Babies

Have any of you seen the documentary film “Babies” by filmmaker Thomas Balmes? I just finished watching it and I LOVED IT!! It follows four children from separate areas of the world from birth to a bit more than a year old. They are Ponijao from Namibia, Mari from Tokyo, Bayarjargal from Mongolia and Hattie from San Francisco. (Shown in order on the photo below.)

The thing that was really eye opening for me is the big difference between how the children are watched by the parents. The children from the U.S. and Japan live in very clean environments, are watched very carefully and attend play classes with their parents. The two little boys from Mongolia and Nambia are frequently unattended, often dirty and engaging in activities that most of us would be horrified at. And yet, all the parents love their children and take good care of them in their own way.

Let me give you a couple examples. Bayar is often left alone on a bed tightly swaddled. One time a huge rooster with big spurs comes up, checks out the bed, jumps up and hangs out there with him for a while. Another time he’s given a piece of bread to suck on while he is lying down. He’s so little he can’t really eat it so they put a match stick, complete with the match head, through the bread, creating a barrier that keeps the bread from sliding down his throat and choking him.

Ponijao crawls around in the dirt pretty much all the time. He’s shown with dirty hands, sucking on his fingers, rooting around in the sticks and stones on the ground and once comes up with an animal bone, which he promptly sucks on. His mother is right next to him and only once makes a move to stop him. Another time, before he’s even walking, he’s shown lying on his stomach in an inch or so of water, playing and leaning down to drink unassisted.  (If that seems like a lot to give away, trust me, there’s a lot more.) 

Most of us would be shocked and horrified by these behaviors. Some of the things the children are doing seem downright dangerous. Even if it’s not exactly dangerous, if a child of ours was sticking his very dirty hands into his mouth we’d all likely quickly grab him up and wash him thoroughly. Could a child choke on a pebble or get a disease from playing in dirt or sucking on an old animal bone? Maybe. Am I going to let my child do that? Probably not.

But here’s the thing. For me, the film really opened my eyes to the “proper way to raise a baby.” Sure, I identified more with the way the baby from Japan and the U.S. were raised, and I’ll likely raise my children more like that than the babies from Mongolia and Nambia. But there’s nothing wrong with the different ways that children are raised in other areas either. Children all over the world grow up in vastly different ways and they manage to survive without pristine clean play areas, play dates with singing and clapping and parents that entertain them every second with bright toys and books. There really is no one “proper way to raise a baby” it’s just our cultures and upbringings that dictate certain behaviors in us. The mothers in Nambia and Mongolia learned how to care for their children from their mothers and others around them and would probably be shocked at many of the ways we raise our children in developed countries.

After watching this film I hope I can be a little more relaxed as a parent. I want to remember that there are different ways of doing things and they aren’t necessarily bad, just different.

Has anyone else out there seen this movie? I’d love to hear from you if you have. If not, I highly recommend it. I found it fascinating, touching and, frequently, very funny.  If you have Netflix it’s available on instant watch.