Michael Pollan on food marketing sheds light on baby formula discussion

An interview on Alternet with best-selling author Michael Pollan (In Defense of Food) ties in to our recent discussion on breastfeeding and formula marketing. Emphasis mine:

Michael Pollan (MP): I remember my mother dutifully giving us all margarine instead of butter. She would say, "Some day they're going to figure out that butter is actually better for you than margarine," and we thought she was nuts. In fact, it turned out that margarine was lethal and butter is fine.

Alternet's Terence McNally (TMN): She was still feeding it to you suspecting that would happen...?

MP: The authority of mothers was essentially destroyed by the food industry. The $32 billion a year in marketing muscle out there has undercut culture's role in determining what we eat, and culture is a fancy word for your mom.

TMN: Just to emphasize that number, that's not the food industry, that's the food marketing industry.

MP: That's advertising, studying us, packaging, figuring out how to get us to eat more.

TMN: Food industry folks say, "We don't think we should regulate this sort of thing because Americans believe in individualism and free choice, but we're all for public education." So maybe we'll throw $100 million of education up against that $32 billion of marketing.

MP: $100 million is one snack food's annual budget. The entire USDA/FDA effort to educate people about food equals one chip. [laughs] There's no contest. They control the information about food.

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Revisiting the Misgeret, or Is Preschool Necessary

It's bound to happen at one time or another when you are out with your toddler. Your neighbor asks you the question you were wondering yourself earlier that day, as you tried to talk on the phone while your son climbed the bookcase: "Isn't he bored at home with you all day? How old is he again? [Insert any answer here.] Shouldn't he be in a misgeret?"

In honor of my 4-year-old starting gan in a few weeks (we did have an informal two-child playgroup, technically a misgeret I suppose), I share my answers to the suppositions of nosy and rude advice-givers. They don't deserve a reply. But at times we must address concerns of family members, or, more likely, we ourselves need the reassurance.

• "The child needs to get used to being in gan for half the day." Or, "She will be behind academically." When I mentioned to one mother that our three-year-olds would be in gan together the following year, she asked how I could send her when she hadn't been in gan at age two. According to this theory, children need a year in a misgeret to prepare for the next misgeret.
  
• [This one is for late talkers.] "Gan will help him learn to talk." This is just wrong. Children in gan generally spend little time talking one-on-one to an adult. And the less the child communicates through speech, the less verbal attention he is likely to get from teachers. Children develop speaking skills at vastly different ages and unless you have reason to suspect a problem, it's safe to let them develop at their own pace. Gan will not make a huge difference either way.
  
• [For olim] "The child needs to learn Hebrew." Gan-aged, immigrant children still have plenty of time to become fully bilingual. But language is a balance. If your child spends most of her day in a Hebrew-speaking environment, her English vocabulary will be smaller. And vice versa. You can teach him Hebrew yourself, or make playdates with Hebrew-speaking children, to ease the transition. But immigrants to all countries have survived the experience; emotional maturity is more important than language. [My daughter is concerned about this despite more than adequate Hebrew skills.]
  
• "He needs to play with children his own age." I question this assumption "milechat'hilah." The younger the child, the less equipped to compete with others for the attention of adults. Since making aliyah the age of starting group care has lowered, while time spent in care increased. Children learn social skills mainly from their parents, and they can play with other children while parents are present. If all neighborhood children are in gan, they can meet in the afternoon or on weekends. They don't need thirty hours a week away from parents to learn cooperative play. Unfortunately, preschool for fewer hours is unheard of in Israel. (Let me qualify that--I heard of a gan run by the city of Tel Aviv where you can leave a child on a drop-off basis.)
  
• "Immigrant children need to develop a tough, Israeli exterior." (I mentioned this here.) Okay, but at what cost? I read of a doctoral student who spent months observing three-year-olds in an Israeli gan. She reported of a complex social structure that included children bringing treats to appease bullies. The children's teachers remained unaware. When put into such an environment children may learn healthy ways of defending themselves. Others become aggressive, or conversely, withdrawn.
  
• "Aren't you bored?" Mothers are supposed to be doing adult activities, not playing games all day with their children. (See my next point.)
  
• "Do you sit with her?" I get this all the time; they are asking whether I use worksheets or teach letters and numbers. (I visited a highly-recommended gan where three-year-olds did worksheets each day.) The short answer is no; I enjoy a loose daily structure. We read, play, color, go to the park, run errands, do chores, and meet other mothers and children. The children who are interested pick up letters, numbers and even reading. They play by themselves a good deal of the time while I do "adult" things. In turn, I expect frequent interruptions.
  
• "Your child is too shy/aggressive/wild/attached to you/disobedient/spoiled/slow/bossy. It's because you don't send him to gan." Every child develops different and has personality problems challenges, even the ones who attend gan. Who doesn't? But if you keep your child home, you will be blamed for those issues.
  

Over a million American children are being homeschooled for elementary and/or high school. Surely that puts keeping a two-, three-, or four-year-old at home for another year in perspective.

(I wish I didn't need to add this caveat: I am not trying to convince parents to keep their kids out of gan, or quit their jobs. I do wish to support parents struggling with this issue.)

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Do you wish you belonged to the "other" group?

Lily left a comment on a recent post suggesting that "working mothers" and "stay-at-home" mothers often wish they were in the opposite category. I know I occasionally fantasize about picking up a briefcase and closing the door behind me each morning, leaving someone else to deal with the mess and the tantrums. I imagine how much more people would respect me, if I had a prestigious job.

I am leaving my family behind in a few minutes, as I am on my way to a two-day conference. My husband took off from work.

What about you? (I guess this question is mainly for mothers, but all input is welcome.) Do you think about what life would be like had you chosen a different work/home balance? Either now, or in the past?

Haveil Havalim, the Jewish and Israeli Blog Carnival, is up over at Frume Sarah. Check it out.

How did my mother do it?

Pesach-observant homemakers the world over are talking about turning over. Turning over the kitchen, that is. When they have finished most of the shopping, cleaning and kashering (making the stove, sink and counters kosher for Passover), they officially"turn over" the kitchen for Pesach. They might still have chametz around but from that point any serious cooking will be kosher for Passover.

My mother always turned over the kitchen the night before the Seder. After the bedikat chametz (search for leavened bread after nightfall) we brought down the Pesach dishes from the attic. My mother insisted that we wash them, and indeed they were covered with dust and the occasional bug. She rose early the next morning to put the roast in the oven (when I got married I learned that it's traditional not to eat roast meat for the seder--but she may have made pot roast). We ate chametz until the last minute, chosen from a tray on the breakfast room table. The children's job was to wash dishes, clean out our hairbrushes and garbage cans, and help prepare the seder plate. For lunch she fried potato latkes. Her Pesach food was easy to make and delicious. The table didn't groan from the quantities but no one left hungry either (but did I ever tell you about the soup?).

In another family, which shall remain nameless, the husband stayed up all night after bedikat chametz cleaning the oven. By the time the men left for shul in the evening, the wife was just starting to grate the horseradish for the seder plate. One of the children, on spending her first Pesach in a hotel, was shocked at the variety of food served for lunch on Erev Pesach. In her house, there wasn't any time, or anything, to eat.

At the opposite extreme, I grew up with someone whose mother "turned over" the kitchen so early that the family ate kosher for Passover food for an extra week.

My mother knew what she had to do and when. She neither procrastinated nor took on unnecessary chores. She did spring cleaning if she was able and let it go if she didn't. Most important, she didn't obsess over any one job. She did it to the best of her ability and crossed it off the list.

A golden mind, a golden heart, a golden tongue

Riveting. Moving. Inspiring. Such is the documentary A Lonely Man of Faith produced by Ethan Isenberg. The golden mind, heart, and tongue belonged to Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveichik, known to his students simply as the Rav.

The highlights of the film for me:

• The early influence of the Rav's mother. The film emphasized her love of secular knowledge and only hinted at her real contribution -- the emotional warmth the Rav's strict father could not provide.
• The Rav's emphasis on higher learning for women, by insisting on teaching the first Talmud class for women at Stern College. Maimonides, the Boston day school he founded, had mixed classes through high school because the Rav feared that separate classes would lead to inferior education for girls.
• His support of the State of Israel, secular education, and cooperation with the non-Orthodox (on issues affecting the entire community), causing a rift between modern Orthodoxy and the Yeshiva world that has not been repaired.
  
• The Rav's combination of a love of learning, personal integrity, and an emphasis on ethics and morality including business ethics. He believed that the goal of learning Torah and doing mitzvot is to lift us to a higher moral level. Too often they are seen as the ends in themselves.
  
• The discussion of faith that he brought into modern-day consciousness. He was disturbed by those who asked, "What can religion do for me?" instead of "What does God want from me?"
  
• His unique and well-trained mind--head and shoulders above any other -- combined with unusual sensitivity, oratorical genius, and levelheadedness -- placed him, arguably, as the savior of the precarious American Orthodoxy that existed when he arrived in the 1930's.
• The Rav's personal and professional challenges.
• The unfortunate lack of a successor, or even a clear legacy, because every decision occurred in a specific context that cannot be reproduced.

I only mention a small portion of the vast material that the producers managed to include in an hour and a half. Even though it ignored or glossed over many negatives, A Lonely Man of Faith made me proud to call myself modern Orthodox and a religious Zionist.

Do kids care if your house is dirty?

If my mother hated cleaning, she never admitted it to me. But she didn't research or think much about cleaning techniques, like she did with other aspects of homemaking.

She was fussy about guests, who were never allowed in the kitchen; she had me for serving and clearing. I didn't mind much, except when I didn't get soup because it had boiled away--sometimes she calculated too carefully. She kept the living and dining rooms, along with the front entrance, exclusively for company (a luxury most of us Israelis can only dream of). The family used the side door; she often complained about their previous house, where you had to bring groceries in through the living room.

My own friends were welcome in the house and ate in the "breakfast room" off the kitchen, with the family.

By the time I was born she could have afforded hired help, and did occasionally, but she was too private a person to feel comfortable with someone else working in the house.

I wonder how much of an issue housekeeping was for her. Was the house really dirty, even before my mother developed a chronic illness when I was twelve? Was she ashamed of the house's condition? If so, I wasn't conscious of a problem and chalked up her foibles to anxiety regarding guests. Maybe there is a lesson here: If your own house isn't so clean, chances are your kids don't care and won't remember.

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Crawling: A Father’s First Year Blog Tour

Mom Central invited me to participate in a Blogtour for Elisha Cooper's book Crawling: A Father’s First Year.

Elisha Cooper (no, he’s not Jewish) is an artist and children’s author living with his wife Elise in Berkeley, California. Elisha documents his journey through the first year of fatherhood after the birth of daughter Zoë.

We have all the usual milestones: The initial shock of being solely responsible for another human being, the first time alone with a baby who won't take a bottle, the first trip to the emergency room. But he moves from humorously casting himself as a clueless father to examining his ever-changing emotions. He admits how inadequate he feels next to his wife who seems to know instinctively how to calm and care for the baby. He describes his jealousy of Zoë’s and Elise’s intense feelings for each other.

What makes the book special is how he comes to terms with these feelings and refuses to let them interfere in his relationship with his growing family. Toward the end of the year when he is caring for Zoë full-time, he writes (p. 144) "I will never replace Elise. The intensity of the look she and Zoë share when they see each other at the end of the day is not replicable. But I'm needed." He never stops trying to find unique ways to connect and interact with his daughter, and develop his relationship with his wife as they adapt to their new roles.

Another thing I liked is that certain "controversial" aspects of parenting were presented as a given. Elise nurses, with never a thought of formula (Cooper even uses breastmilk in his coffee). When Elise travels, there's no thought of leaving baby with dad. They take Zoë to restaurants regularly, and even attend weekly "baby night" at the neighborhood movie theater. In a funny scene Cooper describes a dating couple who accidentally turn up on the wrong night. Why didn't anyone in Israel ever think of welcoming babies to a movie showing?

As a mother, I felt uncomfortable with what seemed to be a cry-it-out episode when Zoë is one month old (!).

Sometimes Cooper's writing is a little crass. And even if he believes passersby who say that Zoë is the cutest baby in the world, he should have the good taste to play it down.

At first I found it disconcerting that Zoë's age is rarely mentioned; I kept wanting to check how old she was at any given point. But as I often say to mothers struggling with breastfeeding, “Watch your baby, not the clock.” Cooper focuses on his own feelings, without comparing his family and their decisions to those of others.

Crawling: A Father's First Year is attractive and well designed with short chapters. New parents will enjoy flipping through it during those late night feedings.

A Radical Ruling: Breastfeeding and Fasting on Yom Kippur

Our rabbi made an amazing statement this past Shabbat: Pregnant women and nursing mothers whose babies are solely dependent on their mothers' milk (including babies who take a small amount of solids, generally until 8 or 9 months) must not fast on Yom Kippur. Nursing mothers (and presumably pregnant women; I didn't hear that part of the speech), , should eat and drink in shiurim starting Yom Kippur morning, and not wait until they have symptoms or see signs of distress in the baby. He said that he based his opinion on a ruling by the Hazon Ish.

Click here to continue reading this post and get suggestions for fasting and breastfeeding.

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