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Child Rearing
Choices Birthing Feeding Diapering Sewing Car Seats
Childcare & Schooling Outdoors Certifications
1. Choices: Ideally, the co-op will attract a diversity of people with varying values. It may be a challenge to accommodate differences in parenting ideals, which vary widely and are highly emotionally-charged. Balance between communal decisions and personal family decisions will be the key.
2. Birthing: Birth options include birthing at home in individual living spaces, using some part of the health building as a birth center if a midwife is available to the community, or using the nearest hospital in town. Various people will have different needs based on their level of comfort, their health, and the complications of their pregnancy. Every mother and family should feel comfortable to choose whatever kind of birth they are most comfortable with, whether at home, birth-center, or hospital birth. Planned, unattended births (with no licensed midwife or doctor present) can be a disaster waiting to happen, although there are many mothers, especially those who have already birthed multiple children, who advocate for it very strongly. The community would have to decide whether it would be okay to allow unattended births. The Coalition for Improving Maternity Services has a “Mother-Friendly Childbirth Initiative” that sums up the best attitudes toward mother-care that I’ve seen.
3. Feeding:
A. Breastfeeding: Breastfeeding is best for the health of mom and baby, and mothers should be encouraged to breastfeed for at least one year and exclusively for at least 6 months. It would be important to have a certified lactation consultant living in the village. Visits to a lactation consultant out in town would be uncomfortable for a new family and probably more cost-prohibitive than certifying a member. Breastfeeding, of course, will save the community money - about $1,300 per infant per year. This figure is for the first year of life, after which milk/formula becomes less and less a part of the child’s diet. See http://www.kellymom.com/bf/start/prepare/bfcostbenefits.html#table1
B. Supplementing Breastfeeding: There is a small minority of women who cannot produce enough milk, so supplementation either with other women’s expressed breastmilk or with formula would be options.
C. Solid Foods: Solid foods could be processed in the cluster dining halls, or individually by families.
4. Diapering: Members/residents with infants should be strongly encouraged and enthusiastically supported to use cloth diapers. They are not the same frumpy mess with pins that they used to be. Today’s cloth diapers can be put on and taken off in one piece with velcro just like a disposable (or snaps), come in a variety of colors and prints, and would be a better choice for the whole community in terms of economy, environmental concerns, and the health of the baby.
A. Washing of diapers can be done either by the family in their cluster’s washing facilities (this is perfectly sanitary, as long as the water outflow from the facility doesn’t feed edible plants or into a gray water system) or diapers can be collected every few days from each home’s diaper pails and washed diaper-service-style in a laundry facility that has the sewage-treatment capability. If diapers are to be collected together and washed, there should be a way to identify one child’s diapers from another’s.
B. Each family may want to use a different system, and it’s entirely possible given the variety of options -- so there would have to be some way to keep each family’s diaper separate. Another option is having everyone use the same kind of diapers, but having each family’s diapers sewn with a different color or pattern. The sewing shop in one of the workshops could easily be used to sew the village’s diapers. I sew diapers for my son, and could bring my patterns and machines. A diaper-sewing business could be another good source of income for the village, especially if there is a whole team of people sewing diapers.
5. Sewing: Other items to be sewn by the community include slings of all styles, baby clothes, blankets, bedding, etc.
6. Car Seats: Local car seat safety technicians can be found at this link: http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/childps/contacts/ Whatever person or group is maintaining the cars and checking them out to residents (once the community has pared down the number of owned cars) should also have this certification and be able to assign the correct seat for each child’s age and weight. Alternatively, parents could each have their own seat stored in the auto garage which would be installed as needed. One car should always be available and equipped with a car seat for any age infant and toddler (maybe one rear-facing and one front-facing) in case of emergency.
7. Childcare and schooling:
A. Maternity Leave: This is an important issue, because mothers will have had obligations to the community (such as being the electrical engineer or grocery purchaser). The community would have to decide on how much maternity leave to allow for, and I suggest it should be generous. The six weeks traditionally assigned in the market economy is a joke. A bare minimum of two weeks before the due date and 3 months after would provide families with a better quality of life. Some countries provide 2 years. Maybe the WHO has guidelines on this?
B. 3 Months to 4 Years: Childcare for infants and toddlers (as defined on the website: Under 4) should not be limited to simply “babysitting,” but should include space for parents and families to play together and with other families rather than just dropping kids off. Also in those facilities there should be comfortable space for mothers to come breastfeed their children while they are taking a break from their jobs.
C. 4 Years and Up: Parents may have wildly different values as relates to this, and the village would be prepared to support both traditional schooling (in a style such as Waldorf or Montessori) in the central classroom and home schooling. Older students may apprentice with the trades-folk of the village or in town, or dual-enroll at the local junior college or university.
8. Outdoors: Playgrounds, trees, footpaths, swings, and tree-houses come to mind. Also, fences around the whole complex or just the kids’ areas. A very beautiful common building would instill a sense of community, nostalgia, and aesthetics for small people to identify with their home “town.”
9. Certifications and Endorsements: To focus and communicate our intentions, it would be nice to be aligned with other folks who have children’s needs in mind, and perhaps to link to their websites or endorse their ideals, and in turn be linked and endorsed by them. Building on the work of like-minded organizations eliminates the need for us to start from scratch. Two that I can think of right now are the children’s entertainer Raffi Cavoukian’s “A Covenant for Honoring Children” (http://www.raffinews.com/?q=node/17) and The Child-Friendly Initiative’s mission (http://www.childfriendly.org/who/vision.html). The CFI has a program for starting a local chapter, and this could be an option for the village, too. Also, the above mentioned Coalition for Improving Maternity Services’ “Mother-Friendly Childbirth Initiative.”
Written by: Jennifer Chendea