Dear all:
I'm thinking about what Paula Meier does with her low income mothers. She did not adopt
an elitist attitude towards these women. She had faith that these women could comprehend
science and do scientific tests themselves. Really, all a centrifuge is, is a big fancy salad
spinner with a fancier degree of machine tooling. I do not believe the instruments she used
with these women were as important as the fact that she trusted these women to care
enough to learn how to use these instruments to help their babies. The trust she had in
them (not necessarily the centrifuge for assessing milk fat content or the scale for test
weighing their babies) was the greatest gift she gave them. Faith that they did not need to
be protected from the knowledge that not giving breast milk was a risk and faith that they
did not need to be protected from learning a little bit of math and science becuase someone
else thought it would be too complicated for them to understand.
I would say any conversation we have with mothers, we should take the higher road of
assuming they are competent and can handle appropriate discussions of risk.
Best, Susan Burger
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