Holidays on holy days
I have another opinion piece in the Dom Post today, ‘though this time, it’s not on-line. I’ve scanned a copy: click on the thumbnail to see a largish and legible-ish version of it, and then click again to increase the size so that you can read it.
The argument is quite straightforward: in order to accommodate the increasing diversity in our society, instead of having public holidays on Christian festivals, but not on other faiths’ holy days, we should change the law to allow each person to choose two ‘public’ holidays for her or himself. This would enable Christians to celebrate Christmas and Easter, and Muslims to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, and Hindus to celebrate Diwali, and so on.
And there’s a fairly standard argument raised in response by those who would like everything to just stay the same and suit them so that they don’t have to make any changes whatsoever: all those people from other ethnicities who came here knew what the rules were before they arrived, so they can just lump it.
In the column, I point out that these days, many people of other faith traditions, meaning non-Christian traditions, were born here, and in any case, many have become citizens, so they are entitled to the same rights as other citizens.
But evidently that argument was too subtle for one of my in-laws, who quizzed me tonight about the column, and raised the standard argument, even though I had addressed it already. I quietly seethed, but simply argued the point back, and suggested that given that we live in a diverse society, and that diversity is increasing, then as a matter of practical living, we simply must find ways of rubbing along together. She desisted, thank goodness.
Because otherwise, I would have had to point out that if immigrants were to simply take on board the rules that were in existence when they arrived, then we would all be celebrating Matariki. And I don’t imagine that she would have liked that at all.
I came across one interesting snippet when I was writing the column. Our Holidays Act says that the purpose of the Act is:
to promote balance between work and other aspects of employees’ lives and, to that end, to provide employees with minimum entitlements to—
(a) annual holidays to provide the opportunity for rest and recreation:(b) public holidays for the observance of days of national, religious, or cultural significance:
(c) sick leave to assist employees who are unable to attend work because they are sick or injured, or because someone who depends on the employee for care is sick or injured:
(d) bereavement leave to assist employees who are unable to attend work because they have suffered a bereavement.
Source – Holidays Act 2003, section 3 – Purpose
The emphasis is mine.
I don’t think the Act is fulfilling its purpose. It gives employees entitlements to holidays for Christian religious purposes, but no holidays are allowed for any other faith’s religious purposes. Either the Act needs to be changed, or some consideration needs to be given to marking religious festivals in faiths other than the Christian faith.
As usual, I ended the column with a slightly quirky descriptive line about myself.
Deborah … would like to take a day’s leave each year to celebrate Darwin’s birthday.
The powers of rice
You may recall that a few months ago I dropped my mobile phone in a thermal pool in Taupo. I dried various drying techniques, but alas, it was thoroughly fried. Even the much-vaunted rice technique didn’t work. Perhaps it was the combination of the length of time it was in the pool (about 30 minutes), and the chemicals in the water
But this time around, the rich technique did work. Yes, I dropped my phone again, this time in the gutter outside our house. I had it turned off and pulled apart and dried within minutes, and into a jar of rice. I left it there for about 40 hours, and then very nervously dusted it off and turned in on. It worked!
Perhaps it would have been fine anyway. Even so, should you drop your phone in water, I recommend the rice technique.
Defending the kyriarchy
In 2010, Kelly Vincent, who uses a wheelchair, was elected to the South Australian parliament. Renovations had to be carried out to enable her to access the chamber, and they were underway the moment her election to the House was confirmed. There were no questions raised whatsoever about finding the money to ensure that Vincent was able to do her job as a Member of the Legislative Council.
In 2011, Mojo Mathers, who is profoundly deaf, was elected to the New Zealand parliament. In order to participate in the debates in the House, a critical part of any MP’s job, she will need an electronic note-taker. And the Speaker of the House, Lockwood Smith, has refused to fund it.
Green MP Mathers made history when she became New Zealand’s first profoundly deaf MP in November.
She will give her maiden speech in the House tomorrow, which will be translated by sign-language interpreters.
But Dr Smith has told the Green Party that Parliamentary Services will not pay for the staff member to do the note-taking which Mathers needs to take part in debates. Prime Minister John Key this afternoon said the Government would ”have a look” at providing extra funding for the technology, if it was approached by Dr Smith.
Lockwood Smith is a member of the ruling National Party. As Speaker of the House, he is supposed to be impartial. However, in this instance, he has used his powers to ensure that a member of an opposition party has been silenced. Mojo Mathers has already been prevented from speaking in Parliament because the technology wasn’t in place.
It’s not as though Smith couldn’t have forseen this eventuality. He had a clear indication on the day of the election, back on 26 November, that it was likely that Mojo Mathers would be elected, and her election was confirmed on 10 December 2011, when the official results were released. So he has had over two months to sort the matter out. But he just didn’t get around to it. Now his excuse is that the Parliamentary Services Commission doesn’t have the funding appropriation to pay for electronic note-taking. But as Idiot/Savant says, the appropriation for translation services is available, through the appropriation of the Office of the Clerk (source – pdf). Amongst other things, the Office of the Clerk is funded to:
[provide] to the House of Representatives of professional advice and services designed to assist the House in the fulfilment of its constitutional functions, and enabling participation in, and understanding of, parliamentary proceedings.
Translation services for MPs who speak in Maori are funded from the vote, and it would be entirely appropriate to fund electronic note-taking for MPs with hearing impairments from it too.
I suspect that what’s really worrying Smith is that if he has to find money for electronic note-taking from this service, he will also have to make cuts elsewhere, and that might affect his own National party MPs. The National party is having a great time making huge cuts across the public sector, but funnily enough, when it comes to tightening the belt themselves, they don’t seem to be quite so keen.
I am starting to see in Smith a resolute defender of the patriarchy. In his first term as speaker, he was lauded for imposing more discipline on Question Time (one, two) and he himself took pride in restoring some of the daily ceremonial to parliament (source). But recall the way that he wouldn’t let Hone Harawira offer a statement in Maori before taking the oath. It has become the accepted practice for MPs who oppose some or all of the words in the oath to make a short statement first, and then to take the oath to fulfill the form required by our law (source). But Smith refused to allow that practice to continue when it came to a radical Maori man taking the oath. And now he won’t allow a woman with a disability to participate in Parliament.
It’s all about sticking with the way we do things around here, that is, the way that suits men with white skins and able bodies. Heaven forbid that we should try to do something different, try to find a new way of organising our government that celebrates diversity instead of privileging those who are already powerful.
The one bright note in all of this? Comments on the Stuff website about the story are running hot and fast. In just six hours over 550 comments have been made, the great majority of them in support of Ms Mathers.
Some more thoughts on the Weepu bottle feeding stoush
Like Annanonymous, the latest breast vs bottle dust-up has touched a raw nerve for me, no doubt due to my own experiences with breast feeding. But also because I find the number of shoulds and shouldn’ts that are dished out endlessly to parents deeply wearying. All too often the edicts seem to be handed out with little thought as to how parents might achieve them, or what constraints there might be, or what other issues a parent may be facing.
I’ve found some of the language used disturbing. This sentence from Dita di Boni’s column in the Herald is a case in point.
[La Leche League / midwives / etc] can suggest, coerce and press the issue, but it is a mother’s choice in the end whether or not to take the advice proffered.
Well, that’s… revealing. “Coerce.” That has been exactly the problem for many mothers who have tried breastfeeding, but experienced tremendous difficulties, for whatever reason. There is an enormous amount of pressure on women to breastfeed their babies. And it is facile to say that women can just choose whether or not to take the advice. When that pressure to breastfeed is applied by an expert, it is very hard to resist it. All the more so in those early weeks and months with a new baby, especially a first baby. So many new parents know so very little about how to care for babies, so they are very dependent on midwives and health nurses and and La Leche League experts. To suggest that a new mother who is struggling with pain, and cracked nipples, and ever-feeding infants, has the emotional resources to withstand the pressure applied by those she is depending on is bizarre.
di Boni goes on to say that, “It is up to women to have confidence in their choices.”
And there it is again. Holding individual women responsible for the failings of a society that promotes breastfeeding, but doesn’t provide the resources to enable women to access help with it, and then berating them for lacking confidence if they try to withstand the pressure put on them by those who are experts. Experts in breastfeeding, that is, but not necessarily at all knowledgeable about the particular contexts within which individual women are living and rearing children.
On the other hand, I am baffled by the idea that being pro-breastfeeding is equivalent to being anti-fathers and fathers being involved in their children’s lives, and that bottle feeding is great because then men can be involved in caring for their children. That’s the view espoused by fathers’ rights activist Darrell Carlin.
But there are myriad ways for parents of any gender to care for their children: talking, playing, reading books, cuddling, settling to sleep, dressing, changing nappies, taking to doctors’ appointments, toting them around the house in a sling while you get the housework done, going for walks, singing. And that’s all just in the first few weeks, and just the things that you can do with the baby (c/f say, earning an income to support the baby, or doing housework while the baby is asleep). There is precisely one task that the great majority of fathers can’t do: breastfeeding. And really, if they really, really, really do want to do it, then they could always try a Lact-Aid.
The remainder of Carlin’s column is taken up with wailing about how the nasty feminists have taken over the world and men are oppressed. And put upon. And really, women should be fighting for men’s rights because after all, men gave women the vote. Also, the nasty feminists again. Whatever.
And the last thing that has surprised me: La Leche League’s complete inability to use social media. LLL has tried to say that all it did was ask the Health Council to remove a few seconds from an anti-smoking/pro-smokefree public service ad showing Piri Weepu feeding his baby. In doing this, the only thing they were trying to achieve was to ensure that one public service message – smoke-free – wasnt’ contradicting another – pro-breastfeeding.
But actually, that’s not all they did. As it turns out, what they also did was alert their membership to the issue.
The irony is the damage to the league was done by its own hand. When the Health Sponsorship Council asked their opinion on the Weepu advertisement, La Leche supporters responded intemperately by launching a mass email campaign. The language in the emails was, by the admission of one supporter, “passionate”.
“Passionate” was one word that was used to describe the e-mails. I also heard, “virulently intemperate”. I haven’t seen any of the e-mails, but I’m guessing that they were not polite. And that’s what created the story. Not the request made by LLL, but the allegedly vicious language used in the e-mails sent by supporters. I’m guessing that if LLL had simply given some advice on the ad, without initiating the e-mail campaign, then the story would never have hit the headlines in the first place.
Oh goody! Another breast vs bottle stoush.
Piri Weepu, All Black and devoted father, filmed an ad promoting non-smoking. As part of that ad, there was a few seconds of him feeding his younger daughter, using a bottle. Before the ad was finalised, the makers consulted the La Leche League and the New Zealand College of Midwives, who asked for the clip to be excluded from the final version of the ad, because it sent the wrong message.
The “wrong message” being the bit about bottle feeding babies, instead of breastfeeding.
Right…. let’s just overlook the minor detail that the great majority of men are unable to breastfeed at all, so if Piri Weepu is going to feed his baby girl, then he must use a bottle. We’ll also need to overlook the idea that our feeble lady branes are so feeble that the mere sight of a man using a bottle to feed his baby will result in mass abandonment of breastfeeding. To be fair, Piri Weepu is an All Black, which for non-NZ readers, means that he is a Hero, and to be even more fair, he is even more respected than many All Blacks, because not only is he a great rugby player, but he seems to be an admirable person off the field too (c/f say, what’s his name who spent large parts of last year getting drunk and falling over). Even so, is it really the case that a few seconds of a man bottle feeding his baby in a public service ad about the benefits of non-smoking is going to change someone’s decisions about breastfeeding?
I find the whole breast vs bottle discussion enormously difficult. I breastfed one baby for just under a year, and then after about ten days or so, bottle fed my twins. It has taken me years to shake off the guilt I felt about not being able to breastfeed my younger babies.
And that’s where the La Leche League and the NZ College of Midwives get it wrong. There are enormous structural failings in our society that make it difficult to breastfeed, and for many women, there are physiological problems that make it difficult to breastfeed, yet women who are unable to do so are made to feel that they are inadequate at best, and at worst, people who are deliberately setting out to do something terrible to their children by feeding them with formula.
Things that militate against breastfeeding in our society? How about the underfunding of maternity hospitals and wards which leads to new mothers being kicked out just three or four days after birth, whether or not breastfeeding has been successfully established. If a woman wants to leave within hours or days of birth, then of course she should, but just because some women can do so doesn’t mean that all women should. What about the fact that many women go home to with a new baby to a house full of other children who need to be cared for, but with little home help? Our social structures used to be such that a sister, an aunty, a cousin, a grandmother, could come and stay for weeks to enable the new mother and her baby time to recover from birth and establish breastfeeding before having to take on the full load of running a household, but it is a rare woman these days who can call on such help. Ignoring the changes in our social structures means that individual women are made to carry the blame for not being able to devote all their time and attention to their new baby.
As for the physiological problems… these are unavoidable, and perhaps can be mitigated in some cases, if a woman is given sufficient support. I was not, despite asking for it, and despite having my babies in what was allegedly a baby-friendly hospital. Because I have had some benign breast lumps removed, I have only one breast that can produce milk. It turns out that perhaps the other breast could have produced milk, if I had been given advice and support about tandem feeding right from day one. But that advice and support was not forthcoming, even though I had explicitly asked to talk to a lactation consultant both before, and immediately after the birth. There was no support to help me to overcome the particular physiological difficulty I faced. And some women simply don’t produce enough milk to feed their babies. Or they could, if all they had to do was lie on a couch all day, but the great majority of women in our society don’t have that option. Dairy farmers are fully cognisant of the fact that some cows produce more milk than other cows, even when they are in exactly the same paddocks and being fed exactly the same food. Cows differ from each other in their capacity to produce milk, and so do women. That’s why some women simply must supplement their breastmilk with formula. Otherwise, in the absence of donated breastmilk, their babies will starve. Some women have tremendous difficulties with latching their baby on, and with pain, and with cracked nipples. These are not trivial problems, but they are brushed aside as though they do not matter by many of the pro-at-any-costs breastfeeding promoters.
There are some medical benefits to breastfeeding, but in a developed Western nation with an excellent water supply, they are not large. Meta-analyses of the advantages of breastfeeding show that that there is some reduction in diarrhea, and some inconsistent evidence about other factors which may or may not be associated with breastfeeding (source). All other things being equal, breastfeeding is better for your baby. Even just most other things being equal, breastfeeding is better for your baby. But formula is not poison, and a baby in New Zealand who is fed with formula will do just fine.
Let me be clear. I am in favour of breastfeeding, and all going well, I would have liked to have been able to breastfeed all my babies. Not just “liked”. I desperately wanted to breastfeed all my babies, and I was shocked and distressed by my inability to breastfeed my twins. I was even more distressed because of the huge load of guilt that was heaped on me for bottle feeding.
The answer is not to stop promoting breastfeeding. It is to get serious about offering support for it, instead of just guilting individual women out for being unable to breastfeed. And it is to normalise breastfeeding, to make it part of everyday life. When Facebook can ban pictures of breastfeeding, but ignore pleas for it to remove pro-rape pages and groups, we know which activity is acceptable.
As for Piri Weepu and the La Leche League… I find it bizarre that a small section of the ad showing him caring tenderly for his infant daughter has been removed. Annanonymous puts it well:
Talk about looking at the hole instead of the doughnut. Here was Weepu – national icon and male role model – proudly taking part in childcare, and lending his voice on a key health issue affecting kids. La Leche shot him down for taking part in the feeding of his own baby – a baby who, at six months old, can now be bottle-fed even by World Health Organisation guidelines.
Take at look at some gratuitous Piri Weepu photos, and especially this one, taken at training just before the big quarter final match in the Rugby World Cup.
I also recommend Spilt Milk’s excellent post about breastfeeding: Breastfeeding support: less is not more, which takes a different view of the support offered by the La Leche League.
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