Re the Canadian psychologist who said children had to adapt to their own culture/society -- NO, THEY DON'T!!! Culture is the sum total of millions of individual decisions made every day. It is quite changeable and malleable. You don't have to go along with the status quo. You may suffer for not going along with the status quo, or you may change the status quo, if enough people have the gumption not to go along. Too often, people go along with the 'cultural norms' because they think they are the only one who disagrees, when in fact, the majority of people disagree, but everyone is too scared to say so. A trivial example -- I have never worn makeup. This flies in the face of everything American cultural teaches women. Have I ever been penalized for not wearing makeup? Well, I did get one student evaluation years ago saying I "wasn't professional" because I didn't wear makeup. Did I care? NO!! Probably there have been other occasions when people judged me lacking for not wearing makeup, but whatever the consequences have been, I'm quite willing to accept them for not wearing makeup. I also walked around bald when I was having chemo. I got lots of weird looks, and people called me "Sir," and some people criticized me for making others 'uncomfortable' with my cancer. Did I care? NO!! There are children sleeping with adults and nursing til 5 or 6 or longer all over the US. You can't say that there is one, narrowly-defined, US cultural pattern for child rearing to which we all must adhere. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that culture cannot be changed. If people had done this, we wouldn't have had the Civil Rights movement, or the women's movement, we wouldn't have smoke-free workplaces and restaurants -- and we wouldn't even HAVE women doctors if many young women over the years hadn't been willing to challenge the system. Kathy Dettwyler _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com *********************************************** 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