“On the basis of years of research, I am totally convinced that the first priority with respect to helping each child to reach his maximum level of competence is to do the best possible job in structuring his experience and opportunities during the first years of life.”
—-Dr. Burton White, director of the Parent Education Center, Newton, MA; 1975.
“But let us think, for a moment, of the many peoples of the world who live at different cultural levels from our own. In the matter of child rearing, almost all of these seem to be more enlightened than ourselves—with all our Western ultramodern ideals…Mother and child are one. Except where civilization has broken down this custom, no mother ever trusts her child to someone else.”
—-Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind, 1967.
“The breast was intended to bind the baby and his mother for the first year or two of life. If we read the biological program correctly, the period of breastfeeding insured continuity of mothering as part of the program for the formation of human bonds…A baby who is stored like a package with neighbors and relatives while his mother works may come to know as many indifferent caretakers as a baby in the lowest-grade institution and, at the age of one or two years, can resemble in all significant ways the emotionally deprived babies of such an institution.”
—-Selma Fraiberg, professor of Child Psychoanalysis at the University of Michigan Medical Center, Every Child’s Birthright, 1977.
Note: Fraiberg credits lactation as part of nature’s way to keep mother and baby together. Many parents place their children in Montessori preschool and regular school. How many of these parents listen to Montessori when she emphasizes that babies should receive only breast milk for the first 6 months of life and that mothers should nurse for 1.5 to 3 years because “prolonged lactation requires the mother to remain with her child”?
Sheila Kippley
Breastfeeding and Catholic Motherhood
The Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding
The Crucial First Three Years