COMMENTARY–October 11, 2002
In Defense of the Nuclear Family
In our politically correct culture, it
is probably inconceivable that I would bother to defend the nuclear family. I might be branded a right wing Conservative
who is bent on returning
My point as always is, however, that human beings have basic needs that must be met in childhood, particularly during infancy and early childhood. Ideals are important to have because they set standards to a high level, and I cannot imagine anything more important than setting a high standard for an ideal family. That said, though, I do not intend to criticize the many families who do not fit the profile of a nuclear family.
There are many permutations of family life, and I applaud all parents for doing their best to rear healthy young children. I have a good friend, for instance, who is gay and the father of a young daughter. He and his partner are excellent and devoted parents.
The best-selling novel The Nanny
Diaries describes the most dedicated parents in
I received an e-mail message from a father who resented this Web site’s emphasis on the importance of mothers and breastfeeding since he is a single father. I could only offer him encouragement that he is probably doing a great job as a parent. I know grandparents who reared their daughter’s child and put all their love into this responsibility. These families are all amazing, and they survive outside the nuclear family set-up.
Truly, I have no criticism of any dedicated parents who care lovingly for their children. In fact, there is increasing evidence that the suburban nuclear family is completely dysfunctional. How else is one to explain the recent report in the New York Times that young high school children from one the of wealthiest New York suburbs participated in a homecoming event that left dozens of children ill from alcohol poisoning?
How can one explain the fact that the high school boys responsible for the Columbine massacre both had married parents? There are innumerable cases that demonstrate the sickness of young children who have been reared in nuclear families. One should not, however, readily blame the nuclear family alone for all the dysfunction since the most basic function of the nuclear family was discarded long ago.
To understand the family unit, we should study indigenous cultures that exemplified typical family life before “civilization” changed family dynamics. In those families, caring for a young baby or child was integral to daily life. It may be true that baby births are still part of daily life, but the context of their care is vastly different today.
Instead of embracing the baby and carrying her about while women accomplish the daily task of living, babies today are considered as placement objects. Where will the babies go? Even before a mother gives birth, she is obligated to think about where this baby will wind up.
The options are vast because the majority of them do not embrace the possibility of a mother involved in the baby’s direct care. Day care workers, in-home nannies, grandparents, babysitters, and others are all possible caregivers whereas mothers are often expected to return to work outside the home. In other words, mothers are no longer expected to care directly for their own babies.
In the past, the question of who would care for the baby was never brought up because it was naturally assumed that the mother would. Certainly, there were exceptions in the upper classes since governesses and nannies were employed. Similarly, many women in the lower classes could not be permitted to stay home if she could go out and work. Regardless of these exceptions, the vast majority of women generally took care of their own babies.
Women’s participation in child-rearing changed, however, over the past century. It was not simply a consequence of the women’s movement, which was actually excellent for women in many ways. After all, who could possibly complain about the increased opportunities women gained in education and employment in the past century? The profound change that occurred was the idea that breastfeeding and a mother’s intimate presence were no longer needed in order for young children to survive infancy.
The infant formula manufacturers managed, with the complicity of the medical community, to convince the majority of mothers that breastfeeding was neither necessary nor very scientific. The idea was that educated women could approach the task of child-rearing scientifically with measured doses of costly infant formula powder and boiled water instead of the free of cost and seemingly unscientific activity of breastfeeding.
In addition, medical practitioners routinely advised women that babies did not need touching and intimate care. Instead, they were to be placed in cribs and to be subjected to regimented rules regarding feedings, sleep, and toilet training.
Although we have evolved from those turn of the twentieth century rigid child-rearing rules, strong vestiges of regimented rules persist in child-rearing. Parents have adapted themselves to the notion that scheduled bottle-feedings of infant formula is the norm in child-rearing and that breastfeeding is simply a matter of choice.
Recent strides in scientific research demonstrate the positive benefits of breastfeeding, and news of such progress is announced by the media. Even so, breastfeeding is still viewed as an optional activity that has more to do with the prevention of ear infections and perhaps increased intellectual testing scores than with the overall well-being of young babies and children.
Most women, if they breastfeed at all, cease breastfeeding after a few weeks or months. Few continue beyond one year. Evidently, not many parents comprehend the magnitude of breastfeeding’s contributions to a child’s complete well-being, physically and mentally. The impact of a century-long campaign to discredit breastfeeding has had a profound influence not only on child-rearing but also upon the women who still maintain most of the responsibilities associated with child-rearing. Women are now becoming more aware of the immeasurable health benefits of breastfeeding, yet they have limited choices with respect to whether or not they can stay home to breastfeed.
Clearly, there is a big contrast in what women face now with respect to child-rearing as compared with what the average homemaker faced in the 1950s. In that past era, many women were able to stay home (or even told to stay home) for the sake of caring for young children and expanding employment opportunities for returning World War II veterans. Yet despite the fact that women stayed home, women were already living in what the historian Christopher Lasch called “the therapeutic culture.”
In that culture, the ordinary citizen is stripped of one’s ability to think or judge for oneself because the opinions of so-called experts in a diverse array of fields dictate what one should think or believe. So if, for example, a woman decided to breastfeed her newborn, her pediatrician and hospital nurses would have discouraged her from doing something so primitive. Today, there are still hospitals that are anti-breastfeeding in that they continue to dole out free samples of infant formula and fail to encourage women to breastfeed.
Out of thousands of hospitals
nationwide in the
Ostensibly, women in the 1950s stayed home to care for their babies while their husbands left home to work and earn the family income. Under the guidance of child-rearing experts, the responsibility of caring for a baby became a series of regimented chores that involved attending to the baby’s physical needs. A mother scheduled her baby’s feedings with infant formula, diaper changes, clothing changes, and naptimes. Nowhere in this series of chores was a fundamental understanding of how distant a mother had become from her infant.
Instead of being a responsive mother who was closely attuned to her baby’s needs, she had become a dutiful timekeeper. Basically, the job of caring for a baby consisted of what and when a mother needed to do something for her baby, as if she herself received nothing from the baby in return. Essentially, the joy inherent in caring for a baby was lost. Is it any wonder that most women have willingly abdicated the role of hands-on mothering and relegated the care of their babies to a multitude of caregivers?
Mothers resigned themselves long ago to becoming long-distance caregivers, so it is unsurprising that so many women now literally leave the home soon after giving birth to their babies. Since mothers were encouraged repeatedly to distance themselves from their babies, it became inevitable that they would no longer understand how essential their care would be to their babies’ survival and well-being.
By eliminating breastfeeding from the basics of child-rearing, the experts effectively undermined the very unique function of a lactating mother. Not anyone can lactate as easily and naturally as a mother who has given birth to a baby. Her body is primed to produce the perfect milk that will help to ensure her baby’s healthy growth and development. Abundant scientific research demonstrates the incredible uniqueness of breast milk produced by each lactating mother.
In contrast, chemists produced and introduced artificial infant formula to healthy women over a century ago. These chemists and their complicit physicians actively discouraged women from breastfeeding, even at a time when the water supply was not universally sanitized. By the 1950s, women actually disdained the idea of having a baby latched on to their breasts. Thus, a prime function of motherhood had already been discarded.
Breastfeeding, a hugely significant part of child-rearing, was no longer even considered to be a unique motherly offering. The disconnection between mother and infant has been secured for generations now, and the effects are telling.
The real myth of the suburban 1950s era is twofold. Some claim that a particular nuclear family existed and that if we returned to that type of nuclear family, our society would be better. Such nonsense is absurd since there was nothing ideal about the 1950s household, other than the fact that the father provided enough income to permit a mother to stay home.
Many mothers were depressed and unfulfilled. It was in that time period that Valium prescriptions for anxious housewives became the norm. It was no wonder then, that in 1963, Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique connected so strongly to disaffected housewives who deplored their suburban existences.
Women were profoundly unhappy, but it would be misleading to attribute the angst women suffered only to the boredom of being a mother and housewife. It is true that mothering had become a series of tiresome chores in the absence of breastfeeding, but the truth is that the nuclear family was hardly an autonomous and self-sufficient family unit.
Over the past century, women basically ceded all their knowledge and wisdom to the child-rearing experts who appropriated the information and published them in book form as authoritative guides to child-rearing. The therapeutic culture demanded that women maintain ignorance about child-rearing, something that could hardly have encouraged either human survival or human enlightenment. It certainly would never have helped pioneering settlers or indigenous peoples to survive had their women been lacking in skills or knowledge. Yet this is precisely what our culture has done over the past century by basically stripping women of their intuition and sense of responsibility for their children’s well-being.
We live in the year 2002, and it is ridiculous that only a handful of experts know about children and their well-being. This is hardly plausible since women have always borne, nursed, and reared their children. Women and men are capable of knowing how to rear their own children, but we need to reverse the misguided therapeutic culture that has shrouded parents in darkness and ignorance for many decades.
The primary step we need to take to reverse the therapeutic culture is for parents to recognize the preeminent need of young babies and children to have an available breastfeeding and loving caregiver. Both parents must recognize this need. Families will need to work out the details that will permit such an arrangement.
For example, it is possible that a
mother may need to work outside the home after her maternity leave (which is
unbelievably short in the
I have friends who did this. They were able to nurse their babies through the first year of life. This is a beginning to establishing the primacy of a baby’s needs, one that helps to exalt a woman’s profoundly unique ability to nurture and nourish her baby ideally.
In the ideal nuclear family, a breastfeeding mother is respected and appreciated for the uniqueness of nature’s gifts. I cannot think of any human activity that generates phenomenal benefits as breastfeeding does. It enables women to bestow upon their baby girls and boys a profound gift of health and well-being.
Naturally, breastfeeding is not a panacea, but it surely comes as close to offering babies and children the best that life can offer. Human intimacy, touch, love, affection, warmth, concern, compassion, and devotion are all encompassed in the act of breastfeeding. The life-to-life communication that is awakened through breastfeeding will last eternally. Such is the power of breastfeeding and hence, the importance of providing a lactating mother to a baby. Simply stated, breastfeeding is most easily accomplished in a nuclear family setting.
Times have changed, and we should alter the course of child-rearing practices so that breastfeeding is once again returned to the bosom of family life. Women who bear babies and fathers who procreate need to look beyond the limitations of child-rearing without breastfeeding. Parents need to see that the few years that a child spends at the breast are like bank accounts that are secured with high interest rates.
The deposit of a significant principal (a mother’s time, effort, dedication,
and lost income) and a high interest rate (breastfeeding and its irreplaceable benefits)
yield hugely rewarding and significant returns.
We cannot and should not measure such returns, but they are clearly
visible throughout a breastfed child’s lifetime. Not only will a breastfed child be physically
and mentally healthier, but a child will also be emotionally more connected to
all those around him.
The psychologist and journalist Daniel Goleman wrote an important book called Emotional Intelligence, and he cites significant research that demonstrates how intimately human emotions are bound to early child-rearing practices. Human brains are primed to respond to certain environmental stimuli because of emotions experienced during early infancy and childhood.
When babies and children are nurtured and cared for by a responsive and affectionate caretaker, it is that much easier for them to develop the emotional intelligence that permits them to interact with others on a meaningful and positive basis. This is not to say that adults who lack emotional intelligence are unable to develop such intelligence. They can, but it takes a lot of work and effort that many adults may not be willing to exert. In other words, it is much simpler to teach young babies and children the meaning of emotional fulfillment early in life.
Parents play an indelible function in a child’s life, both directly and indirectly. Both fathers and mothers play unique roles that complement one another. Things have changed in recent decades, many of which are very positive. For example, men who are now parents recognize how infrequently they interacted with their own fathers.
This means that fathers today take a more proactive role in caring for young babies and children. This is worthy of the highest praise and encouragement. The only proviso I would add is that fathers do not interfere with breastfeeding since the good a father does for a baby matches and reinforces the benefits of breastfeeding.
Breastfeeding is not an exclusive relationship between mother and infant. Rather, it is the relationship that permits all other and future relationships to have meaning and value. What exists between mother and infant through breastfeeding is merely reinforced manifold in all other relationships. Hence, a father’s relationship with his child is never diminished by breastfeeding. The ideal nuclear family would cherish breastfeeding as the center of child-rearing practices.
If we look at hunger-gatherer societies, women always carried their babies on their bodies, so babies could easily nurse and sleep near the breast. While men went to hunt, women did chores like gathering wood and food, creating home necessities, and caring for the children. Survival was a completely cooperative endeavor, and roles were not distinguished as being primary or secondary. Surely, the men’s addition of meat and skins from hunting added to the family’s survival as much as the women’s gathering of roots and firewood.
Everyone worked together to assure family well-being, and this is the type of nuclear family that we need in society today. We might no longer have the division of hunters and gatherers in families, but we certainly need to recognize the lingering human trait of mutual cooperation that has contributed so enormously to human survival.
It might sound dramatic to declare that human survival is questionable at this time, but there is little doubt that the quality of human life today is highly worrisome. The mistrust, animosity, misunderstanding, and forthright hatred that exists between human beings is unnecessary. I venture to write that much of this is related to the lack of breastfeeding in our culture. The absence of breastfeeding is what promotes the terribly negative aspects of human behavior that is so evident in all sectors of society.
Surely, human beings as adults can control their behavior and emotions, but it would help if they had a foundation of intimacy and love at the core of their lives. This is something that breastfeeding can definitively help to achieve in all human beings. Breastfeeding can guarantee emotional intelligence easily and simply whereas years of therapy and self-reflection can offer no such guarantee.
Obviously, women cannot just awaken to the importance of breastfeeding and do it all alone without the financial and emotional support of a caring spouse. More importantly, it is going to be challenging for women to realize that the act of staying home with young children and breastfeeding will temporarily remove them from the competitive world of business. This will be a cultural shock since women are educated and trained to compete with men in the realms of education and work.
The role of a woman in a young child’s life is singular because what she can do for her child by breastfeeding is incomparable. This is something men will have to be magnanimous and gracious enough to accept. Fathers can do this by supporting their families emotionally and financially.
Ultimately, although the nuclear family that is centered on breastfeeding is ideal, I understand that ideals are not readily achieved. So I will offer other suggestions for alternative lifestyle families. Lesbian couples can mimic the nuclear family most closely since one woman can nurse while the other works outside the home.
Gay couples can think of procuring donor breast milk. It may sound silly, but donor breast milk is available, and a growing demand would make it even more available. Single mothers could prepare themselves financially for a prolonged leave of absence from work or gain financial support from their families. Such options are probably not viable, but possible.
Single fathers may also try to gain access to donated breast milk. Unfortunately, in most of these cases, the intimacy of breastfeeding and the maternal connection is lost. In those cases, loving parents of all types who truly care about their children will still be able to offer them the best hopes for a healthy and bright future.
The nuclear family as we generally know
it is on the decline whereas families led by single mothers, single fathers, single
grandmothers, and two same-sex parents are increasing. I readily understand the fact that any loving
family is better than no family at all.
The anthropologist Ashley Montagu wrote that as much as he advocated
maternal love and breastfeeding, he believed that a loving surrogate caretaker
could effectively guide the healthy development of a child.
When a mother is unavailable to care for
her baby, then a loving caretaker can help that baby fulfill his birthright to
healthy human development. This is very
true, but it does not negate the fact that there is an ideal way of rearing
young children. Young children can and
should be reared with maternal love and breastfeeding on demand, if this is
possible. As a society, we have a great
deal to gain by encouraging the return of the breastfeeding-centered nuclear family.
Revised April 14, 2006
