Technologies of the Family

This article of NYTimes.com talks about many parents in U.S. like to spend significant sums on building playhouses for their children in nowadays troubled economy.  In fact, the playhouse makers report that they are as busy as ever and the playhouses they have built become larger in sizes and more expensive in costs.  Many parents who buy playhouses state that the goal of having playhouse is to inspire their children to play outside and promote their creativity.  According to those parents, the fun the children have in the playhouse is priceless.  However, child psychologists think that parents do not have to spend much money to encourage the kind of unstructured imaginative play.  On the other hand, the playhouses are often custom-built based on parents’ specifications.  For example, John Schiller and his wife spend $50,000 to build a customized playhouse which has the same Cape Cod style as the Schiller’s expansive main house for their 4 year-old daughter, Sinclair in Texas.  Interestingly, the playhouse builders think that the playhouse is not only a place for children to play, but also a decorative expansion of their parents’ houses.  Actually, a psychology professor at City University of NY, Steven Tuber thinks that those playhouses may meet the parent’s sense of impressiveness, but they are not relevant to the child’s need and desires for a play space.

I think this article is relevant because we discuss how the childrearing exports tell parents about creating an ideal playroom for their children in order to revitalize their home in our class.  Progressives think that the playroom benefits both the children and their parents.  It is a space that satisfies children’s developmental needs for self-directed play and also frees mothers from frequent disorder.  Furthermore, playroom authorities urge parents to furnish the playroom to suit children’s tastes.  Many designers think that decorating playrooms is the opposition of the room’s purpose.  They believe that an empty, unfurnished room will guide children in the direction of using their imagination.

http://sciencebasedparenting.com/2009/01/19/a-skeptical-look-at-lotus-birth/
When I was doing research on natural childbirth, I encountered a new fad, the Lotus Birth. Although it is still small, and practiced mostly in birthing centers and in at-home births, it confirms a few of Margaret K. Nelson’s points in her research article from this week’s reading.
Nelson asserts that middle class women are often advocates of more natural childbirth and that they educate themselves about birthing possibilities. What happens in a Lotus Birth is that, instead of having the umbilical cord cut and the placenta thrown away after birth, the midwife or doctor leaves them both attached and they are left to fall off naturally over the next few days.
The Lotus Birth is certainly appealing to middle class and upper class families, because as Margaret Nelson found, they are more likely to want natural births and will latch on to any practice that claims to give their babies even a small advantage in life. The research blog that I found on Lotus Birth states that it can help to transmit nutrients to the newborn for a longer period of time, but also that it is unnecessary to keep the placenta attached for that long. I find it interesting that this could actually catch on with upper and middle class classes, since the few pictures I’ve seen of a baby with an attached placenta are not appealing, but now that I read Nelson’s article, I do not find this surprising at all. When something is “new” and “natural,” with any supposed health benefits attached to it, there will certainly be people willing to try it, and the upper and middle classes will lead the way.