Well, to put that into perspective... I've read that in the Gusii society in Kenya, it's actually normal *not* to talk to infants or make eye contact with them. When anthropologists tried asking Gusii mothers to try talking to their babies in order to show them how to do something (older babies, obviously), the mothers found this quite extraordinary and didn't really know how to go about it at all. And, although that's the only specific example I can think of, I do recall reading that this can be common in traditional hunter-gatherer societies - it isn't normal, in those societies, for parents to talk to babies and focus on them a great deal to the extent that we do in this society.

Now, of course, that's not to say that there isn't a lot of room for us to pay less attention to our electronics and more to our children. But, at the same time, this whole idea that it's terrible for a new mother to be posting Facebook updates instead of gazing into her baby's eyes and forming an instant bond... I think that may be strongly guided by a cultural ideal we have of how new mothers 'should' be interacting with/bonding with their baby that actually may not have much basis in terms of human history.


Best wishes,

Sarah Vaughan

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