KirstyAnne Prescott
April 22nd(Due date March 26th)
ANT 1001 TV24A Gaunt
Accounting Major(second yr.)
Mother's Love: Death without Weeping
Nancy Schepher's piece Mother's Love is a mind blogging piece that has me questioning my judgment of love everyday. Schepher is an anthropologist who from time to time studies the relationships between mothers and their new born babies in a poverty-stricken area called Bom Jesus da Mata in Brazil. In this society it seems that survival of the fitness is the overall theme. Babies who are ill or have a slim chance of surviving are left to die. "That is harsh and inhumane", one of my friends told to me after i shared this story with her. But is it really? In my own grinding these mothers are "loving" they babies in their own way.
It is generally society's doctrine that your parents do what is best, and in these circumstances these mothers have provided as much as they could. This village has no beneficial resources or even proper health services,neither do they have our society's precious health coverage plan. These mothers do their best everyday and have realized that this is no world for the weak! These mothers rather give their little "angels" back to heaven than let them suffer a dreadful life full of pain and sickness.
Sometimes we often point fingers at other who we think are strange and many of us may consider the neglect of these children as Taboo, but do we ever fry fish the same exact way? So why do these mothers have to conform to our society's notion of love? Not because they don't mourn the way we do does not make them less human. This is a subculture in the many cultures that make up Brazil, and this practice of putting more focus on healthy babies than weaker ones have existed for centuries.
In a sense i think if these mothers were to go against their teaching and cry and mourn for days, they would be looked down upon. They are just trying to cope in their environment and do the best they can with the labor-intensive under-paid jobs that they have. They are not complaining. Why should we? We can never cast judgment on anyone, unless we are in their shoes!!!!
April 22nd(Due date March 26th)
ANT 1001 TV24A Gaunt
Accounting Major(second yr.)
Mother's Love: Death without Weeping
Nancy Schepher's piece Mother's Love is a mind blogging piece that has me questioning my judgment of love everyday. Schepher is an anthropologist who from time to time studies the relationships between mothers and their new born babies in a poverty-stricken area called Bom Jesus da Mata in Brazil. In this society it seems that survival of the fitness is the overall theme. Babies who are ill or have a slim chance of surviving are left to die. "That is harsh and inhumane", one of my friends told to me after i shared this story with her. But is it really? In my own grinding these mothers are "loving" they babies in their own way.
It is generally society's doctrine that your parents do what is best, and in these circumstances these mothers have provided as much as they could. This village has no beneficial resources or even proper health services,neither do they have our society's precious health coverage plan. These mothers do their best everyday and have realized that this is no world for the weak! These mothers rather give their little "angels" back to heaven than let them suffer a dreadful life full of pain and sickness.
Sometimes we often point fingers at other who we think are strange and many of us may consider the neglect of these children as Taboo, but do we ever fry fish the same exact way? So why do these mothers have to conform to our society's notion of love? Not because they don't mourn the way we do does not make them less human. This is a subculture in the many cultures that make up Brazil, and this practice of putting more focus on healthy babies than weaker ones have existed for centuries.
In a sense i think if these mothers were to go against their teaching and cry and mourn for days, they would be looked down upon. They are just trying to cope in their environment and do the best they can with the labor-intensive under-paid jobs that they have. They are not complaining. Why should we? We can never cast judgment on anyone, unless we are in their shoes!!!!
Notice you write: "It is generally society's doctrine that your parents do what is best.." In what society do you mean? You speak as if all societies think this way, teach this way, learn this. Isn't this ethnocentrism? I like your empathy not for "your" grinding but for theirs. Culturally relativist thinking.
ReplyDeleteAvoid generalizing that this is common thoughout Brazil or notice that you are generalizing. If not, show the statistics that this is so. And what's not to say the same thing is happening within impoverished American or Trinidadian contexts? Put a mother from US culture in that circumstance and they might respond the exact same way after a while. Don't you think?? If not consider the social structures and environment are causing their responses. I think you might be correct in supposing that crying mothers would be shunned. You're starting to think within the emic framework. Great job! see BB for grade.