Why African Babies Don't Cry

I stumbled across quite an interesting post about cultural differences in nursing babies, specifically between Kenya and the UK, by J. Claire K. Niala. I definitely recommend reading her entire post (http://www.drmomma.org/2010/09/why-african-babies-dont-cry.html). I'm selecting here some excerpts from her writing, and adding a little subjective discussion. My views could be way off since I've never gone through the experience myself, but shaping your opinions based on others' stories who have can definitely help. Side note: I love the paradox of posting on a blog to recommend mothers to stop reading books/blogs when trying to learn about their babies :-)

When I went home [Kenya], I observed. I looked out for mothers and babies and they were everywhere, though very young African ones, under six weeks, were mainly at home. The first thing I noticed is that despite their ubiquitousness, it is actually quite difficult to actually “see” a Kenyan baby. They are usually incredibly well wrapped up before being carried or strapped onto their mother (sometimes father). Even older babies strapped onto a back are further protected from the elements by a large blanket. You would be lucky to catch sight of a limb, never mind an eye or nose. The wrapping is a womb-like replication. The babies are literally cocooned from the stresses of the outside world into which they are entering.

In their early lives, babies seem to be raised thoroughly differently in Kenya vs UK, and I kinda want to say that the difference applies more generally to traditional vs more modern cultures.

I would assume a big part of this is because the mothers are trying to get back to their social/work lives much sooner that a few decades ago. But an accelerated lifestyle of the modern society should probably not apply to newborns, human beings haven't had time to adapt well to that. As our friends recently stated when they got their first precious little girl: babies are so incredibly helpless in their first year, that you can't imagine how our race has survived for so long!

Then again, our not-so-long-ago ancestors were shielding the babies so much from the external world! Mothers were spending most of their time with the newborns, there weren't many 'conveniences' like nannies or daycare, there were no miraculous baby foods that can replace breast milk, etc.

Even now in the Chinese culture both the mother and child are not allowed to leave the house in the first months, or receive guests, or even exposed to 'daily' technology like the TV set. But in the modern world you see mothers bringing 3-months-old babies on an airplane because they feel like visiting a friend across state. It makes me wonder where the focus should be, on the mother as an individual with a life and a career, or on the baby's critical growing time? Is the convenience of modern society helping, or hindering the development of the next generation?

Her discussion on crying, the expected nursing habits and closeness early on is interesting: 

[In Kenya] The understanding is that babies don’t cry. If they do – something is horribly wrong and something must be done to rectify it immediately. [...] for my grandmother it was simple, “Nyonyo (breastfeed her)!” It was her answer to every single peep.[...]

Read your baby, not the books. Breastfeeding is not linear – it goes up and down and also in circles. You are the expert on your baby’s needs.

I guess the "babies cry" approach is widely accepted nowadays because there is no proved obvious short-term harm to the babies, and makes the parents' lives easier, but I wonder how much does that affect them in the long run? Maybe it's not just extending the breast-milk nursing period that has a chance to significantly raise the baby's IQ, but also extending the mother-to-child closeness and the feeling of protection for the baby in his early life. 

It reminds me of that story/study on the strong difference in the IQ levels, as adults, for a group of babies in the US that were adopted from the same orphanage in Romania. In the orphanage, the nurses weren't allowed to pick up the newborns from the cribs so that they don't encourage their need for bonding and attention (which was purely driven by a lack of resources, i.e. high babies-nurse ratio). However, the group of babies that ended up better-developed as adults all came from the same ward; it turned out that a cleaning lady was coming there every night, picking up each baby in turn, holding them and singing them lullabies. 

I suddenly learned the not-so-difficult secret of the joyful silence of African babies. It was a simple needs-met symbiosis that required a total suspension of ideas of what should be happening and an embracing of what was actually going on in that moment.

No matter how accurate or fable-like these stories and viewpoints are, a few things stand out: affection and closeness in early life does go a long way, and starts with changing your priorities in those early years; following a fast-paced, technology-driven society and disregarding the more traditional ways of life may not be right way to approach this matter. And, of course, parenting is an art :-)