Mother-Baby Relationship: A basic life-style and Life-line: Universal Form of Child Rearing beyond Cultural Difference ?

Mothers and Babies:

The Basic Interpersonal Body-Mind Complex��

-Body Educational: Geo-educational and Geo-habitual Livelihood Dynamics-

Shin’ichi Suzuki, Professor Emeritus,

Waseda University, Tokyo

Introduction

I have been warning people since 1980s of the silent catastrophe of human beings in sight. That is the child-negligence in a huge scale and size. The international organs like UNESCO and UNICEF have also rung a series of alarms.

Regarding present educational sciences, I think I may observe a dominant paradigm which serves the more to the states but the least to the rising generations. Sometimes I dared to define such educational sciences as the state-dominant� educational dogmata (Suzuki, 2004a, 2004b, 2002).

When there emerged so-called new education movements from the later period of the 19^th century to the early 20^th and where they became prevalent, children were the key factor towards establishing new society. The philosophical stand points of the new education movements were such as following: (1) children should be liberated from the old regimes of learning as schooling and (2) the new society should be built by new children, by which not only children but the adults can be secured to be genuinely human beings. One point of features of such movements was to set children’s bodies free from the various constraints upon them put by the adults; parents, school teachers, church priests, ordinary population in the regions and even some medical doctors. It was in this sense a strong drive towards human liberation. That was one of the very reasons why the movements were oppressed strictly not only under the political regimes of conservative doctrines but under the totalitarianism which often chose the political strategies of national mobilization. Such refrained phrases as ‘vom Kinde aus’ or ‘the Century of the Child’ echoed through the last century but in vein. ���

As to body the Freudian school found a hidden drive of a personality and indicated the possible fallacy of the Cartesian dualism of mind and body. Despite such influential and generative insights into human consciousness and behaviors, and despite the endeavors of philosophers, artists, architects, musicians, teachers and psychological scientists who accepted the Freudian understanding of human beings, human beings were conceived for long time in the west as ‘individual’ nods separated from each other and taken as objects (subjects) to be trained by the states. Burkitt wrote:“…..with the consolidation of rationalism and classicism as official ideologies of Western societies, the experience of the ambiguous and open body is lost, and in its place there emerges the closed body of modernity, where the emphasis is placed on the body’s surface rather than its openings to the world. This is the communicative body, a signifying surface that expresses but at the same time conceals part of itself behind its armouring. Such a body emerges in the division between self and Other which begins to grow more marked with the increasing reliance of the state on normative controls. These are applied to the bodies of the individuals in state institutions such as prison and school, but they also come into play in the every day interactions between people who watch each other’s behavior and apply moral norms to others and to themselves.”(Burkitt, 1999, pp.65-66.). The individuals cannot escape from becoming both the watchers and the watched. They survey others as well as their own selves.

�The civilization, which has been based upon such a perspective as is composed of net-relationships between the nod-individuals and their contracted interrelatedness, has distorted the comprehensive and whole livelihood of people into a collective of fragmented experiences that may reciprocally accelerate fragmenting children’s experiences and atomizing their personalities (personae). Beyond the fur reaching envelop of modern alienation observed crossing-boarders in Europe, varieties of networks of politically, economically and culturally fragmented human-beings emerged and protruded, taking the shapes of super-network of human beings weighed down with self-reliance, from the capsule of highly marketized globalization. From the view points of human bodies, such situations around human beings can be more and more threatening circumstances for the coming new generations: babies, children and youngsters.� �

�Defining culture as a fundamental way of living, the situations of multi-cultures are in a sense nothing but the hotbeds of social conflicts, if they live in the networks of bodies of modernity in the Burkitt’s sense. People in the global market system have to live as elaborated commodities in the daily processes of livelihood. They may ware some kinds of personae as commoditized human goods (teachers, merchants, politicians, bankers and so forth). Nowadays they are often called social capitals. Theirs however are not always such personae as indicate spiritual, moral, human and existential causes towards positive and generative life. Rising ratio of grand scale migrations among nations and economic-industrial conglomerates like EU, NAFTA, SAFSA, ASEAN etc may indicate heightened fragility of cultural identities of persons. This is another crisis for the coming generations to overcome.

Beneath the large scale negligence of children worldwide lies crises of civilizations of human societies. How to cope with this issue ? What kinds of relations can be found between the expected solutions and children or child-rearing?

My tentative answers are as following:

(1) In order to innovate the dominant paradigms in educational discourses, it is imperative to replace the basic framework of collecting first data for educational reasoning:

(2) In order to innovate the dominant paradigm in political discourses, it is presumptive to introduce alternatives to the notion of nation-state and to guide political reasoning:

���� (3) In order to bridge the two innovated discourses in education and politics, it is heuristic to re-think of the Ur-images of human bodies which were conceived of in respective cultures of human kind.

In essence, I would talk on three types of artifacts of human bodies: body politic, body economic and body educational.

Section One: Mother-Baby Human Complex: starting points

���� I should recognize that there are some common features of baby-rearing crossing different cultures of different populations. Indeed, child-rearing may differ from person to person, from culture to culture and from generation to generation. What is almost common, I assume, is the breast feeding of babies. So that I may find possible solutions to the issues, I review first the symbolic representations made by babies and then secondly I propose to introduce an idea of mother-baby bodily complex, a person to person unity, which I hope is both the theoretical assumption and the practical prescription not only for education but for politics and economics. ��

Sub-section 1-1: Breast-Feeding

���� There are two standpoints of breast-feeding. One is positive and affirmative to breast-feeding and another negative and skeptical. Most of pediatricians support it and assert its significance to personal growth of babies. Professor Dr Noboru Kobayashi, President of the Academic Association of Child Studies, a Japanese pediatrician, has summed up how new born babies grow and develop physiologically, psychologically, socially and culturally. He tells as follows (Kobayashi, 1981, 2003):

A Cries

(1) a newborn’s first cries: child’s first attempts to state his/her position in life;

(2) baby’s various cries: the first cry, the happy cry, the discomfort cry, all reflect baby’s wide range of emotions; communications through cries;

(3) intensity and frequency of crying: ethnically different and the future of a human displays itself in a newborn’s cry. �

B Smiles

(4) babies’ smiles: with highly advanced emotional functions; a social smile responding to stimuli; a meaningful behavior from the socio-biological perspectives;

(5) eye-to-eye contacts and a baby’s smiles: visual stimuli are important to the baby’s smile and laughing;

(6) genetic mechanism to smile and to laugh: through long evolution neurological function like spirit and emotion has been developed.

C Sleep

(7) children’s sleep: growth in sleep;

(8) babies’ sleep: three kinds, REM sleep, Non-REM sleep and the third pattern which is understood as the remains of sleeping pattern of embryos (due to immature cerebrum)

(9) newborns’ sleeping rhythm: irregular but roughly REM 50% of a day, Non-REM 40%; later non-REM sleeping becomes dominant;

(10) fetuses’ sleep: not clear but supposed;

(11) a big life mechanism behind sleeps: peaceful sleep of a baby is an expression of healthy biorhythm, showing the baby is completely satisfied.

D Finger-Sucking

(12) a three- to six-week-old baby starts to suck or to look at his/her hands: feeling something by his/her mouth; learning something through senses of taste and touch; fingertips are important to learn about senses of touch and further details of movements;

(13) finger-sucking of a baby: a behavior which is physiological and innate;

(14) finger-mouth connections: developing the remaining functions of babies’ brains as much as possible through combining presence of mouths and available functions of brains;

(15) finger-sucking and social relatedness: (a) a baby with less cries tends to longer finger-sucking, and a baby with much cries tends to less finger-sucking, and (b) a baby with much cries tends to move actively( extrovert), asking for much while a baby with less cries tends to move less (introvert),not asking for much; hence (c) presumably, a baby may be looking at the situations in the world quietly while sucking his/her fingers;

(16) grown up children and finger-sucking: frustration; adverse effects upon permanent tooth; irregular teeth.

E The Baby as The Thinker ��

(17) There are no ways for the babies other than crying and laughing to express themselves. Their ways are limited. However, what they think seems to be refined not in the sense of instinctive responses but in the sense of happiness, wonder and curiosity. Beyond the instinctive recognitions of sensuous stimuli that are related with one’s survival such as hunger, pain and heat, the refined ideas of babies are more advanced emotions expressed in the setting of body-environments co-relatedness.

Sub-section 1-2 : Intelligence and Five Senses or What baby’s ‘hands’ and baby’s

��‘voices’ may tell

In my understandings, Professor Kobayashi takes first the whole of complexes consisting of two bodies -mother’s body and the newborn’s -as a living dynamic, which is the very basic structure of all human relationships. And then he positively supports breast-feeding as the basic human functional relationship between an older generation and a new one, both of which are living organs as human bodies which are biological, physiological, psychological, cultural, social and historical. It is quite clear that this complex obviously consists of two separate bodies but it is also self evident that such a physical composition of two bodies is at the same time what we call social and cultural complexes. If so, the mother-baby-complex is the fundamental unit of all human and personal relationships regardless the differences of ethnicity, geographical locations, history, culture of human species.� ���

���� Then, how is it possible for anyone to describe and explain the details of historical differentiation of human faculties into knowledge, learning, culture and institutions? My tentative answer to this question is the Entfremdung or Alienation of experiences which can be defined as “body-field-gestalt”—mother-baby-complex.

What Professor Kobayashi describes about newborn babies’ reciprocal reflective relationships between their physiological- psychological processes within their biological bodies and psychological- social processes outside their physical bodies could be postulated into several phrases as follows:

�(1) cries and utterance of voices : media of communication,

�(2) babies’ finger-palm-hand- movements typified by ‘grappling’: self-observation

��� or letting-self-be-objective (mich-Objektivierung)�� �

�(3) mouth-finger-sensory-motor activities: differentiation of mentality in closer

��� relations with brain function development �

�(4) babies as thinkers: higher potential for learning and mental development.

From the view-points of educational anthropology (which should be not only �descriptive but also culturally interpretative), such phrases as above could be re-interpreted more heuristically.

a) cries (sounds from a baby’ s self; outcome from baby’s movement) come to hearing (acoustic sensory organs of the baby: hearing): coordination between physical movement and sensory activity

b) finger-sucking (sensory organs on fingers, lips or mouth and sensory organs of tastes) goes with a whole of finger-hand movements (sensory-motor schema of finger control): coordination between sensory activity and physical movement ��

c) smiles (complex muscle movements on face) are projected to and observed by the mother (sight-sensitive and emotional-reactive response from a matured body) and baby’s smiles work together with smiles of mother by way of baby’s watching (sight sensory organs of the baby and spontaneous projection of emotions of him/her from within) on mother’s face=eyes (emotional projection of mother’s self: countenance as expression): coordination between ‘baby’s sensory activities + physical movements’ and ‘mother’s sensory activities + physical behaviors’ ��

In a word, all of these behaviors of newborn babies are in the wider sense the reciprocal coordination between the sensory schemata of a body and the kinetic schemata of the body. Anatomically the dual systems of extra-pyramidal neuronal networks and pyramidal one should dynamically correspond each other as subsystems of the whole of neurons and kinetic motor systems. Brain of him/her, even when it still developing, works here decisively. It is important and crucial for any babies to have social surroundings which can be represented first by the care-takers, mostly by their mothers. Because such primary surroundings are the vary basic conditions in and upon which all the processes of coding and decoding of abstract signs and languages can be motivated, internalized, cultivated and developed with images and symbols which are to be based on and in the body-environment-construction, a direct psycho-physical gestalt on the field: namely, interpersonal (baby-mother) body-mind complex.�� �

���� Coming back to breast-feeding, it is clear for anyone to observe and to know that Baby-Mother Complex represented by the breast-feeding is composed not only of �bio-physiological processes but of anthropological-social-cultural dynamics. Without relying on abstract signs and forms but with various bodily nurturing pragmatics all mothers and all babies normally communicate through such complexes even though it will not easily yield itself to any clear recognition or description. Still less to fuller classifications, explanations and predictive prescriptions. In another word, it is not easy for anyone to analyze and to generalize the processes of such complexes in the words of given theories. However, the baby-mother-complex as such is the core structure of human cultural experiences. Dr Saijo, a young scholar from Waseda University, describes that complex as Mother-Baby-Nestling (Saijo, 2004).� ������

���� In the indigenous Japanese language, they have such words as ‘mi’, ‘miwake’, ‘miru’, ‘wakeru’ and ‘miwakeru’. Paraphrasing them, here comes an interesting insight into the basic relationship between bodies and mental activites.

���� Mi: body

Miru: see, observe, look at, watch

���� Miwake: distinction

���� Miwakeru: verb form of Miwake; distinguish

���� Wakeru: divide

Hence, combining two words of Mi and Wakeru, Miwakeru can be analytically interpreted as ‘dividing body’ = ‘distingusih’: to know / tell A from B. This may mean that in the Japanese indigenous epistemological and ontological discussion on experiences, ‘Mi’ (body) and ‘Mi-ru’ (observe) were not first separated as was the case with Cartesian philosophy: separation between the observers and the observed. But historically they invented their own methods of classifications relying on their own reflections upon experiences and they were dependent on body-complexes. The division between body and mind was not imperatively postulated as the criterion. The projection of bodily experiences into symbols or signs or words was required of course. They, I assume, more and more deduced something from their own bodily based experiences and turned what were deduced into new signs or new words relying heavily on pragmatic reflections upon bodies-fields-complexes in which they lived. After borrowing the Chinese characters and learning Chinese classics (Confucius and others) and Buddhist doctrines, more of the indigenous Japanese words were expressed with ideographic Chinese characters. Despite the facts as above mentioned, it may be� suggestive to all those, who are critical of dominant paradigms in educational discourses, to reflect on the Japanese language schemes (langue and parole) which were once deeply rooted in the bodies-fields-complexes in the respective periods in history.�

Body-Field-Gestalt worked consciously or unconsciously as the basic construct of human intelligence. So far as it may work so in the future, the Mother-Baby-Complex or the Mother-Baby Nestling is still of consequence.

Section Two: Categories of First Data for Educational Reasoning

���� Mother-baby-nestling suggests that the first data for educational studies or reasoning should be looked for and classified correctly reflecting the basic dynamics of child-rearing by mothers (or care takers). I have already hypothetically introduced (i) basic genres and (2) basic relationships for collecting and classifying the data for educational reasoning and educational sciences (Suzuki, 2004) They are as follows:

������ The Basic Genres

�������� ���I� Children grow or develop.

������� ���II� Adults help children to grow or to develop.

������ ���III� Adults grow or develop with children

������ ���IV� Children grow or develop with children

������� ���V� Adults grow or develop with adults

������ The Basic Relationships among beings

�������� ��A� mono to mono (material being versus material being)

�������� ��B� mono to hito� (material being versus human being)

�������� ��C� hito to hito�� (human being versus human being)

����� �The Corollaries from the Basic Relations

�������� ��D� mono to ikimono (material being versus living being)

�������� ��E� ikimono to ikimono (living being versus living being)

�������� ��F� ikimono to hito�� (living being versus human being)

���� How is it possible for anyone to use these criteria and classificatory categories in making discourses on education? �It may deserve for the present writer to apply these frame-works to the descriptions about breast-feeding or the Mother-Baby-Nestling.

Illustration 1: baby’s cries

Three kinds of criesthe first cry:

1) breathing� functional� Genre I & II� Relations B & C

2) the discomfort cry:� needs� functional� Genre I & II� Relations B & C

3) the happy cry:� satisfaction� functional� Genre I & II� Relations B & C

Illustration 2: breast-feeding

Various processes between mother and baby

1) pregnancy (conception): functional� Genre I & II� Relations B & C� Corol. D & F

2) child birth (delivery) : functional� Genre I & II� Relations� C� Corol. D

3) nursing (breast feeding, sucking): functional� Genre II� Relations B & C� Corol. F

Illustration 3: hand movement

1)      purpose-full movement:� functional� Genre I�� Relations B & C� Corol. F

2)      purpose-less movement:� a-functional� Genre I & II� Relations B & C� Corol. F

Illustration 4: utterance

1)      purpose-full utterance: cries

2)      purpose-less utterance: babbling� a-functional� Genre I�� Relations C

Illustration 5: smile

1)      physical non-intentional smile: reaction functional� Genre I� Relation� A

2)      intentional smile: reactive� functional� Genre I & II� Relations B & C� Corol. F

Nowadays child birth and child rearing are highly institutionalized as a pattern of human civilization. It may require, therefore, to elaborate the categories into more operational settings of terms, indices and criteria. The proposed framework for collecting first data of educational research and discourse formation in its scientific enquiries, I hope, could be proliferated into an heuristic matrix of sub-disciplines on condition that more information and knowledge could be borrowed from biology, bio-chemistry, bio-physics, molecular biology, genetics, developmental science, life sciences, medical and pediatric sciences, psychology, cognitive science, brain and information sciences, robotics and artificial intelligence, cybernetics and so on.

Concluding: Towards A New Paradigm

���� As is mentioned in the introduction to this paper, more children are left aside under bitter negligence by the grown-ups. Regarding to EFA (Education for All), for illustration, Dr Torres (Torres, Rosa Maria, 1994, 2002 ) once justly criticized the attitudes of the governments, which represent their nation-states, of their sometimes retreating �stances on implementation of action plans internationally flagged. The member States themselves formally signed the UNESCO or UN documents but their governments changed with ease and so often. As the result, the real development of policies have often been geared off. Jomitien expected the full implementation of policies proposed within a decade but Dakar found it necessary to have another decade in implementing ground policies and achieving desired targets.

���� It is high time for all of us to introduce new units, which can actively perform relevant roles, for collaborative joint actions towards betterment of children’s circumstances. What I intend to introduce as a new unit for international collaboration is the Body Educational. It is at present an imaginary compound of existing social entities such as family, group, community, society, company, union, NGO, NPO and local government. The Body Educational consists of such structural components as follows:

(a) geo-body: topi or places where population dwell and live

(b) population: people living individually and collectively on a given geo-body

(c) habits: ways of living shared by population

(d) interest: series of habits-situations

(e) livelihood: bound of interests

(f) polity: purposeful ordering of livelihood

(g) economy: resources supplying to livelihood

(h) education: basic processes of development of individual and collective population

Collecting ( c) and (d) factors under the notion of livelihood, the present writer may suggest to build the whole conception of Body Educational as indicated below.

It may happen to observe the polity given in the Body Educational is the local government at a given geo-body, a topos where people live. At the same time it may not. There can be a complex of A consisting of livelihood A, economy A and polity A, and so on. Probably there can be n Complexes consisting of ‘ n series of livelihood, economy and polity’ within a space of a given geo-body. It is necessary to invent a new consultation system within multiple complexes. There can be variety of grass-roots regional movements and they may have their own decision-making schemes within the movements. Such movement and schemes can be the leading and heuristic models for building a consultative system.

���� According to the definition of livelihood, it is a historical compound consisting of routine ways of living, traditional cultures, traditional religions, traditional value systems, and enriched ethos of community. All of these can be transmitted to the younger generation within population through learning / education. By that way every livelihood should be preserved and renewed continuously. By the same token, economy and polity within a geo-body-population-complex can be persistent in keeping once established habits- behavior-code, and esteemed functional criteria. At the same time they can be inn- or renovated by education. When thinking of and defining education, it is essential to recognize the fact that the Mother-Baby-Complex / Nestling is the very basic physio-psychological gestalt at a field (home for example, but topos, a space in the geo-body) from which almost all of institutional and strategic insights could be derived.

Notes

Burkitt, Ian, 1999; Bodies of Though, Embodiment, Identity & Modernity, SAGE Publications, London, pp.1-163.

Kobayashi, Noboru, 1981, 2003; Children are our future: the Human Science of Mother and Child, Retrieved January 9, 2004, from the World Wide Web, http://www.crn.or.jp/LIBRARY/KOBY/MIRAI/cbs0111.html

Saijo, Takeo, 2004, Boshi-kan no Daki no Ninngen-Kagakuteki Kenkyu (Human Science Analyses of Mather-Baby-Nestling), Kita Oji Shobo, Kyoto, pp.1-145.

Suzuki, Shin’ichi, 2002, Kokka-gaku-teki Kyoikugaku karano Koiku-Kenkyu to Kyoiku no Kaiho (Beyond the state dominant paradigm of educational research: liberation of education from nation-state monopoly), Kyoikugaku Kenkyu (Studies in Education), Japan Association of Educational Studies, vol. 69, no. 1, March 2002, pp.40-42.

Suzuki, Shin’ichi, 2004a, An Issue on World Peace: from legal provision to education?—visible laws and invisible laws toward New Geo-Bodies and Bodies Educational (2), in World Peace Education, vol. 30, no.1, Feb. 2004, pp. 67-75.

2004b, Body Educational no hoe (Towards Bodies Educational), Tanaka Satosi ed Kyoiku no Kyoiku-Tai e (Towards Symbiotic Educational Communities), Tohindo Publisher, Tokyo, pp. 179-252.

Torres, Rosa Maria 1994, Literacy for All: Twelve Paths to Move Ahead, in Convergence, vol. XXVII, no.4, pp. 50-73.

2000, One decade of Education for All: The challenge ahead, IIEP, UNESCO, Buenos Aires

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