
family has had counselling to deal with the trauma. His son, now 5, suffered
from nightmares. "He felt he'd committed a crime, and he felt guilty," his
father said.

When Minsk asked what was considered appropriate behaviour, the counsellor
said nude pictures of children over 2 were taboo unless they were pictured
in the bathroom or in a pool. The living room was out. "They were talking
about a boundary," Minsk says, "but nobody convinced me that what I did was
wrong."

Still, the experience taught him a lesson about his adopted homeland. "I
know where the boundary is now in Canada. Different culture, different
society, has a different way. In Europe, where I come from, there is no such
puritanism regarding nudity, especially with your own children."

Since then, the Supreme Court has ruled that photographs of a baby in the
bath or other "representations of non-sexual nudity" are not considered
child pornography under the law. Still, this week the Liberal government
again rolled out new legislation on child porn, now focusing on the Web. The
"making,distribution and possession" of child pornography is illegal under
the Criminal Code, but that definition has been deemed too vague for the
Internet age.

Last week in London, after Scotland Yard threatened to seize photographs of
naked children from the Saatchi Gallery, the city's Crown Prosecution
Service decided the pictures were not illegal or obscene. The police were
acting on public complaints about an exhibition called I Am a Camera,by
artist Tierney Gearon, which featured naked pictures of her three children.
Similar problems
have dogged acclaimed U.S. artist Sally Mann, who made her reputation with
her photos of her family in various states of dress and undress.

It's a minefield that would make any parent feel conflicted about physical
intimacy with their children. How do we decide what is and isn't
appropriate? Is nudity okay? Until what age? What about a father who bathes
with his young daughter? Is kissing a baby all over a sensual act? What is
the difference between sensual and sexual?

In The Eros of Parenthood, Oxenhandler links adult sexual pleasure with the
pleasure a parent gets from touching their child. "Who could deny that adult
sexual love evokes the earliest feelings of childhood?" she writes. "Lying
naked on a bed, spread out before the eyes of an admiring lover, one is not
so far away from the naked baby, lying on his changing table, under his
mother's gaze."

The author makes it clear that, although the parent-child romance has all
the emotional intensity of adult love, it is non-sexual. "I think we have a
very hard time grasping that two things can be similar without being the
same," she says.

The book was born from her feelings while waiting for her daughter, Ariel,
to
emerge from the shower. Standing outside the stall, holding a dry towel as
her
daughter had asked, she had a "Kafkaesque feeling of guilt, when you
simultaneously know you haven't done anything and aren't about to do
anything,
but yet you feel somehow you're in the wrong."

Talking to friends, she found she was not alone. They, too, sometimes felt
embarrassed or fearful that someone might interpret their physical
relationships
with their children as exploitive or abusive. Oxenhandler blames this on a
"global cooling in the public sphere," driven by heightened public awareness
of
childhood sexual abuse.

Just as social workers, teachers and camp counsellors are careful not to
touch
their charges in any way that could be misconstrued, Oxenhandler thinks
parents,
too, are pulling back for fear they might be wrongly accused, like Andrew
Minsk.
Oxenhandler believes that children need physical intimacy to develop to
their
full potential, and that parents need to be more hands-on.

Not everyone agrees. Pediatrician Ken Finkel, a professor emeritus and
member of
the Child Advocacy and Assessment program at McMaster University, says
parents'
expressions of love for their children are very individualized. Most of it
goes
on at home, where there are no prying eyes.

"I don't believe that parents are inhibited in their interactions with their
children because they're afraid of who is looking over their shoulders," he
says. "I think it's entirely a matter of personal style -- and cultural
style,
for that matter."

And just because a parent is less demonstrative doesn't mean their children
will
be emotionally impaired, he says; there's more than one way to get a message
across. For example, telling a child he is doing a good job conveys precise
information. Reinforcing that praise with a squeeze on the shoulder is even
better. But if a parent just walks up to a child and squeezes him on the
shoulder, the message isn't clear.


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