It is Time to Say Goodbye

As the semester comes to close, I look back through my posts and see everything that I have written, researched, and shared with all of you. As I go from post to post I see how each one is different and unique in its content. Looking deeper into the meanings and ideas of these post, that all are related to developmental psychology, I began to seek connections that helps to show that it all make sense and come full circle. In this final post I will share my findings of these connections between three pairings of posts have created over the past four months.

Starting from the first post I ever made, Babies: My thoughts on their thoughts, I looked into the thoughts of babies and answered the question "Do babies think?." I had a firm standing on "Yes, they do." From the Baby Lab where Angela Saini and Sylvian Sirois's study infants,  I learned that babies focus on movement and color changes during testing scenarios which show that babies are attentive and focused on new and different things which is shown through recorded testing and EEG testing as well.

The cover of the book and the writer of it, Paul Bloom

 This led me to think about another topic that I talked about in a post which was morality. I talk about morality in my fifth post, Right, Wrong, Maybe... but WHY?, in which I dive into the theories of Lawrence Kohlberg and Jonathan Haidt. Both psychologists created a chart or a table of logical thinking for the level in which someone has moral understanding. Haidt is the one that makes me think of babies due to the Intuitionist Approach. Since I firmly believe that babies think, and there are tests to back me up, this makes me wonder if babies have a concept of morality. Intuition is supposed to be a natural thought mechanism within the human brain from birth, so if this is true then I think thought about if it could be used during infancy. In a book that I've read titled Just Babies: The Origin of Good and Evil (you can read the first seven chapters if you click the link), Yale psychologist Paul Bloom dives deep into the idea behind morality in infants. With a variety of tests done to hundreds of babies, Bloom believes that babies are born with a sense of right and wrong as well as their own opinions on which one is more appealing to them. This leads me to hypothesize that if babies can think about situations with a moral standing, then there could be tests done early on to determine what type of moral behavior a child will grow into.

The next pairing I tackled were my second and third posts. In my second post I talked about language and thought. In A Word Speaks a Thousand Thoughts. I described many different forms of language and interpretation of what language is. A theory given by Benjamin Lee Whorf with the idea that groups of people thought differently based on the language they speak. His theory was rejected in the 1960s as it was racist and stated that if groups such as Hopi Native Americans didn't have the word 'time' then they were less people, however; humans created the word time and thus, proved Whorf to be incorrect. Language is a construct by humans and new words are being created every year. Along with verbal language, humans have a non verbal language called body language. These obvious to subtle movements are what can help one understand another even if there is an age difference such as with children and parents.

Language is usually structured and easily understood, but for babies, they have their own methods of communication that are just as important when they are with their mothers. In my third blog post, Connected at the Hip? I talk about attachment parenting. A review of attachment parenting is that it is a type of parenting technique in which the parent listens to the coos and gurgles and watches a baby's move and how they interact with the world to know what their needs are at any given time, even before they utter their first word. There is a certain way in which a mother must communicate with their child during attachment parenting that is a common language to those in the relationship, but a secret code to others. This might not be english or any other language know on the earth, but it is a communication system in which babies needs and desires are recognized by their mother.

The last pair of topics I am going to discuss are both fairly controversial topic globally which would be identity and sexuality. My post 24601: Who am I?, talks about identity in terms of ethnicity, psychosocial development and identity status. Looking more at the psychosocial structure of identity created by Erik Erikson a look at a very turbulent time of life, adolescents, his basic conflicts are identity vs. role confusion. At this point in a person's life, hormones are more active and the body begins to change and people must recognize who they are in a variety of categories, one of which is sexuality.

Sexuality can be thought of in ways such as the capacity for sexual feelings which is not only male-female, but also male-male and female-female. During the stressful time of adolescents, along with figuring out what you want to do for the rest of your life, what you are going to do to get there and if it is college, applying and hoping for acceptance, you are trying to figure out do you like guys, girls, or both? Sexual identity is a very emotional time of self-discovery, some people might not realize, or at least admit, their identity until they have finished high school, past the general stage of identity. In Who are We to Judge Love?  I talked very liberally about homosexuality and how crazy and barbaric some cultures go to attempt to eradicate something so natural. In another psychology class that I am in, there is wonderful analogy for homosexuality and handedness in the book's 33rd study material module in Psychology Tenth Edition in Modules by David G. Myers:

"Most of today’s psychologists... view sexual orientation as neither willfully chosen nor willfully changed. Myers compares sexual orientation to handedness. You don’t deliberately decide (willfully choose) to be right-handed or left-handed. Similarly, you can’t intentionally alter (willfully change) your inherent inclination to use one hand over the other."

If more people thought of sexuality and sexual orientation in this way (and ethnic identity), I think the world would be a more peaceful place and adolescents would have once less thing to make them feel awkward and unsure of themselves during the critical stage of life.

I am happy to finish this last post off on a positive note as I say my goodbyes.

Thank you everyone for reading my blog, I hope you got something out of it, I know I did writing it!

Who are We to Judge Love?

One of the hot topics in recent years is the LGBT+ community and the ability of its members to be out in public and be accepted and not be ashamed for who they are as a person. It has become a major controversy for more than the last six decades even though it has been around since the ancient times.

Homosexuality has been around since the Ancient Greeks. Men had a larger range for their sexual expression as they were allowed to walk the cities alone to meet mates. Older men were usually with younger men, and they boys were either bought as slaves or courted with their father's permission. Women still became wives of these men and did bare their children to continue the family name. It was thought of as the social norm that 'women were for business and boys were for pleasure.' Ancient Rome also accepted homosexuality until it was taken over by Christian authority, from then on it was considered a sin as interpreted in the Bible.

Now in the 21st century, there are variations of acceptance (or lack of) for homosexuality. Many developed countries that have generally accepted homosexuality to be as equal as to have legal marriages are in Europe, North America, and South America.

World Map on the levels of legalization for the LGBT+ community.

Some of these do vary such as in the United States where it is state by state regulation, but about 30 states and Washington D.C are in support so far out of the 52 states. Although marriage is not legal in the other states, it is still recognized which is a great achievement for the community. Other countries are not nearly aa progressive in the acceptance of gay marriage or even gays existing.

Russia is a wonderful example of a very strange intolerance for 'gayness,' but has yet to ban it, but Russia has a "Gay Propaganda" ban, which is of course very different from banning homosexuality altogether. Russia's government doesn't mind homosexuality as along as there isn't any meeting places for gays, any PDA, or any public notion that one is gay. Gay people must be 'closeted gays' and none can ever know about or else they may face jail time. The Russian governments goal is to make it as 'safe' as possible for Russian youths to avoid anything that could encourage them to have organizations that support and advocate for gay rights. 

The iPhone monument that once stood in St. Petersburg, Russia

Many supporters of equal rights for the LGBT+ community have made jokes and have poked fun at the Russian government about their ridiculous oppression of the gay community in Russia.

An article that came out last week in The Huffington Post that mocked the Russian government after they took down a statue of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, in St. Petersburg after they discovered that the present CEO, Tim Cook, was gay. One of the most homophobic legislators in the Russian government, Vitaly Milonovo, thought that they should ban the CEO from Russia since 'among other things, 'sodomites' spread Ebola." I can't even read this quote in my head without letting out a small chuckle of how utterly ridiculous this is. First of all they had a monument of a two meter tall (about 6 feet) iPhone in the middle of St. Petersburg to worship their technology god, then they decided that because Cook would bring  "Ebola, AIDS, and Gonorrhea" if he was allowed in the country for being gay, they tore the statue down to detach themselves from the diseased company. I'm sure that Cook was very upset that he couldn't get a selfie with this piece of work (the monument not Milonovo).

Homophobic Russian legislator Vitaly Milonovo (left), out and proud gay CEO of Apple Tim Cook (right)

As laughable and ridiculous Russia's gay propaganda ban is, there are other countries such as Uganda, Nigeria and Egypt, particularly Cairo, around the world that have life imprisonment and the death pentaly in store for those that come out. 

It is illegal to be gay in Uganda, and that is how it is. The Ugandan government refuses to believe that homosexuality is a genetic trait as it cannot be pin pointed to a single gene in human DNA, what they ignore is that one gene also does not determine hair color, a combination does. Since they feel that science can't prove it, they have determined that homosexuality in a social behavior that will not be tolerated as they feel that their people should be able change how they feel. It is vey clear that the Ugandans that feel this way are very ignorant and very much wanting to shuffle around any type of research or data to match their desires as when people use interpretations of the Bible to stake their claim as fact and that it should be used as law.

In Nigeria, life is very much the same. It aims to 'sanitize' itself as gays re an abomination in their eyes. In this Times article, a man was whipped 20 times for being gay, this is considered a kind punishment as the usual is death. Of course, many Nigerians were outraged by the fact that he did not receive the death penalty and threw things at the man as well as the judge that gave the punishment. Anything and everything gay is prohibited in the country and a Pew Research survey found that 98 percent of Nigerians opposed homosexuality and believe that it should not be accepted. This is a nearly unanimous survey, but my hope is that either there are people that lied for their own safety, or simply did not take it for the same fear and it is thought to be 'un-African'.

In Northeastern Africa, the opposition for homosexuality is fairly new, but rapidly growing in Cairo, Egypt. All was happy and peaceful in Cairo and it felt like a friendly community one man stated, but then everything changed when 52 egyptian men were arrested in a police raid on the Queen Boat, a typical gay hangout. About half were convicted for debauchery and sentenced to three years in jail which led to an uproar in Western governments and civil rights groups. The Egyptians have not outlawed homosexuality, but they go around that by condition of debauchery which is the excessive indulgence of sexual pleasure. Since the Egyptian government wasn't too fond of their differences, this was used as their core reason of conviction to reduce the amount of out homosexuals. While in jail one man, Mr. Abyad, said that they did was shaving their heads, the guards harassed them, and they were forced to sleep on the cold concrete floor without any toilet. The Egyptians are beginning to treat their people as slaves because of their genetic sexual orientation.

What these countries do to their people, to humans, is barbaric on many levels, unfortunately, as in the past with other forms of human opposition such as the Holocaust and slavery, people need to continue to fight for the freedom and equality of these human beings. The determination of activists and time are the keys to setting these people free from their hostile environments.

24601: Who am I?

This is the question that John Valjean asks himself once he realizes that an innocent man has been mistaken for himself and is going to trial for his crimes. At this point in his life, Jean Valjean is the mayor and owner of a factory. He has to make the decision of either concealing himself as this character that he has become or reveal his identity to the courts and save an innocent man to likely lose his own. Jean Valjean decides that he cannot hide and that he must reveal his true identity to be at peace with himself.

Erik Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development

Not all identities are life or death situations, at least not in this day and age, and should be thought about more deeply in order to figure out one's true self. There are steps to make our way through life that were theorized by psychologist Erik Erikson. Erikson's theory of psychosocial development goes through eight stages from birth to preschool, child, adolescents and the stages of adulthood. The stage in which shows great interest for psychologists is stage five which corresponds to adolescents that are trying to figure out their identity and understand who they are. In this phase, there can be a number of categories in which one tries to determine their identity such as sexual orientation, ethnicity, relationships, religion, politics, and occupation. Within each of these categories are four phases in which one can be in that James Marcia created to extend off of Erikson's theory.

Marcia's phases of his Identity Status Theory

There isn't an order in which these phases go in, but the idea is to try to reach the achievement stage as that is when one should be the most confident with what it is they are about such as a particular ethnicity. Ethnicity is a very interesting topic among the adolescent stage and even into young adulthood for some. Less than 40 years ago, very few people were concerned with their ethnicity shaping their identity if they were mixed, today it is a defining point for some to describe who they really are.

Ethnic identity has become a very interesting topic for many people in the United States. People from just about every background is here, with a little bit from another background, and possibly a third and fourth. The diversity of the country has led many to think more about what makes them who they are. When I think about my identity, I think of myself as everything I am: Italian, Irish, German, Swedish, and Native American. Some of these are very small bits, I believe I am roughly only about 1/32 Native American, but I still count it as what make up who I am. Depending on the situation, I may identify myself as a single ethnicity such as Italian when it come to food and reasons for me speaking loudly; when I have bright rosy cheeks even when it's not cold, I say its because I am Irish and Swedish. 

Although most of what my identity consists of is European, there are others in which they have a wider backgrounds such as Asian-European or Latino-African. An article from Time magazine focuses on a group of college students in a biracial and multiracial club. There meeting starts with an icebreaker of "Who am I?" to figure out somone's ethnic background. What once would have been an insult is now a fun game for everyone to get to know each other. The group began in the early 2000s at the University of Maryland where interest was immediate and has only grown since its founding. The present advisor Dr. Warren Kelly is in awe of how the same campus in which he was educated at (and is now an educator) has changed so dramatically with ethnicity and the diversity of it. Dr. Kelly himself is a mix of Japanese and African American, but during his college years he only identified with apart of himself.

“I was black and proud to be black,” Dr. Kelley said. “There was no notion that I might be multiracial. Or that the public discourse on college campuses recognized the multiracial community.”

 This idea of identifying as a single ethnicity likely comes from how the census once had to be filled out. Originally, you could only pick one Causcasian, African American, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American to name a few. This limited someone that was African American and Native American for example to decide which one they identified with. Parents of mix children were angry about this and demanded a change. In the 2000 Census, the option went for "choose one" to "choose all that apply."  This caused an increase in the known diversity of the U.S. once the data had been collected and analyzed. 

Since the Census used to only allow on box to be checked for ethnic identity, some have wondered if President Obama is not the first 'black' president, but actually the first 'multiracial' president as both of his parents come from a different background and Obama has alway only been able to check on box and since checking mor than one is very new, he might have continued to check only the African American box for one reason or another. This caused a conflict with the Biracial and Multiracial Club and the school's N.A.A.C.P when they asked them their opinion. They said that they wanted the club to stop trying to take away 'their black president.' The multiracial group wanted clarity to support their cause, but the N.A.A.C.P wanted to have their cause to be shown as well which caused conflict between them.

On the other side, some African Americans actually try to decrease their amount of "blackness" in order to get jobs. In another Time article by Michael Luo, Luo describes the methods and reasonings behind people shifting their resumé around in order to make them seem "whiter." One example of this is a lady named Tahani Tompkins. Tompkins tried to get a job, her resumé was very good for the field that she was applying for, however, she wasn't getting hired. She decided, with a suggestion from a friend, to use her initials instead of her first name and have her resumé say T.S. Tompkins which ended up landing her job interviews. It seems a bit strange that something as simple as a name could increase the chances of a job interview. Sad, but true and Tompkins is not the only one. Other African Americans removing anything that outright says that they are African Americans the best they can in order to get jobs. Some go to lengths such as removing if their college was historically a black college, and any black non-profit organizations/support groups that they have been apart of, some go as far as rearranging their references from "whitest to blackest." All of this changing is done just to be noticed for a job interview to defend themselves in person. The lengths that some go to get a job is ridiculous as it is hiding their identity. With so many in the younger generations trying to display and show of their diversity, there are still many that are trying to hide because they feel that they have to.

Ethnicity is an important asset in one's life that can help to achieve identity status within themselves. Identity in general is something that one should be proud of and embrace. Embrace your differences whether you are African American, Asian-American, Bolivian-Asian, Hispanic-European, or a man hiding from the law behind another man, be who you are and show your true self.

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Right, Wrong, Maybe... but WHY?

Morality is a tricky subject to talk about. Many wonder what makes something "good" and what makes something else "bad." Think of stealing a loaf of bread. Most people would say that steal is wrong and it should not occur. Now, think of Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, he stole bread in order to fed his family as they were poor and starving and was punished. I know I didn't think it was right for him to go to prison for so many years for stealing a loaf of bread. What about his family, did they die from starvation when Jean never returned? Do you think this was still wrong of him to do? He stole, but he did it for the right for his family to be fed, isn't that a good answer? I'd say so, but not everyone agrees.

Moral psychology has long been dominated by rationalist models of moral judgment. A rationalist's approach to morality is thought that moral judgements and knowledge are reached mainly through the process of reasoning and reflection. Moral emotions such as sympathy may sometimes be part of the reasoning process, but moral emotions are not the direct causes of moral judgments. In rationalist models one briefly becomes a judge before passing judgment on a specific case of possible wrong doing such as to steal or not to steal the bread. 

Lawrence Kohlberg

Lawrence Kohlberg, developed a method to look at the stages of reasoning that lead to decision making. Kohlberg created a study that involved an interview and a fictional scenario. In the scenario a man named Heinz was placed in a moral dilemma when he needed a particular drug that would save his wife's life, but the drug store refused to sell it to him.

After participants read this scenario, they were asked whether Heinz should steal the drug or not. He follows the rationalist modle because he believes people reason about their actions and then come to a conclusion about what they should do. With this study, Kohlberg used the participants answer and explanation to develop a set of stages for morality, there are three categories and then two sub-categories for each level. The higher the level of morality, typically means the more intelligence in thinking.

Kohlberg's Moral Stages

There were a few flaws that were in this study that could make it less viable such as the group of participants were all white males in private school. There were also only forty participants in this study which does not give a good variety of the population either. The lack of variation in the participants reduces the accuracy of the processes.

Jonathan Haidt

A newer theory tot hinting about moral psychology is with a model called the Social Intuition Model created by psychologist Jonathan Haidt that focuses his research on morality. Haidts idea of Social Intuition is that people use their intuition to make decisions and not reasoning. In his paper, The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment, Haidt describes the differences between moral reasoning and moral intuition. Moral reasoning is the conscious act of mentally reconfiguring information of people that make moral judgments. Moral intuition is the unconscious conclusion of moro judgment that includes a strong emotional connection. As this is unconscious, people do not realize that this process is occurring.

The best way I can understand how Haidt is thinking is through this chart from the Time website that was written by Jonathan Haidt himself to explain more of his theory that many people have criticized.

The scenario that Haidt creates in his paper is one of a brother and sister that, while in France, decide to explore their sexuality and make love to each other, afterwards they feel closer and aren negatively effected at all by this experience. They are both cautions and each use a form of birth control. After reading this, the participants in this study were asked if this was right or wrong of them to do. Most people would that it is unacceptable and morally wrong, the next question is why, and that is what trips people up in their answer and are then placed into the 'dumfounding' category in the the top left.

 The siblings are in France where incest is legal so there isn't an issue with the law, they are both using a form of birth control so the possibly of a child with deformities is slim to none (and if there was a pregnancy she could get an abortion), and neither of them are negatively effected emotionally by this act. This leads to the final answer one might think of "it's wrong because its gross," but where does that fit in on Kohlberg's chart? Answer: It doesn't, but it does fit with Haidt's, which has a totally different view on morality.

Okay that's great that one chart explains the answer and one doesn't, but, where does this leave morality?

Tamier Sommers goes further to analyze Haidt's experiment and discovered that human make a decision on a conclusion for a situation but they skip over the "why" until possibly asked. Haidt brings up situations similar to the sibling scenario that William Saletan describes in his article about the theory. Some of the question that may interfere with the thought of morality are questions like "Is it wrong to have sex with a dead chicken? How about with your sister? Is it O.K. to defecate in a urinal? If your dog dies, why not eat it?" These question explore the dilemmas of "what is right and what is wrong."

With this in mind, how are we able to decide on what is "right" and what is "wrong"? Was it right in the end for Jean Valjean to steal the bread or was he justly punished? Should the siblings be allowed to perform incest or is it really a bad action? With keeping in mind Kohlberg's the stages of morals, we must also have the options of our personal judgment whether they have evidence or not in order to see as many sides of an 'iffy' situation as we can.

I Watched It Begin Again

I believe in soul mates and that everyone has someone out there to love and to love them, you just need to find them at the right place at the right time.

I think of my parents as a happy couple. Of course there are small squabbles from time to time, but that's normal after being together for around 25 years and a little less for marriage. They were high school sweethearts and got married a few years after high school and then after that, had me. They've always had a relationship where if there was something wrong or a disagreement that they would be able to sort it out together. My parents love each other and tell me that they could never see themselves with anyone else. I think they will be together forever, but divorce national divorce rate may argue otherwise.

My parents would probably do well in Dr. Gottman's interview to determine if a married couple would stand the test of time. His factors for relationship success are determined by these variables: 

1. Expression of fondness/affection2. Expression of negativity towards spouse3. Expressiveness vs. withdrawal4. We-ness vs. Seperateness (how much they identify as part of the couple) 5. Level of traditionality regarding gender roles6. How couple reported dealing with conflict: Volatility, Chaos, or Glorifying the Struggle7. Marital Disappointment or Disillusionment

Once these variables have been assessed, Gottman and his colleagues can determine three year out if a couple's relationship will last at its present point with a 94% accuracy. 

 The national first marriage divorce rate is up to 50% in today's world. Studies by Slater and Gordon also show that divorces aren't just something that happens out of nowhere. People that want a divorce, on average, think about getting one over two year prior to pulling the plug on it. I think that is kind of sad that while one person thinks things are great, the other is contemplating leaving them forever. Studies show that during those two years that about 18 months of it is trying to mend the cracks in their relationship. Alas, most attempts fail and end in separation.

Even after a couple is divorced, their rate for a second and third marriage divorce increases as high as  73% chance. These are pretty grim statistics. With numbers like these, do some people give up hope on finding love? I would say that they might.

Some people just give up on their chances at love and feel that in today's society that they could live alone just fine.

Is divorce really the end all, be all of a relationship of two people who had so much intimacy and passion towards each other? Is that love still there? 

It can be!

Studies have shown that 10% of divorcees remarry their former spouses and 72% of those couple remain together until death does part them. A good example of this rekindling light are my grandparents. My grandparents married very young and have my mom and aunt (twins) a very short time after their marriage. With inexperience, hard times, two girls, and money troubles; love and compassion for each other wasn't enough to make their marriage last forever. They managed a remarkable 19 years together before they finally split. 

A few years after, my grandfather remarried my step grandmother and my grandmother had a partner that she lived with. I grew up for half my life knowing them at separate entities, different people in different worlds. I never thought anything of it since I didn't know them before their divorce. They didn't have any animosity towards each other so I never saw conflict with them and that was fine by me.

Their love never died, it was only put on hold.

 Little did I know that something surprising would happen and bring them back together.

In 2003 I believe, my grandmother's house burned down and she and her partner lost just about everything. Once the house was redone, in 2006, and my grandmother sold it and moved up to the same area as my parents and myself. Her partner didn't like the cold and was against staying there long term so after about a year he left to go back to southern New York. In 2005, an unsuspected tragedy occurred and my step grandmother passed away from a sudden medical ailment.

 

By 2006, both of my mother's parents were single again, that's when they came into contact.

From then on they started talking very often and making trips to each other's houses in New York and Rhode Island. They would be together for all of the big holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving. The best part of it all was when my mother almost cried when she received a birthday card that was signed by both of her parents. Over 15 years had gone by without something so special as a jointly signed card. They said that they would never get married again, but eventually time lent a hand and brought theirs together in holy matrimony in December 2013. They are now a happily retired, remarried couple living on the beaches of Rhode Island.

My grandparents together again

Statistics say that 72% of couple that remarry their former spouse will stay with them. I am 100% sure that my grandparents will be part of that 72%.

Connected at the Hip?

Attachment parenting is a hot topic among psychologists, and parents alike. 

What is attachment parenting? 

Attachment parenting is typically an extremely close relationship of child and mother. The mother will breastfeed her child, on demand, sometimes until they are toddlers at age 3, 4 or even 5. The mother will perform 'baby wearing' which is always carrying the baby either in a sling, a carrier in the front, a backpack for behind, or in a hip attachment as seen above. In attachment parenting, co-sleeping is also a popular method used to ensure bonding.

The next question after this explanation would probably be: 

Who created this idea of parenting? 

TIME magazine writer Kate Pickert, wrote an article in May that made the cover staring attachment parenting and the doctor that created it, Dr. William "Bill" Sears.

Dr. Bill Sears (right) and wife Martha (left)

Dr. Sears is known as the father of attachment parenting. He is the author of over 40 books on child-rearing and pregnancy. Sears' is best known for his 'tome', as Pickert describes it, a 750+ paged parenting manual known as The Baby Book that his wife Martha also helped with writing. This book, however, wasn't written based on Sears' own experience but more of a 'reaction' to his childhood. Sears and his wife did not have their theories of attachment parenting come to life as children themselves. Sears's father abandoned him as an infant; Martha's father died when she was a child and her mother was mentally ill.

As the couple that founded the theory of having a close relationship to your children had anything but that. It has been concluded that it is because they did not have the loving family they wanted that they would create one for their children in their upbringing, and thus, attachment parenting was born.

Attachment parenting is very controversial as it is very anti-feminist. 

This practice expects women to carry their baby, feed their baby, and sleep with their baby in order to have the set connection possible with their baby. This practice can also leave dad out of the picture a lot since methods such as breastfeeding, even after teeth have developed, should be done straight from the breast and shouldn't be pumped to ensure the best mother-child connection.

Nutritional benefits of breast milk vs. formula

I think that breastfeeding is something that everyone should do, but I don't see a problem with pumping the milk for later use. Pumping the breast milk encourages a stronger father-child connection when the child can see the father's face when feeding them as well as the mother's. Breast milk is much better for children than formula because the baby can get vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that can't alway be dehydrated and crushed up to make a powdered substance for consumption as that is basally what formula is. I think that breastfeeding should be done for at least the first year and a half, maybe two due to the nutrients that babies will receive from the mother's milk. Breastfeeding and pumping are also all around more beneficial economically.

Cost benefits of breast milk vs formula

If it is done for longer that that, then, I think more pumping should be involved and it should be used as a vitamin supplement if say the child just doesn't like vegetables yet, who knows. A personal benefit of the mother continuing breastfeeding is that the 'baby weight' gained during pregnancy will slide right off as breastfeeding can burn a few hundred calories a day since the baby is using it for their energy. Continuing breast feeding or pumping can also prevent monthly menstruation as well as a pretty decent form of birth control, though as all others out there, not 100% effective.

Another big part in attachment parenting is baby wearing or carrying that has critics about it, including myself. I think that babies do need that bonding with their parents that is received when they are being rocked and carried as it shows the child that they are wanted and loved which is the goal of attachment parenting, to ensure this bond is formed and sealed as stated in the Attachment Parenting International website where it talks about caring for the child in the first paragraph. I don't see how this can be necessarily healthy though, once the child is able to walk, for the mother to constantly be holding their child. 

When thinking anatomically about carrying a child on your hip, many mothers have to shift their weight to the child's side and 'throw their hip out' to support the child. This weight shifting is putting more pressure on one side of the body and also leaving the hips at an unnatural angle under this pressure for long periods of time as well as the back being slights curves in a left or right position, and the knee locked in place, which is also unnatural for long periods of time. I myself have carried babies this way and I know that my back becomes sore along with my hips and sometimes my knees from carrying children this way for a long time. 

The typical carrying method for infants on a mothers hip.

After my experiences, I think that children should be carried and coddled when they are infants, but as the child ages and grows bigger, I think they should start to be carried less. I realize that there are many devices to carry babies on some part of a mother, but if attachment parenting is about a natural connection and natural upbringings, then shouldn't there not be a use for those artificial devices? I think not. Strollers, I think, are the best way to go when a child is to heavy to carry but still too small to walk for a long time on their own.

Strollers are good for infants and toddlers alike.

The bonding continues with attachment parenting, from the breast, to the hip, now into the bed the babies will go with their parents in a practice called 'co-sleeping'. Co-sleeping is when the mother, father, and their children sleep in the same bed, every night until they are ready for a "big kid bed" which can be as late as age 8 or 9 in some cases. A blog post in The Mommy Files talks about this interesting phenomenon that has been increasing in popularity since the 70s and 80s when it became more widely accepted to sleep in the same bed as your child. Blogger of The Mommy Files, Amy Graff considers the question of whether or not sex is acceptable in the family bed in her post.

A few co-sleeping positions with some humorous names.

Starting with the co-sleeping itself, I think that it is acceptable for a child to sleep with parents when they are infants. When I read that there are little 'side carts' for beds for infants I became more than certain in my opinion that infants should be close to the mother, especially if she is breastfeeding, then it would make it easier to do so in the middle of the night. If a parent feels uncomfortable with the baby so close with possibilities such as blanket suffocation then they should place the baby in a crib, but still keeping them in the same room for better monitoring of the child. I think that at around the age of two, maybe three, that the child should 'graduate' from being with mommy and daddy in the bed and sleep alone in their own room and go on from there to be moved from a crib to a 'big kid bed'.

I think co-sleeping is a good idea. I also think that sex is a healthy behavior, especially for married couples that want children. I do not support both happening simultaneously in the same room at all what-so-ever. 

I am sure that some of you can think back to when you were children and to hear some strange noises coming from the other room or peeked into mommy and daddy's room when they thought you were asleep and saw them doing a very strange act to you. That was possibly a pretty scarring event, wasn't it? Now, think about how it might effect a child's mentality to wake up to it happening right next to them. The sight, the sound, maybe even the smells could really effect the child's relationship, not only with the parents, but maybe even other adults. It doesn't matter if the baby is sleeping, they can still hear it, their brains are still functioning while unconscious. Having sex with your child in the room is comparable to a college roommate bringing someone home to get busy with while you're sleeping on the other side of the room!

It's embarrassing, rude, and totally unacceptable in my opinion.

Overall, I think that there are many variations and different levels to attachment parenting for any situation in a parent-child relationship. As anything, it is best to do what you think is right for you.

A Word Speaks a Thousand Thoughts

A word,
Eine wort,
Una palabra,
Un mot.

Words, are spoken all over the world, everyday, and at every moment of a day, but do these words actually mean more than what is said?
There are over 7,000 spoken languages from all parts of the Earth and many of them have not interacted with each other which leads to the languages themselves to be different (i.e. Swedish and Swahili are two totally different languages and even have different character sets for their written versions).

I will use my first set of phrases at the top as my first example of how language is not only the way we speak, but how we speak and think about things. The four phrases you see above all mean the same thing 'a word'.The first two, English and German are in a category of languages called the Germanic languages and the latter two, Spanish and French, the Romantic languages.

These categories are denoting branches of languages that have spread over time, but still have some of the same characteristics of each other such as similar words and syntax. The English and German phrases have a similarly spelled noun "word; wort" however, the indefinite article "a" is very different. The reason why there is this difference is because in German there is a feminine, a masculine, and a neuter version of the word "a"; this phrase happens to be feminine.

Why is "word" feminine in German you may ask? It is simply because that is how the language was constructed in order to help better define and categorize things in the German language. Spanish and French also have masculine and feminine articles in their Romance languages, as do Portuguese and Italian in the same Romantic category. Spanish and French have very similar looking indefinite articles for the same word, however what may become confusing is to know that, although it is the same word in both languages, in Spanish "word" is feminine and, in French, masculine. Now why would two languages from the same branch of origin have different genders you may ask? It is the same answer as with German, over time it was how the language was constructed. Although Spain and France are side by side geographically, they will have their differences in language as they do in their cultures because as they developed on their own, that is how they became independent and individualized as countries.

Language fascinates me. What I have already described above is primarily information I have gathered while personally studying and learning languages, but since language is such an interesting topic, I read further into it on a wider scale than Western European language to find out even more incredible concepts, thoughts, and ideas in other languages.

Time is a concept that has been around for thousands of years. We use time to determine when the morning and the afternoon are, shifts at work, when a meal should be ready, bed times for young children, when young children reach a milestone in their life such as young adulthood. Time is used in many ways to bring order into our lives, so we would assume that everyone, no matter what language they speak, would have words in their language for time, right? Wrong. In the 1940s, a linguist named Benjamin Lee Whorf wrote about an idea he had that language influences thought. Whorf believed that groups of people thought differently due to the language they speak. He went as far to say at cultures such as the Hopi Native American tribe were unable to understand the concept of time because the word "time" wasn't able to be directly translated. This idea was thought to be true until the 1960s where it was rejected due to two factors; the idea itself seemed racist and, how could humans have created a word such as "time" if it didn't always exist in the first place? The idea that language influenced thought was still a very interesting idea to many and was further looked upon to seek the validity in it.

modern form to measure time - the wrist watch

ancient form to measure time - the sundial

A more in-depth academic article How Language Shapes Thought begins to unravel the mysteries of the relationship between thought and language based on simple concepts such as time, numbers, gender, family, and direction. A great example of this is written in this article:

"For example, suppose I want to tell you that I saw Uncle Vanya on 42nd Street. In Mian, a language spoken in Papua New Guinea, the verb I used would reveal whether the event happened just now, yesterday or in the distant past, whereas in Indonesian, the verb wouldn’t even give away whether it had already happened or was still coming up. In Russian, the verb would reveal my gender. In Mandarin, I would have to specify whether the titular uncle is maternal or paternal and whether he is related by blood or marriage, because there are different words for all these different types of uncles and then some (he happens to be a mother’s brother, as the Chinese translation clearly states). And in Pirahã, a language spoken in the Amazon, I couldn’t say “42nd,” because there are no words for exact numbers, just words for “few” and “many.” 

These are all variations of a single sentence in only a handful of different languages. 

With the verb in the sentence ("saw" or "to see" in the infinitive) it is in the past for us, but in other countries it may not even have a tense or past, present, future as English does. Languages without a future tense are known as "futureless languages". There is an idea that is argued that there is a difference in the economic standing for "future languages" and "futureless languages". In a TED talk video, Keith Chen, a behavioral economist, examines the pattern that a country with a "futureless language" may actually have a higher savings rate than a country with a "future language". He believes this to be true since those without a future tense tend to think of the future similarly as they do of the present. This may make "futureless speakers", such as those in Luxembourg that have the highest % of GDP,  more conservative with spending as compared to "future speakers" such as Greeks that have the lowest % of GDP savings in the graph that Chen displayed during his presentation.

Graph shown in Keith Chen's TED talk

Language is a complex concept to grasp and even more so with the increase in studies of what it effects, and how it effects a country, a person, and a single thought.

Thanks for reading!

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Babies: My thoughts on their thoughts

With the articles that we read this week the main question was if babies could think or not. In the past fifty years, there has been an increase in the amount of research that has gone in to figure out this difficult question.

Since one can't normally go up to an eighteen month old and ask them what they are thinking about or have them answer a question verbally, the best way to go about it is to test it with body language, more specifically, eye movement and pupil dilation.

A Time article focused on eye movement and pupil dilation where infants were tested for their ability to notice a difference in something such as the color of a train being the same going in a circular track through a tunnel until, of course, it changed color in the tunnel. The infants' pupil dilations were recorded to show that the infants' eyes dilated when a change occurred, or something unusual happened.

This shows that babies are thinking, as they notice something with their eye dilation to support this. The question is-what babies are thinking when they see this strange occurrence, whether it is something as complex as understanding it to be an impossibility that the train could change colors in the tunnel, or simply that they thought this was a novel event with a color change.

Due to a lack of object permanence, which is when one can recognize that something that is still in existence even when it is not visible, the infant thinks that there is a blue train and then when it changes color that there is a green train. They cannot yet understand that the blue train changed into a green train but, can understand the event of a blue train and the event of a green train which does show that they are thinking.

Angela Saini introduced a point that there was an increase in women in this field of study. In class we spoke about why it could that there has been this increased interest in discovering how babies think. With the increase in the research there was also an increase in women researchers in this field. I think that this is not a coincidence as many mothers could feel more at ease with their baby being tested on if they were being tested by a researcher that was also a mother. With the typically natural nurturing instincts of a women, the babies would natural feel more calm as the researcher would better know how to keep the baby happy, especially if she were to have a child of her own.

 A TED talk video with Child Development psychologist, Alison Gopnik described another interesting point in child development compared to other baby animals; that humans have a longer period of childhood where they are nurtured more so than any other species. Gopnik claims that this is the reason why babies are so bright and how they can develop a higher level of thinking sooner. It makes sense since infancy is where the brain develops the most so if we have more time to finish, it can increase in its complexity.

Languages are a great example of a child's learning capabilities. Children are like sponges that absorb information quickly and effectively when taught a second language. Their brain growth increases exponentially until as old as the age of five, from then the brain develops at a steadier pace of learning, but they are still actively thinking.

Gopnik also claims that during this time that with their increased active thinking, that there is increased creativity. With children being so open to new experiences before the effects of stress and judgement set in, children can openly think about what ever they want to think, how ever they wish to think it. This openness in thought could lead to great ideas that adults, with their experience and more complex knowledge could use to benefit others.

Children are actively thinking about thousands of things at all ages, I think its just more of a question of how deep of thinkers are they and at what point do their thoughts become more complex.

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