Почитала я эту статью Немного о релактации, гендерном равноправии… и судьбе беларусов » Наблюдения, Папа и ГВ » Кормим грудью!, некоторые утверждения показались мне особенно смелыми, если не сказать, ложными, в частности:

"Но вот, что мужчина может кормить грудью, я считала, что это не более чем миф, да и вообще зачем это мужчинам, в принципе? Но недавно на глаза попались неопровержимые доказательства – статья из журнала Guardian. В ней рассказывается о мужчинах племени Ака, которые живут в лесах центральной Африке (общая численность 20 тысяч человек). Они действительно дают возможность своим детям пососать свою грудь и тратят примерно 47% своего времени на воспитание и общение с детьми."

Я ничего не имею против сосания мужской груди, просто о кормлении в таком случае речь идти не может, мужчины используют грудь не более, чем пустышку (естественную и более полезную по сравнению с искусственными резиновыми и силиконовыми аналогами), для утешения.

Решила проверить, выделяется ли у них молоко, из статьи ниже, что я нашла, в инэте, про выделение молока из мужской груди ничего не говорится. Говорится, что они могут максимум два часа отвлечь младенца от тоски по маме, пока она не придёт и не покормит. Из этого, не стоило бы делать далеко идущих выводов о том, что "с козлов можно получать молоко".

Рекомендую статью, воспользуйтесь гуглтранслэйтом, если не владеете английским. Ниже, кстати, выделила два абзаца, первый очень важно знать любому мужчине, в частности моему. А второй касается некоторых других мужчин. Как пишется, одним из эффективных способов мотивировать мужчину остановить насилие в семье, это объяснить, как это отразится на ребёнке. Всё остальное работает хуже, как я поняла.

Синди, Копирайт 2011

-- UK evidence indicates that high levels of father involvement early on predict more examination passes for their children at age 16 and lower likelihood of a criminal record by age 21 as well as long-term mental health and marital satisfaction in later life.

-- Evidence from many countries indicates that fathers' motivation to end violence towards their children's mothers is substantially enhanced when the impact of domestic violence on their children is explained and explored.

Men have nipples to sooth crying baby until it can be fed
Men have nipples to sooth crying baby until it can be fedMain Category: Men's health
Article Date: 13 Jun 2005 - 10:00 PDT

A father's nipple is perfectly suited to soothing a crying baby until it can be fed, according to a major report published for Fathers' Day (June 19) on fatherhood across five continents, which identifies the world's best dads.

FatherWorld, published by Fathers Direct, the UK national information centre on fatherhood, details a worldwide increase in active fathering. It names as "Best Dads in the World" the Aka Pygmies, a hunter-gatherer tribe from northern Congo, in central Africa. When the mother is not available, the father calms his baby by giving him a nipple to suck.

Aka Pygmy men do more infant care-giving than fathers in any other known society, finds the report. On average, they hold or are within arms' reach of their infants 47 per cent of the time. They beat Swedish dads, the number ones in the Western world, who average 45 per cent of parental childcare. In typical British families, dads now average a third of the parental childcare, according to latest research from the Equal Opportunities Commission. Worldwide, fathers are estimated in today's report to contribute between a quarter and a third as much time as women to direct childcare. However, FatherWorld, springing from a week-long summit at Oxford University of the world's academic experts on fatherhood, reports that, of 156 cultures studied, only 20 per cent promote men's close relationships with infants, and only 5 per cent with young children.

Aka fathers often take the child along when they go drinking palm wine. They may hold the baby close to their bodies for a couple of hours at a time, says the report which highlights findings by Barry Hewlett, an American anthropologist, who has studied the tribe for more than 20 years. The dads, rather than mums, are often the ones who settle the babies if they wake at night.

Sebastian Kraemer, child psychiatrist at London's Whittington Hospital, said: "It is possible that, in prehistoric societies, this was a normal way of fathering. We should not assume from 10,000 years of history that our prevailing model is the right one."

Caroline Flint, former President of the Royal College of Midwives, said: "I have come across cases of dads doing this. It's not a case of the man saying to the baby, 'Here you are, have my boobie,' but usually of the baby snuffling along the father's chest, finding the nipple and sucking. The men are usually very surprised, but the babies seem content. They love to snuggle up to their dads."

Wayne Hemingway, designer and father of four, said: "I'm not sure I could be an Aka Pygmy dad. Placing nipper on the nipple could be a big challenge to the British male. Ray Mears should take a group of British dads and their babies out to the Congo for a couple of weeks to meet the Aka Pygmies and see what our dads can manage. But I am one dad who won't be trying it out."

Michael Lamb, professor of psychology at Cambridge University and the world's leading academic expert on fatherhood, said: "Internationally, over the past 20 years, we have seen fathers who live with their children spending more time with them and doing more diverse activities not just in Britain but in every known society. However, we are also seeing another trend - increasing numbers of children who are fatherless for much of the time because of factors such as migrant labour, fragile relationships and divorce."

Duncan Fisher, chief executive of Fathers Direct, said: "We are beginning to recognise that a revolution in paternal involvement with children is sweeping not just Britain but the world with huge potential benefits for families and for eradicating poverty and ill-health."

In FatherWorld, Dr Patrice Engle, who leads the UN's fatherhood programmes, describes how UNICEF has recently created new projects in dozens of countries to support fatherhood because of the latest evidence about its impact on child poverty, breastfeeding and education. Dr Engle said: "Perhaps the largest set of resources - money, time, food and caring - that could be directed to children are those controlled by men in families."

Interesting facts from FatherWorld

-- Countries all around the world are showing increased levels of actual engagement by fathers (ie time spent actually doing things with kids). For example, in the US, in the 1960s, fathers did about 25 per cent as much as mothers - by the late 1990s that had risen to between 55 and 70 per cent. In Canada, the increase between 1986 and 1996 was from 50 to 65 per cent. In the UK, according to EOC research, father engagement has risen by eight times in the last 30 years.

-- Studies of 156 cultures found that only 20 per cent promoted men's close relationships with infants, and only 5 per cent with young children.

-- Few countries have provision for leave or financial considerations for fathers on the birth of their children. In Egypt, women receive leave to care for their children. Men are entitled only to leave to care for their parents.

-- In Nicaragua and parts of the Caribbean, a father's loyalty is primarily to his own mother and only then to his wife and family.

-- Between 10 and 30 per cent of developing country households are officially defined as female -headed. In countries with the highest rates of men's migration and/or low marriage rates, such as the Caribbean, the proportion can range up to 50 per cent.

-- In the Latino gangs of Los Angeles, becoming a father is almost the only way to leave the gang alive.

-- UK evidence indicates that high levels of father involvement early on predict more examination passes for their children at age 16 and lower likelihood of a criminal record by age 21 as well as long-term mental health and marital satisfaction in later life.

-- Evidence from many countries indicates that fathers' motivation to end violence towards their children's mothers is substantially enhanced when the impact of domestic violence on their children is explained and explored.

-- FatherWorld is published by Fathers Direct, price �5.95. For copies call 0845 634 1328 or go to www.fathersdirect.com The report springs from a week-long conference at Oxford University of the world's experts on fatherhood from more than 20 nations. -- Fathers Direct, the UK national information centre on fatherhood, is a charity, working to support positive relationships between men and their children. www.fathersdirect.com Fathers Direct, Herald House, Lambs Passage, Bunhill Row, London EC1Y 8TQ.

Contact: Jack O'Sullivan, 01608 737125/ 07779 655585 or j.osullivan@fathersdirect.com

http://www.fathersdirect.com
А вот, ещё одна статья, на закуску. Are the men of the African Aka tribe the best fathers in the world? | Society | The GuardianAre the men of the African Aka tribe the best fathers in the world?

While the women hunt, the men look after the babies - even letting them suck their nipples. Joanna Moorhead asks anthropologist Barry Hewlett why the Aka are such unusual parents

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The Guardian, Wednesday 15 June 2005
Article history

It's a question that has united Aristotle, Darwin and my three-year-old in puzzlement: what exactly are male nipples for ? This week, the charity Fathers Direct came up with an answer, courtesy of some research it unearthed about a nomadic tribe of African hunter-gatherers. The answer, it seems, is the one my three-year-old (and Darwin, to be fair) suspected all along: male nipples are there as a stand-in for when mum isn't around and there's a squawking bambino in dire need of something to suck.

And, when you think about it, why ever not? Surely a male nipple, deficient though it is in terms of sustenance, gives a more pleasant sucking sensation than, say, a dummy.

That's certainly how it seemed to Professor Barry Hewlett, an American anthropologist who was the first person to spot male breastfeeding among the Aka Pygmy people of central Africa (total population around 20,000) after he decided to live alongside them in order to study their way of life more closely. By the time he noticed that babies were sometimes being suckled by their fathers, it wasn't as stunning a revelation, however, as it might have been had he spotted it going on in the breastfeeding room at Mothercare in Manchester.

Because by then Hewlett had realised that, when it comes to gender egalitarian parenting, the Aka - who call themselves the people of the forest - beat anyone else he'd ever studied hands down. According to the data he began collecting more than two decades ago, Aka fathers are within reach of their infants 47% of the time - that's apparently more than fathers in any other cultural group on the planet, which is why Fathers Direct has decided to dub the Aka "the best dads in the world".

What's fascinating about the Aka is that male and female roles are virtually interchangeable. While the women hunt, the men mind the children; while the men cook, the women decide where to set up the next camp. And vice versa: and it's in this vice versa, says Hewlett, that the really important message lies. "There is a sexual division of labour in the Aka community - women, for example, are the primary caregivers," he says. "But, and this is crucial, there's a level of flexibility that's virtually unknown in our society. Aka fathers will slip into roles usually occupied by mothers without a second thought and without, more importantly, any loss of status - there's no stigma involved in the different jobs."

One especially riveting facet of Aka life is that women are not only just as likely as their men to hunt, but are even sometimes more proficient as hunters. Hitherto, it has usually been assumed that, because of women's role as gestators and carers of the young, hunting was historically a universally male preserve: but in one study Hewlett found a woman who hunted through the eighth month of her pregnancy and was back at work with her nets and her spears just a month after giving birth. Other mothers went hunting with their newborns strapped to their sides, despite the fact that their prey, the duiker (a type of antelope), can be a dangerous beast.

If it all sounds like a feminist paradise there is, alas, a sting in the tale: Hewlett found that, while tasks and decision-making were largely shared activities, there is an Aka glass ceiling. Top jobs in the tribe invariably go to men: the kombeti (leader), the tuma (elephant hunter) and the nganga (top healer) in the community he has studied are all male. But that doesn't detract, he says, from their important contribution as co-carers in the parenting sphere: and nor, either, does it reduce the impact of the message he believes the Aka people have for western couples struggling to find a balance between the demands of employment, home-making, self- fulfilment and raising kids.

"The point about the Aka," says Hewlett, "is that the active role the fathers have is simply one facet of their entire approach to life, and it's that approach as much as anything that we can learn from. One thing that's crucial in the raising of the young is the importance placed on physical closeness: at around three months, a baby is in almost constant physical contact with either one of her parents or with another person. There's no such thing as a cot in an Aka camp because it's unheard of for a couple to ever leave their baby lying unattended - babies are held all the time." Aka fathers, apparently, aren't averse even to heading down to their equivalent of the pub with a child attached to their chest (or even their nipple); the Aka tipple, palm wine, is often enjoyed by a group of men with their infants in their arms.

It's all a far cry from the west and, says Hewlett, the first thing fathers here could think about is the lack of time and physical contact they often have with their young kids. "There's a big sense in our society that dads can't always be around and that you have to give up a lot of time with your child but that you can put that right by having quality time with them instead," he says. "But after living with the Aka, I've begun to doubt the wisdom of that line. It seems to me that what fathers need is a lot more time with their children, and they need to hold them close a lot more than they do at the moment. There are lots of positive contributions fathers can make to bringing up their children, but we shouldn't underestimate the importance of touch and cuddles."

This is one of the most important lessons the Aka brought to Hewlett's own experience of parenting, he says: he's a father of seven kids, aged between 13 and 22, and he has moulded his life and career so he's been able to be around a lot as they were growing up. He says that his studies of the Aka have also made him a more trusting and sharing father (two qualities the Aka have in abundance, apparently).

Another lesson the Aka have for us - and this is for all of us, mothers as well as fathers - is about how precious children are, and how lucky we are to have them in our lives. If it sounds a bit schmaltzy well, that's exactly why we need to hear it: the fact is, says Hewlett, that we've strayed into believing that our kids are a burden rather than a blessing and that's something the Aka never do. "To the Aka, your children are the very value of your life. The idea of a child as a burden would be incomprehensible there ... children are the energy, the life force of the community." A saying from another tribe he's studied, the Fulani, sums the sentiment up: they say that you're lucky if you've got someone who will shit on you.

But back to that male breastfeeding: Jack O'Sullivan of Fathers Direct says he was invited on chat show after chat show on Monday in the wake of the report going public, and faced a mixture of horror, consternation and support. "Some fathers phoned in to say they'd let their child suck their nipples - often it had just happened when the baby was lying on their chest in bed," he says. But some people were disgusted: the words "child abuse" came up more than once, which points up interesting cultural differences when you think that, to Aka folk, much of the way we raise our kids would count as child abuse to them (babies being left to sleep alone in a different room from their parents, for example).

For O'Sullivan, what is sad is that the negativity to the Aka revelation points up the continuing awkwardness around intimacy between fathers and their infants: while mother-child intimacy is very public, and celebrated, father-child intimacy is still shied away from and worried over, despite an increasing body of evidence showing that, given the chance, fathers can be every bit as respondent to their infants as mothers in terms of reading their signals and communicating with them. In a nutshell, says O'Sullivan, men are scared of intimacy with babies and small children - and it could be that looking anew at that fear, with reference to the Aka experience, could be a useful and liberating male experience.

· Barry Hewlett is co-author of Hunter-gatherer Childhoods (Aldine Transaction).

было бы смешно, если бы не так грустно

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