Aswad
Posts: 9374
Joined: 4/4/2007
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: MariaB
In France you would expect to find a woman openly breast feeding her baby in a restaurant or in the park.
Isn't this normal in the USA, too?
I object to people changing diapers in a restaurant if they don't take it to the restrooms, but I don't see why one would object to people breastfeeding in public. Sometimes, people will eat a salami sandwich in public, and some don't like the smell of salami, but it would be pretty crazy to ban salami on that grounds alone. If something bothers someone, what's the problem with simply asking politely if the offending party would care to take it elsewhere? (I do have a problem with mothers getting upset at a polite inquiry, though. A simple "No, sorry, I'm staying." should suffice.)
quote:
French children don't grow up emotionally scarred by what is considered normal here.
This, to me, is the gold standard question.
If a practice doesn't scar people in a culture where it's normative, and outcomes aren't better in a culture where it's not, then the practice is not harmful in itself and any trauma associated with the practice in cultures that have taboos about it is trauma inflicted by the culture. I figure it's pretty nasty to go traumatizing kids about something as natural as the human body, yet that seems perfectly acceptable to lots of people in the USA. No wonder they've got so much sex crime.
The Internet is very nice in this regard, as it allows people to compare notes on things they take for granted, and learn what works and what doesn't in other cultures than their own. It's one of the reasons I bother to write a fair bit about my own country, and to pay close attention to what others say about theirs. For me, the Internet is an opportunity to learn the things one might not think to write down in books otherwise, and a way to level the playing field and bring information to the people directly. In many ways, it's as big a revolution as general literacy (I think we could agree that ≥90% basic literacy and ≥50% advanced literacy are requirements of civilization in any meaningful sense).
It's been interesting to see the impact that's had in Norway. I can remember, as a young child, being with my mom and dad as they stood in line at the telegraph office to apply for a landline. Or, as an older child, my dad getting one of the first cell phones in our county. Or, as a teenager, getting my first GSM cell phone. Now, I have 100Mbps fiber Internet and so does my maid, despite both of us living in a rural community of a few thousand people on an island as far west in Norway as you can possibly get (the North Sea is a quarter mile from my door). Teenagers put their phone on silent to avoid having anyone see that they couldn't afford to pick up the most recent iPhone between paydays. Many schools use eBooks exclusively, and do live updates on the content when erratae are written.
quote:
On a side note, my son was brought up in London and saw plenty of TV's from an early age. He once said in an overly loud voice, 'why is that man dressed as a lady?' and my answer was, 'because it makes him happy and we all have a right to be happy don't you think?' He was happy with that answer and never asked again.
This is worth repeating, and makes your post very valuable. For parents that aren't comfortable answering such questions, or who don't have an answer handy if their kid asks, it is no doubt incredibly helpful to have a "known good" answer to use if they should encounter the question themselves; to know that someone else has said it and that the kids accept it without any difficulties can be reassuring and thus help parents to raise more open-minded kids.
IWYW,
— Aswad.
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
|
A quandary - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread