What Children Need to Thrive

 Shifting From a Costly, Treatment-Based Model To a Cost-Effective, Prevention and Wellness Model*
A Proposal for Transforming the Health & Well-Being Of U.S. Children
* Research has shown over and over that resources used for prevention are cost-effective

A Proposal from Birthing The Future® a Colorado-based 501c3 nonprofit

PREFACE

By almost every measure, U.S. children are doing more poorly than are children in other industrialized countries. This has been true for every year since 2007. Statistics don’t reveal the full picture, but they do point to the problems:

• A major international study found that death rates for U.S. infants and 1-19-year olds are 1.78 and 1.8 times greater, respectively, than for infants and kids in European countries
  
• Obesity rates for 2-19 year-olds in the U.S. went from 5.2% in 1974 to 19.3% in 2017-18. And they continue to rise
  
• The 2024 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found that, despite advances, the U.S. “currently ranks at the bottom among wealthy nations on the mental well-being, physical health, and academic and social skills of children.”
  
• This same report stated that U.S. kids are 15x more likely to die from gun-related deaths than kids in other wealthy nations. Shooting is the leading cause of death for U.S. children and teens

• National Institutes of Health reported that depression among adolescents almost doubled between 2009 and 2019 [from 8.1% to 15.8%]

• Suicide is the now the 2nd leading cause of death for U.S. teens; and symptoms of depression for kids from 9th through 12th grades increased from 26% to almost 40% between 2007 and 2021
  

*****

Our 13 areas of focus are rooted in 6 core principles

1. Every child needs – and deserves – to be wanted and welcomed when coming into this world

2. Every woman, as well as every female who is not yet an adult, needs – and deserves – the right to decide whether or not she wants to bring a child into the world

3. Every female has access to contraception, including abortion, to prevent her from bringing a child into the world that she does not want or is not able to care for.

4. The time from the weeks prior to conception through the first year after birth lays the foundation for that child’s mental and physical health—and also for foundation for their health and wellbeing as an adult

5. It is in the best interest of every adult and community, and society as a whole, to help meet the needs of all children and their families

6. With evidence-based research proving the immediate and longterm harm caused by Adverse Childhood Experiences (known as ACEs), we are now better able to prevent, identify,  and remedy the traumatic effects of most early adverse experiences, and we’ve seen the development “trauma-informed” health care and education

******

A note from Suzanne Arms
Founder & Director of Birthing The Future® :
While this White Paper is designed to get the attention of local, state and national elected and appointed individuals, and organizations dealing with the welfare of children and families, who tend to think in terms of “problems” and “solutions”, it is our hope that individual citizens will find one or more concerns they are passionate about and could bring to the attention of organizations and elected/appointed officials. It is our hope that these individuals will become advocates for putting one or more principles into action.

*****

ADDRESSING 13 CRITICAL AREAS OF CONCERN

1. PREMATURITY AND LOW BIRTHWEIGHT: We need to prevent prematurity and low birthweight in babies, so that children are born ready for life outside the womb

PROBLEMS:
The U.S. medical model for prenatal care has failed to reduce either prematurity or low birthweight. If this model were a product in industry, it would have been abandoned long ago for failing to produce positive results.

Prematurity and low birthweight babies are not only very costly for the parents of those babies but also for employers of the parents
Parents of prematurely born babies often remain anxious and hyper-vigilant as their babies grow into toddlerhood, which creates additional problems for their child’s development and for the entire family system.

FACTS:

One out of every eight U.S. babies is born prematurely or of low birth weight. This is the highest number in the “developed” world.
Studies consistently show that this figure can be lowered to 3 of every 100 babies born—or fewer—when women receive effective prenatal care

 SOME SOLUTIONS:

• Fully utilize America’s well-trained mid-level practitioners: midwives, PAs and  nurse practitioners – and create a new field – neighborhood health educators. These educators would be women from the community who are chosen by the community to receive a year of free training and are paid for their services
  
• Focus resources on the total health of every mother-baby unit and family, rather than just  potential problems that might arise, as that is fear-based and does not promote well-being. This includes emotional and physical wellbeing, plus self-care and nutrition

• Implement relationship/connection-based maternity care and continuity of carers, which allows women and their caregivers get to know each other and pregnant women feel they can trust these caregivers and therefore share their true needs and desires. These relationships will facilitate women making truly informed decisions and reduce the likelihood of coercion from those who work in the system. This in itself will result in a reduction of preterm birth, less medical/surgical interventions, and reduce the kinds and severity of trauma that are so often experienced by women and their babies
  
  MODELS WE CAN IMPLEMENT:
• Exemplary prenatal care models focus on continuity, patient empowerment, and integrated support, such as CenteringPregnancy (group care for education/support), Midwifery-Led Care (strong woman-provider relationship), Team-Based Care (O-B/midwife/nutritionist/mental health).
  
• Group prenatal visits, where half a dozen pregnant clients meet together with their care provider for 60-90 minutes. These small group sessions foster relationships among the pregnant women and also provide practitioners greater insight into their clients’ emotional as well as physical state. In addition to preventing problems, these small group sessions help prevent the isolation and feeling of loneliness that are so prevalent today. Plus, these small group meetings with the care provider will better utilize the care providers’ time.

2.  TOXIC STRESS IN PROSPECTIVE PARENTS: We must lower the unnatural, toxic levels of stress and anxiety experienced by many – if not most – prospective U.S. parents.

PROBLEMS:
Toxic levels of stress and anxiety are bi-products of our modern disconnection from – and attempt to conquer – nature, including our bodies. It is also a direct result of our modern way of life, high-paced, and isolating for so many and particularly bad for pregnant women, couples, and babies in utero.

Most American pregnant women are fear-filled and anxious when entering labor. And it starts long before labor begins. It fills their minds during pregnancy, when they and their baby in the womb need to be feeling relaxed, enjoying pregnancy, connecting with each other, and looking forward to birth, life beyond the womb, and being a parent.

It is normal and natural for we humans to feel some apprehension and anxiety about an experience that we haven’t had before. However, traditional, and in most tribal cultures, this is minimized by a familiarity with birth. Most girls in these societies have heard mainly positive birth from the women in their lives, who have emphasized the innate ability of all women to give birth. And many of these girls have witnessed successful births.

Birth and death in earlier societies were viewed and treated as normal and natural parts of life. In contrast, in the U.S., both birth and death are kept at a distance. And girls and women learn about birth from hearing mostly frightening stories, which leads to a lack of trust in the process as well as themselves and their babies. This affects the course of their pregnancy and labor and the likelihood that their births will be full of medical interventions, including separation from their baby after birth.

The combination of lack of support, high stress, and the effects of traumatic births results in the chronic sense of loneliness and/or depression experienced by so many women in the months following birth. And the fact that childbirth is a traumatic experience for so many modern  women (as well as their babies) is definitely a contributing factor.

There is no adequate preparation for parenting and little or no help for parents from either their community or place of work. Yet parenting a baby or young child is a full-time occupation. Research has shown that children are more like to thrive when their care is provided by a minimum four adults, yet most children in the U.S. are fortunate if they have just one adult caring for them. And that person is usually functioning in high stress and unable to find pleasure and ease in parenting.

Violence against women, especially within the home, continues to be a major problem in the U.S. and it affects children dramatically. There is also a great deal of abuse and neglect of babies. This is especially true when a baby cries a great deal, especially is there’s an adult in the home who is not biologically connected to that baby and is left alone with that baby.

Many, if not most, children grow up with maternal (and paternal) deprivation and have attachment disorders that they carry into adulthood and affect all of their intimate relationships.

The U.S has no universal, guaranteed and paid maternity or paternity leave and is one of only a handful of countries are in this category (the others: Papua New Guinea, Suriname, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, and Tonga)

FACTS:
Nearly 50% of American women are prescribed antidepressant drugs after birth for “postpartum depression”. These drugs tend to cause the mother to have a “flat affect”, which often hinders strong maternal-infant attachment.

20% of all U.S. maternal death are suicides (that’s deaths in the 1st year after birth

A FEW SOLUTIONS

• Guarantee universal paid maternity and paternal leave, starting at the 6th month of pregnancy, to lower stress in parents, which is a major cause of both prematurity and low-birthweight
  
• Greatly increase the number of physiologically normal (i.e. natural) births and move the majority of births out of the hospital setting and into the community (in birth centers and at home).
  
• Provide guaranteed, universal, paid parental leave to parents following birth.
  
• Create relationship-based care for the entire childbearing experience, from pre-conception through the first year after birth. This in itself will reduce the prevalence of women fearing birth and not trusting themselves, their babies, and the natural process
  
• Provide incentives to employers and businesses to make “family-friendly” work places and encourage and incentive businesses allowing their workers to job share, work part time, or work from home
  
• Lower the work week from 40 hours (actually closer to 60 when travel time to and from work are included) to 30 hours a week, or less, which has been proven to be economically viable for business as well as supportive of family wellness
  
• Reward businesses and employers who offer allow parents to job-share, work part-time, or work at home part of the time
  
• Strengthen unions and remove obstacles for workers joining unions, as they are most effective in fighting for the rights of parents and families

• Create a national public health campaign to improve the American diet and encourage the eating of meals together, as a family or with neighbors
  
• Shorten the public school day, so that it begins at 9 (with activities and outdoor playtime before then), so that kids, especially adolescents, get more sleep
  
  Models we can adopt:

Bulgaria, Romania, Norway, and Sweden are among the top countries for long, well-paid maternity and parental leave. Bulgaria offers up to 410 days at 90% pay, while Romania provides up to two years of leave. Scandinavian countries like Norway and Sweden offer flexible, high-income replacement, often exceeding 480 days for parents to share. 

Top Countries for Job-Sharing and Parental Support: 

• Norway: Frequently ranked top for work-life balance, offering up to 49 weeks of leave at 100% pay, highly flexible for sharing between partners, supported by high-quality public childcare.
• Sweden: Known for a generous 480 days of paid leave per child, with 90 days specifically reserved for each parent to encourage sharing, and 80% pay, according Top Countries for Job-Sharing and Parental Support: 

• Norway: Frequently ranked top for work-life balance, offering up to 49 weeks of leave at 100% pay, highly flexible for sharing between partners, supported by high-quality public childcare.
• Sweden: Known for a generous 480 days of paid leave per child, with 90 days specifically reserved for each parent to encourage sharing, and 80% pay, according to Business Insider.
• Denmark: Offers 52 weeks of leave, with 32 weeks that can be split between parents, combined with, according to The CEO Magazine and Engage for Success, free or heavily subsidized childcare from 9 months.
• Iceland: Invests significantly (nearly 1.8% of GDP) in early childhood education, making it one of the most affordable and high-quality systems for working parents.
• Finland: Features strong support systems and a culture that values, according to Reddit,, parental presence in children’s lives.
• The Netherlands: Known for having one of the highest rates of part-time work and flexible, according to remote.com and shared arrangements.
• Canada: Offers flexible, long-term parental leave options (up to 18 months), allowing for, according to Safeguard Global, shared, paid, or unpaid time off.to Business Insider.

• Denmark: Offers 52 weeks of leave, with 32 weeks that can be split between parents, combined with, according to The CEO Magazine and Engage for Success, free or heavily subsidized childcare from 9 months.
• Iceland: Invests significantly (nearly 1.8% of GDP) in early childhood education, making it one of the most affordable and high-quality systems for working parents.
• Finland: Features strong support systems and a culture that values, according to Reddit,, parental presence in children’s lives.
• The Netherlands: Known for having one of the highest rates of part-time work and flexible, according to remote.com and shared arrangements.
• Canada: Offers flexible, long-term parental leave options (up to 18 months), allowing for, according to Safeguard Global, shared, paid, or unpaid time off.

Top Countries for Job-Sharing and Parental Support: 

• Norway: Frequently ranked top for work-life balance, offering up to 49 weeks of leave at 100% pay, highly flexible for sharing between partners, supported by high-quality public childcare.
• Sweden: Known for a generous 480 days of paid leave per child, with 90 days specifically reserved for each parent to encourage sharing, and 80% pay, according to Business Insider.
• Denmark: Offers 52 weeks of leave, with 32 weeks that can be split between parents, combined with, according to The CEO Magazine and Engage for Success, free or heavily subsidized childcare from 9 months.
• Iceland: Invests significantly (nearly 1.8% of GDP) in early childhood education, making it one of the most affordable and high-quality systems for working parents.
• Finland: Features strong support systems and a culture that values, according to Reddit,, parental presence in children’s lives.
• The Netherlands: Known for having one of the highest rates of part-time work and flexible, according to remote.com and shared arrangements.
• Canada: Offers flexible, long-term parental leave options (up to 18 months), allowing for, according to Safeguard Global, shared, paid, or unpaid time off.
  

3.   NORMAL (PHYSIOLOGICAL) PREGNANCY, BIRTH AND POSTPARTUM: We must focus attention and resources on promoting and supporting normal physiological pregnancy, birth and postpartum, including breastfeeding; and this requires preventing unnecessary interventions and protecting the critical mother-baby system and father-baby bond, which starts at conception.

PROBLEMS:

The predominant way of thinking about birth is that we can’t trust nature, and that includes women’s bodies and psyches, and their babies. Western medical model is one that primarily focuses on the expectation of problems in birth and relies upon many interventions, drugs and surgery, with the stated belief that “No birth can be said to be ‘normal’ except in retrospect”. Therefore all births must be treated as “a catastrophe waiting to happen”.

Birth for more than 98% of American women now take place in a hospital under the watch and care of strangers. The labor room looks nothing like their rooms at home. And the delivery room is filled with shiny metal furnishings and is actually a place meant for surgery, which tells the subconscious brain of birthing women that they should expect something bad to happen.

Depression and anxiety are prevalent among American new mothers and many who are pregnant. Many obstetricians prescribe antidepressant pharmaceutical drugs prophylacticly to women during pregnancy. 10-15% of American women have diagnosable depression/mood disorder during pregnancy or postpartum. Maternal depression and anxiety, directly affect the mother’s relationship to her baby, with longterm consequences for their relationship and the baby’s overall wellbeing.

Obstetricians are trained as specialists in dealing with problems in birth (in contrast to midwives, trained as specialists in protecting the normalcy of birth). Few obstetricians have ever sat with a woman throughout her labor or even seen a physiological “normal” (natural) birth. And, because they’ve dealt with serious complications, they carry their expectation that something will go wrong from one laboring woman to the next.

Nurses in the U.S all-too often have had physiologically unnatural births from which they carry unresolved trauma.Their own experiences, plus the complications and emergencies they’ve witnessed during labor and birth, often lead them to expect problems in every woman.

FACTS:

Birth is a sexual, psychological, and spiritual process as much as a physical one. Merely entering a hospital – a place of sickness and disease – tells a woman’s unconscious mind that her birth is likely to be problematic. 

Being hooked to an electronic fetal monitoring machine and having an IV placed in her arm further tells a woman’s unconscious that something might go wrong in her birth.

Most American physicians are themselves afraid of birth and uncomfortable with the idea the women know best what they need in birth. Why? With rare exceptions, physicians-in-training have no opportunity to mix with and learn from midwives and have never been present with a woman who is confident in her ability to birth naturally and sat with her throughout her labor. For this reason, as well as our love affair with machines and gadgets, most women in labor are continuously electronically “monitored”. 

Continuous electronic fetal monitoring (in which a problem is attached to the baby’s scalp in the birth canal, requiring ruptured the membranes) continue to be a routine practice in every U.S. hospital. This is despite the carefully done research that has proven that it may only benefit one baby in 1,000, while causing complications in for many mothers and their babies.

Labor and delivery nurses in the U.S. are now being placed in nursing stations to watch  tracings of electronic fetal monitors that most women have attached to them. As a result, more and more women are laboring without any significant hands-on support.

It’s labor and delivery nurses in the U.S. who provide more than 90% of the direct care of laboring women.

Many hospitals allow only one person of the woman’s choice to be present with her during labor and at birth. So most laboring women in the U.S. lack real physical and emotional support and this directly affects how they feel and behave in labor, and how little truly informed consent is given for the many interventions they are advised to accept.

Models the U.S. could adopt:

Excellent prenatal care models focus on continuity, patient empowerment, and integrated support, moving beyond traditional one-off visits to models like CenteringPregnancy (group care for education/support), Midwifery-Led Care (strong woman-provider relationship), Team-Based Care (O-B/midwife/nutritionist/mental health)The government of Australia (which has the same model for birth as the U.S.) launched a recent study that found 28% of mothers had trauma from birth. Although they did not study trauma in the baby, anecdotally it’s been reported that the trauma from birth in both mothers and babies is more like 60%. 

In Holland, the head of obstetrics at Amsterdam’s teaching hospital, who was formerly  the director of the midwife training school, instituted the practice of having medical students in their first year learn about birth from midwives. This gave medical students sense of respect for midwives and would put them in direct contact with the profession whose specialty is respecting the normal physiological processes of pregnancy and birth and preventing problems and complications.

FACT:
Physicians in training are deeply influenced by the people they train under, and years later many continue to practice the way they were taught during training.

For example: At one major medical school in Minnesota, during the 1950s, the head of obstetrics was a physician from Scotland who’d been trained to trust women and their bodies and to practice a model of birth that protected the normal physiological process. He had a positive influence on thousands of medical students and training physicians.

A FEW SOLUTIONS

• Launch an evidence-based public health campaign on the importance of normal physiological (i.e. “natural”) birth and what birth-related “trauma” is, its prevalence, and how it can be prevented

• Train all health professionals and educators in the importance of seeing their roles as caretakers of normal physiology in birth, not merely how to spot potential complications and deal with emergencies in birth.
  
•  All health professionals, including those focused on psychology, need to be trained about trauma how to identify it in their patients/clients, as well as how to assess which  mothers and babies are at high risk for trauma. And they need to be well-versed in the full range of local resources – direct and online – to which they can refer women and men
  
• Legislate that that the abuse of a child is a crime against humanity and create a nationwide public health campaign to show what comprise abuse and neglect; and offer free service and support to any who feels they might harm a child

4.  CHANGING OUR PARADIGM FOR BIRTH: We must replace the costly, risky – and proven ineffective – medical-hospital-pharma-surgical paradigm for childbirth and infant feeding with the evidence-based, cost-effective one that is rooted in biology

PROBLEMS:

Birth in the U.S. is an unregulated, profit-driven industry.

Its hallmarks are vast amounts of unnecessary and proven risky—and often ineffective—procedures, including the widespread use of pharmaceutical drugs, electronic fetal monitoring, episiotomies, vacuum extraction and cesarean surgery, followed by unnecessary and harmful separation of mother and baby after birth.

Physicians are paid much more for doing a Cesarean, which takes far less time than a spontaneous birth and both of those factors are incentives that drive physicians to perform so many unnecessary Cesareans.

FACTS:

Research has shown that only 10% of women and babies might benefit from their birth taking place in a hospital and under the care of an obstetrician. The rest, the vast majority of births, can safely occur out of the hospital, in a birth center or at home, attended by a trained midwife

 The U.S. cesarean rate has for years been 33%, when the World Health Organization recommends no more than a 10% figure. And that figure includes countries not having the wealth and resources that the U.S. has.

The U.S. has far more practicing obstetricians (46,500) and far fewer midwives (17,000) than it needs if we are to move away from a fear-based medical/hospital/intervention model/paradigm for birth

The Cesarean rate across the U.S. averages at 1 out of every 3 births (instead of the one out of every 10-15 births recommended by the WHO)

Fewer than 10% of birthing women who give birth in a U.S. hospital today have a spontaneous, unmedicated vaginal birth. As many as 65% of women have their labor attempted to be induced artificially. And “failed” induction of labor usually lead directly to Cesarean surgery

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists now recommends that women have their babies by the end of the 39th week of pregnancy, or be artificially induced. This flies directly in the face of nature and scientific evidence, who shows that a normal pregnancy can be anywhere from 37 to 42 weeks gestation. It ignores the fact that babies are intended to initiate labor.

NOTE:

Research from the renowned research center in Oxford, England found that, whenever a hospital builds or expands a newborn ICU, it quickly fills all the beds. Research has shown that the closer a birthing woman is to an ICU for babies, the more likely her baby will spend time in that nursery.

A FEW SOLUTIONS:

• Create relationship-based care for the entire childbearing experience, from pre-conception through the first year after birth. This in itself will reduce the prevalence of women fearing birth and not trusting themselves, their babies, and the natural process
  
• Train all women entering the maternity care system and all clinicians in the difference between informed decision making vs. coercion and to understand that ,once a woman decides to proceed with a pregnancy, she is the person most likely to be invested in the welfare of her baby
  
•  Relocate the majority [80-90%] of births—low risk births—out of the hospital and into the community, where, under the care of midwives they can safely take place in birth centers or at home, at far lower cost to society and wiser use of resources

• Shift from an obstetric to a midwife (i.e., biological, prevention-based) model, which would make appropriate use of hospitals, obstetricians, and intensive care baby units. This will result in a dramatic increase in healthy outcomes
  
• Dramatically decrease use of medications (all of which carry risks to the labor, and to the mother and baby) and and the use of electronic fetal monitoring, which has been proven not to save lives but to dramatically increase the rate of cesareans. Cesareans are—major abdominal surgery

• Turn all postpartum hospital units into mother-baby units, and have every baby kept with its mother for the duration of their hospital stay.
  
• Train and cross-train all neonatal, maternity and postpartum nurses in how to care for the mother-baby as one unit, since every mother-baby is one symbiotic biological system and separating them causes harm
  
• Lower the number of practicing obstetricians, who are trained as the specialists in treating complications and disease in birth, not preventing them

• Greatly increase the number of practicing midwives [midwives are the protectors of “normal/physiological” birth, and can safely provide complete care for 90% of all childbearing women]
  
  NOTE:
  Because of the amount of time required for midwives to spend with their patients, the U.S. needs approximately 100,000 trained midwives(nurse and non-nurse) to care for the approximately 3 million women who are pregnant each year. Midwives can be trained in their own communities if we make use of online programs
  
  With the help of PA’s and nurse practitioners, CNMs can safely and cost-effectively provide backup to direct entry midwives working in underserved rural communities and over-crowded inner cities

5. LISTENING TO OUR BODY AND TO BABIES: We need to teach children the importance of listening to their body, which is always trying to tell us what it needs, and what babies need and how they communicate their needs and desires – which start womb

Problems:

•  Many parents are ill-equipped with what that role entails, either because they were poorly parented or are under too much chronic stress – or both. And they are often too isolated and have no support, no community around them
  
• This means that schools and religious institutions need to pick up the ball and fill the void
  
• One critical lack is that parents today are often unable to tell what their baby is trying to communicate by crying.
  
• This lack of understanding of what babies are all about, combined with lack of direct support by other adults and the resulting lack of connection between adults and babies – especially new parents – often results in babies who cry a great deal. (Of course, that crying can also be a result of pain, such as a tummy ache or headache, perhaps resulting from a traumatic experience during pregnancy or birth).
  
• Unfortunately, babies who cry a lot are often viewed as being “difficult”; and the response of their parents and other caretakers is all too often to create more distance from those babies, which just creates a vicious cycle.
  
  NOTES:
  This is one of the unfortunate results of parents not being securely attached to their infants, which is often a result of them – especially mothers – having to work right up to birth, not having knowledge of the importance of communing with – and listening to – the baby growing in their womb, who is a sentient being and experiences everything their mother is experiencing. For example, some babies will turn themselves to breech position as a result of not feeling heard by their mother, as a way of getting her attention.
  
  Parents and other caretakers of infants can be taught how to recognize the difference between a baby’s crying that expresses a need vs a cry that is expressing feelings about a prior traumatic experience. Learning this requires spending a lot of time and energy with their baby, paying close attention and being in a receptive frame of mind.

FACTS:

Babies in the womb experience the full range of human emotions. They experience their mother’s emotions through the hormones released by her body that flow into the baby’s body via the umbilical cord. In addition, babies in the womb are living in a sea of her emotions, known as the amniotic fluid, and drink this fluid.

A FEW SOLUTIONS:

• Begin teaching children about the human body-mind, sexuality and reproduction in the first years of school. Focus on how amazing we humans are, how all of our parts harmoniously work together, and how we are a part of nature

• Encourage teachers to invite new breastfeeding mothers into their classroom to show what breastfeeding is and answer questions children have
  
• Encourage and promote school systems to create child care centers for babies on-site and having students spend time with babies

6. NON-VIOLENT COMMUNICATION AND RESPECT FOR SELF AND OTHERS: We need a public campaign and ages school curriculum that promote self-respect, kindness, nonviolent communication and cooperation to replace the still-prevalent beliefs and practices of aggression.

PROBLEMS:

All too often, parents and caretakers of children, as well as teachers and religious authorities, talk at children but don’t listen and pay full attention to babies,, toddlers and children of all ages.

Although it’s been proven that boys are innately more vulnerable, more prone to acting out with self-harm or aggression than are girls, Western societies – with few exceptions –  have been upon the belief that we humans are separate from the rest of nature and need to dominate nature. A corollary of this erroneous belief is the notion that parents and teachers need to “toughen up” boys in order for them to compete in a dog-eat-dog world where aggression is promoted.

NOTE: 

Every baby is born with the full range of emotions. However, boys are usually socialized, right from infancy, not to express sadness or fear. Over time, they shut down these emotions, and the emotions most men are most comfortable expressing are anger or aggression, and  stoicism being their typical response to pain or adversity.

FACTS:

Alexythimea – the inability to recognize or describe one’s own emotions – is a little discussed learned trait of many, if not most men in the U.S.

While most nonviolent societies have been wiped out by violent ones, there do remain a few countries (Bali, for example) and groups within some countries (such as a few African tribes and some Alaskan groups) where physical punishment of children, and shaming, is considered a taboo and where boys are praised each time they share a toy or food or comfort a child who is crying. Aggressive or violent behavior is not punished but extinguished by this focus on nonviolent and cooperative behavior.

NOTES:
Look at the language we use with regard to to nature and to disease: it’s all about waging war and conquering. Most mothers will tell you that their young boys are/were more sensitive and tender than their daughters. Yet these same mothers all too often shame their young sons if they cry, following the examples of the men in their lives, who often have shut down/disowned their own tender emotions and feelings of vulnerability.

SOME SOLUTIONS:

• Train incoming health practitioners – and retrain ones already in practice – in “non-violent communication” (NVC) and to understand how boys are not naturally alexythimic but learn this from adults.

•  End the practice of circumcising newborn baby boys, which is still done to more than half of all U.S. baby boys
  
• Making the abuse of any child a crime

In Sweden physical punishment of any child was outlawed decades ago and the incidence of it dropped dramatically. Usually a law is successful in changing behavior only after a practice has gained widespread disapproval. But sometimes a law shifts public behavior.

• Encourage religious circumcision that is normally performed by Jews as a   ritual of community on the 8th day of a boy’s life – called a “bris” – to be replaced by non violent form of celebration, called a “brit shalom”, where no cutting of the foreskin is done but at most a few drops of blood.

• Require that circumcision be done at least a week after birth, remove it from being covered by insurance and require that parents pay for out-of-pocket. This has proven to be successful in lowering the rate of circumcisions.

NOTES: 

Many parents-to-be and physicians hold the mistaken belief that circumcising a baby boy is necessary for that child’s health and wellbeing

Myths about circumcision include: the belief that it will prevent disease such as urinary tract infection and that it will prevent the foreskin from adhering to the penis as it grows and requiring surgery

AUTHOR’S NOTE: We go into greater detail about circumcision became this procedure is the first time in a male’s life when sexuality and sensuality are connected to pain.

MORE FACTS:

The foreskin is the most sensitive part of the male body. Furthermore the human foreskin has important and unique functions. It naturally retracts as the baby develops, without any intervention.

Newborn circumcision is the only example of a procedure done on a newborn that has been proven to have no medical benefit and carries the risk of trauma, deformity, lifelong sexual dysfunction and sometimes infection leading to death.

Around the world, today’s pediatric organizations uniformly recommend against infant circumcision, with the exception of the U.S. and South Korea.

Attempting to anesthetize the baby is ineffective, carries risk, and does not eliminate the trauma to the baby

When the foreskin of the penis has been removed there are longterm consequences for the boy and the adult male, as well as any partners he has sex with. The foreskin not only protects but self-lubricates, whereas a penis without a foreskin acts like a wick during intercourse, drawing moisture out of the partner’s body. Women who have experienced intercourse with both uncircumcised and circumcised men state that they experience more pleasure with an uncircumcised partner.

The reason our nation’s circumcision rate dropped from nearly 100% to what it is today is the result of a concerted grass roots consumer movement over many years to educate the public and medical professionals, especially pediatricians.

NOTE:

It had never been routine for African Americans to circumcise their boy children. However, in WWII there was a problem of sexually transmitted disease and blacks were targeted for being the problem, because they were intact. This began a racist campaign to get blacks to circumcise their babies and for adult Black men to undergo circumcision. 

• ONE POSITIVE MODEL:
  In Australia, in the early 1980s, the government issued a public health mandate that, because circumcision was proven to carry a serious risk of harm to the newborn, any parent who wished to have their boy circumcised should wait at least 7 days for their baby to recover from its birth and then be readmitted to the hospital for the procedure. The government also stopped paying for circumcisions. Australian parents would now need to pay out of pocket for this unnecessary and risky procedure.

7. BREASTFEEDING, DELAYED WEANING AND SKIN-TO-SKIN TIME WITH BABIES: We need a nationwide campaign to promote full  (i.e. exclusive) breastfeeding for the first 6 months of life, delayed weaning until at least age 2 and the vital importance of ample skin-to-skin time with a baby in the first months

PROBLEMS

Breastfeeding has been positioned as a “lifestyle choice.” This is a falsehood. Breastfeeding is actually an essential component of of birth.

The U.S. formula industry has successfully promoted bottle and artificial formula feeding as safer and more convenient than breastfeeding. That, combined with the face that breastfeeding is still viewed by many as something only lower class or uneducated women do, today it’s been found that fewer than 20% of U.S. babies are exclusively breastfed at 20 weeks of age.

There are few incentives for a woman to breastfeed and many disincentives, the foremost being the lack of guaranteed, universal, paid parental leave after birth.

FACTS
Breastfeeding or breast milk (when direct feeding from the breast is not possible) is actually an essential component of the birth process and has been proven to be critical in:

1)  releasing maternal and infant hormones of relaxation

2)  the prevention of child obesity (and obesity when entering kindergarten is the greatest predictor of adult obesity),
3)  the prevention of autoimmune diseases such as diabetes and lupus

4)  a fully formed immune system

5)  the creation of a proper gut microbiome and gut-brain connect,

6)  creating proper mouth/teeth/jaw alignment, 

7)  promoting self-soothing and optimal sleep patterns, and

8)  promoting the strongest maternal-infant attachment…and more

The recommended time that a baby needs to be in directly (skin-to-skin) contact with a parent is 3-6 hours a day for the first 3-6 months.

For a fully healthy brain-gut microbiome, immune system and gut-brain connection, every baby needs to have only breast milk for at least 6-9 months and not be weaned until at least 2 years of age. This is now the recommendation of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

NOTE:  The U.K. government a few years back sent a warning letter to all NICU  physicians, because formula can result in a deadly condition called necrotizing enterocolitis in prematurely born babies, it is a form of child abuse to feed them artificial infant formula, The warning stated that the  only appropriate form of nutrition for prematurely born and low-birthweight babies is breastmilk.

SOME SOLUTIONS

• To create a broad public health campaign, starting in preschool that promotes the normalcy of breastfeeding (e.g, encouraging teachers and school staff to bring their breastfeeding babies and toddlers to school, so that students can view breastfeeding as normal

•  To make illegal the common practices of formula companies giving free samples to mothers in hospital right after birth and sending them home with more free samples, and drug companies filling pediatrician’s offices with free samples

• To eliminate any participation of formula and pharmaceutical companies at the Centers for Disease Control and in the creation of public health policies and media campaigns related to child nutrition and breastfeeding

• For a few years, until the public has embraced breastfeeding as the healthy norm, to provide direct help as well as financial incentives to women who exclusively breastfeed for 6-9 months and for mothers and fathers to provide the necessary skin-to-skin time with their babies
  
• To provide incentives or tax breaks for women to choose to delay weaning until at least age two, which is considered optimum and which requires a public health campaign to get fathers and other caretakers to support full breastfeeding

8.  PREPARATION FOR PARENTING AND HEALTHY ATTACHMENT: We need to prepare prospective parents for parenthood and healthy attachment with their child and provide ample support for them.

PROBLEMS

America’s parents are less supported than ever. Family sizes have shrunk to where it’s often a single parent holding down several jobs, living alone, and far from their relatives, in a neighborhood where they are isolated

Young parents have internalized the American ideal of the solo hero, believing they can raise their child/ren without help, prioritizing having their own place to live but seldom realizing the importance of creating a support system for themselves and their child/ren 

Parents today get their information from the internet and authority figures such as doctors, and the information is often conflicting and inaccurate

FACT:

One popular parenting book strongly recommends letting babies and toddlers “cry it out”, including when they are put down for naps or bedtime. This same book promotes physical punishment, even for infants, as the way to create a cooperative child. Another recommends never leaving a baby or toddler to “cry it out”, but always showing compassion and providing comfort. The former follows a long tradition of childrearing based on control and domination, with obedience to authority being the highest value in childrearing. The latter, which is the one  that has support from science in terms of what promotes full development and wellbeing, values fostering a child’s sense of self and unique expression and creativity.

SOME SOLUTIONS

•  Create neighborhood health and wellness centers, where visiting nurses can do checkups on children and the public can hold meetings and classes
   
• Train a large number of health educators from local communities to work in these settings, to be a liaison between families and health and social service providers, and to do home visits

• Create and disseminate curricula offered free to gain the skills for  successfully navigating the challenges we face when we become pregnant, both as individuals and as couples
  
• Increase the numbers of trained people to provide in-home and by phone and internet support for at-risk pregnant women and new parents 

One Positive Model:

In Norway, one of the healthiest countries in the world, new parents have the choice of taking 49 weeks of parental leave at full pay or 61 weeks at 80% of their salary. Mothers and fathers can divide the time the way they wish. Pregnant women are required to take 3 weeks before birth and 6 weeks afterward, to rest and bond with their baby. There is a minimum paid leave for parents with low or no income.

Parents in Norway are entitled to take 10 days of sick leave per year to care for a sick child. Recognizing the additional stress that single parents are under, they are entitled to take 20 days of sick leave per year.

Parents in Norway who do not choose to put their toddler in publicly funded early childhood education can be eligible for a cash payout.

9.  BIOLOGY, SEX EDUCATION AND COLLABORATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING: We need to educate our nation’s children, starting in kindergarten, about self-care and the importance of taking responsibility for our bodies and minds (including sexuality and parenthood) and for collaborative decision-making and problem solving

PROBLEMS

American public education has been systematically defunded for more than 40 years.

The curricula in public schools is organized and focused upon children passing specific tests. Teachers have become less and less able to express their own ways of teaching and they are not rewarded for inspiration and creativity. Neither are their students.

American children are woefully ignorant about their body and how it functions and how to take of it, as well as its sexuality

Our nation’s children are also ignorant about how to problem solve and think critically, which is especially important now, in the age of “alternative facts”, cell phones and online platforms such as Tik Tok

A FEW SOLUTIONS

• Starting in kindergarten and continuing through every school year, to offer a choice of classes related to stress reduction and bodily strength and flexibility (such yoga, tai chi and mindfulness) and require that all children take at least one
  
• Offer incentives and rewards rather than punishments, for teachers’ and students’ failure to engage in these activities
  
• Disallow cell phones in all classrooms
  
• Create age- and culturally-appropriate curricula for how our body and brain develop and what we each need in order to develop fully and reach our full potential
  
• Create age- and culturally-appropriate curricula about the human body, how it works and how to care for our body and brain
  
• Create age- and culturally-appropriate curricula about human sexuality and safe sex practices (including masturbation as an alternative to intercourse)
  
• Create age- and culturally-appropriate curricula about what we all, as babies and in the womb, needed from our parents and caretakers, and what “good enough” parenting looks and feels like
  
• Create age- and culturally appropriate curricula for how to become media and internet savvy, so children learn how to distinguish between what is false and what is true

 10.  STORYTELLING AND LITERACY: We need a nationwide campaign to inspire adults to have regular story-telling time with children, starting in infancy; and – because the U.S. is a society where literacy is critical – we need a campaign to encourage parents to have books in their home, and to read aloud to their children daily, starting at birth; and to become literate themselves (if they are not). In modern cultures, there can be no democracy without literacy.

Problems:

Most U.S. homes have no books in them. Illiteracy is a disease of poverty and literacy is the way out of poverty. Children’s books are the currency of literacy. U.S. adults, overworked and overstressed, seldom tell stories to their children. Storytelling is an age old way of passing on culture from one generation to the next. Folk takes embody indigenous and tradition wisdom. We can begin to end illiteracy for free. There is no shortage of gently used children’s book. The shortage is in distribution.

FACTS:

2/3 of the 15.5 million kids living in poverty do not own one book.

Some solutions:

•  Community supported early literacy projects require no funding, just passionate volunteers and donations of books
  
• Books can be distributed through WIC, HeadStart and other already established national programs
  

• There is a ready market of volunteers in retired teachers and librarians
  
• Placing books in food banks, where parents can select books for their children, as they know what their kids’ interests are
  
• Neighborhood storytelling groups comprised of adults, teens and kids
  
• Telling kids stories works, even if the adult storytelling cannot read. They can use picture books and make up stories or tell stories from their own lives

Some Positive Models:

The Book Fairy Pantry Project

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, where children are signed up at birth, are sent a book every month, is worldwide The one weakness of this project is that a town or city must have a local co-sponsor, such as United Way, for kids to get enrolled where they live.

11.  NATURE DEPRIVATION AND ADDICTION TO ELECRONIC DEVICES: We need to end the modern diseases of “nature deprivation”, loneliness, and addiction to artificial devices among our nation’s children and bring the natural world back into everyone’s life – in the workplace, in schools, in hospitals, in places of worship – and, with that, a sense of being a part of the natural world.

THE PROBLEMS:

The youth and young adults of today have grown up in a world dominated by artificial and highly addictive products of technology: television, the internet, TikTok, etc. Many, if not most, were not breastfed at all and, because their mothers were pushed back into the work force as soon as 6 weeks after birth have some amount of attachment deprivation. 

A high percentage of our nation’s mothers – having experienced trauma in their hospital birth and being unable to breast or be with their baby much of ever day, because the U.S. has no guaranteed paid parental leave – are depressed and on pharmaceutical drugs. Our nation’s mothers are often over-stressed, under-supported and all-too-often raising their children alone.

Most of our nation’s children experienced a high degree of stress in the womb, had medical interventions during birth (such as  drugs and Cesarean), were separated from their mothers in the critical hour right after birth, slept apart from their parents, and have some form of insecure attachment. These kids are susceptible to what is to whatever is hyper-stimulating. They are also more depressed and lonely.

Most of the past two generations of kids were placed in early day care (as early as 6 weeks of age) by mothers, who had to return to work. There they were cared for by low-wage workers who were responsible for as many as 5 infants, and whose turnover rate was 300% a year! Is it any wonder that many, if not most of our two youngest generations of kids, choose to “connect” with others via technology rather than face-to-face interactions or to “connect” with artificial, aggression-promoting video and computer games!

FACTS:

Research has shown there is a strong cause-and-effect relationship between the number of hours per week a child spends in day care and their aggressiveness once they enter public school.

Research has shown that the pace and hyper-stimulation of modern life has resulted in myriad problems for children as well as adults 

Research has shown the critical important of children of all ages having time out of doors and in contact with the natural world.

Research has shown a direct correlation between how long a baby is breastfed, if at all, and whether that child starts school obese. Obesity is a huge health problem in the U.S. Obesity at the start of school has been found to be directly correlated to that child being obese as a teen and as an adult. When a child is breastfed it not only receives all of the nutrients required for optimal development. The longer the child is breastfed, the less chance that child will become obese.

Research has shown that many of our nation’s children suffer from attachment disorders and maternal deprivation and obesity, making them more likely to be bullied in school and less likely to have the inner resilience they need to deal with adversity.

The ACEs study (Adverse Childhood Experiences) has proven that the more adverse experiences a child has, the less likely they are to thrive. Higher ACE scores, indicating more adverse experiences, are associated with increased risks for chronic diseases, mental health conditions, substance abuse, and even premature death. These experiences can also disrupt brain development, affecting their ability to learn, and regulate their own emotions, and their social behavior. 

The ACEs research is already having profound impact on how we view, , including  care for, and educate children. It’s been a “sea change”, resulting in the creation of “trauma-informed” classrooms, medical clinics, and more.

SOME SOLUTIONS:

• Add to the curricula of all teacher education the understanding of ACEs and their impact on children, how to be “trauma-informed” with regard to the children they will be teaching.
  
• Create and offer incentives to promote the building of “adventure playgrounds” at public schools and in communities 

• Require all public schools to have ample daily, unstructured time outdoors for students of all ages
  
• Lower the work week to 30 hours, which has been proven to help businesses as well as families, and given parents more leisure time, lowered their level of stress with their kids and fostered well-being for families

12.  UNSTRUCTURED PLAY TIME OUT IN NATURE AND TIME FOR INFANTS TO “TUNE OUT” THE OUTSIDE WORLD: We need a public campaign to educate about the importance children of all ages – including toddlers – having regular unstructured play time every day and we need to educate parents-to-be about the importance of not over-stimulating their babies – allowing them to “tune out”, which is vital for full brain and emotional development

THE PROBLEMS:

Most U.S. children and youth suffer from severe nature deprivation. They spend most of their days in front of screen or on phones. This has contributed to the widespread depression and high suicide rates, as well as addictions. 

Many parents put their babies in front of the tv or computer screen, as a way of keeping them quiet. And many schools have limited the amount of recess time. Nature deprivation results in kids feeling isolated and lonely and unseen.

Parents today, so often overworked and exhausted when they are able to be with their babies, frequently overstimulate them. This is harmful to infant and toddler development and contributes to childhood (and adult) obesity.

While stimulation is essential for brain development, excessive sensory input leads to fussiness, crying, and withdrawal. Downtime, such as quiet, dimly lit, or uncrowded environments, helps them recover from overstimulation. Infants should not be worn face out on an adult’s body, like hood ornament on a car. This does not allow them to turn away from the sensory input of the outer world. It’s better for an infant to be worn facing the adult’s chest. In this way it can turn its head to take in the outer world and it’s stimulation when it wants that.

FACTS:

U.S. children are spending record-low amounts of time outdoors, with estimates of an average of only four to seven minutes of daily unstructured, nature-based play! This is in stark contrast to the over 7 hours of daily screen time for many children. A 2018 survey reported that children today spend 35% less time playing outside compared to their parents’ generation. 

Meta-analyses have shown increased residential green space is  significantly associated with reduced cardiovascular and all-cause mortality.

Positive Models:

Preschool-aged children in Sweden, spend approximately 1.5 hours outside daily in poor weather and up to 6 hours on nice days.

In Finland there are “forest schools”, where 3 days a week preschoolers spend 7 hours a day outdoors, often walking up to 40 minutes to get to a “base camp” and then eating lunch in an open shelter and taking a nap in a tent, before walking back to school.

In Norway, in forest schools, toddlers spend their entire day out of doors, regard of the weather. Outdoor time has been shown to improve the  immune systems of kids. The forest school model is gaining popularity around the world. SOME SOLUTIONS:

• Have a public media campaign to teach and inspire adults to give kids outdoor free play time and to allow babies “down time” from stimulation
  
• Mandate that public schools have kids at least 15 minutes every hour for free outdoor play time
  
• Educate pediatricians and other health professionals who work with babies and children about the importance of “down time” and outdoor time in nature and breaking off eye contact with their baby frequently to avoid overstimulated them
  13.  CHILDREN’S VOICES, IDEAS AND ROLES IN DAILY LIFE: We must listen to children’s voices – their concerns and ideas – taking them seriously, and giving them roles to play in daily life, not only within the family but also with regard to issues of the wider community – local, state and national.