The many calls from many directions this year for support for working families in America is welcome and hopeful. Just peek at the bottom of this newsletter to see the many new policies being considered to address America’s documented 50 year-long drop to the bottom of all developed nations’ rankings on child and adult health, as well as our notorious status as the “worst place to raise a family in the developed world.” 

What is really driving the sudden, widespread interest in moving American families into a (supposed) more sustainable way of life in a culture firmly fixated on profits not people? America’s “hatred” of its families, children, mothers,fathers, and babies has been acknowledged in the press for decades. Perhaps it is the recent hopeful headline, and many like it, by Robert Buonaspina: Creating a Care Economy Can Transform U.S. Into Highly Functioning Society, that is catching the attention of employers trying to patch together a burned-out workforce in a post-pandemic labor shortage.

Take a minute to look at the Ecological Systems of Support graphic in this post and you will see the necessity of systemic support for families. Should these proposed bills and policies pass, the impact on American families for generations will be epic, as has been their absence. It is this total lack of support, and intentional undermining, of families that the conscious parenting movement set out to address decades ago.

However, in a culture increasingly dominated by manufactured narratives intended to divide us, it is no wonder that conscious parenting as a movement has been castigated as an elitist proposition in America. As a two-income household became necessary during the same time period the science of attachment , marketers, like formula companies, moved in to aggressively convince mothers their breastmilk was replaceable. “The mommy wars are leveraged as marketing tools by infant formula makers and other business interests by creating mom types and then pitting them against each other,” writes Kimberly Seals Allers in The Big Letdown. 

Notice how, in her recent post in TIME magazine, Melinda French Gates succeeds in defending a need for paid parental leave without once mentioning the needs of a baby? The focus of the post is on the worker/employer relationship.  Why isn’t the possibility of being a stay-at-home parent on the table in the current debates and negotiations? Even before the pandemic, Millennials expressed their desire to be at home with their babies and children.

If you are new to Kindred, you may not realize that we are not a parenting magazine; we are a human family alternative media platform. We discarded the pursuit of conscious parenting in an unconscious culture a while back, and left those posts to coaches and therapists. To borrow a phrase, we don't want to reinvent the hamster wheel by helping parents conform to our Cycle of Competitive Detachment, we want to break the hamster wheel. (See Breaking the Cycle and Meet the Wayfinders on how this is done.) What we are exploring here at Kindred is our potential as a species on the brink of extinction to reclaim our whole humanity, bound up in our millions-year-old neurobiology and restored through our evolved nest.

Here's how you can find out more about our divergent strategies for living into our full potential and capacities this month:

October 5, 10 a.m. EDST, REGISTER

November 17, 9 p.m. EST, REGISTER

December 16, 12 noon EST, REGISTER

Visit the film's site to view the film and discover resources.

You are welcome to join the online discussion about the film at our Mighty Networks group here.

Although the authors mention the importance of responsive care, affectionate touch, positive community relationships, and play—all aspects of our species evolved nest—they miss a few components: extensive breastfeeding and nature connection. But they are mostly focused on health care providers. Unfortunately, they miss one of the most important aspects for child wellbeing for which the medical profession is responsible.

Moreover, less than 80% of US hospitals are “Baby-Friendly” meaning they do not meet the 10-item list of health-supporting procedures (e.g., extensive breastfeeding support; no formula or sugar water given without medical reason).

All in all, the position paper represents a vital needed shift in public health care goals, including not only trauma-informed but also wellness-informed practice.

Read the response to the new AAP statement from Kindred World's president, Darcia Narvaez, PhD, here

We forgot the wellness-informed pathway to human wellbeing, a holistic wellbeing that leads to peacefulness. We describe the wellness-informed pathway and how it is shaped in peaceful cultures by meeting humanity’s basic needs. We discuss what human thriving looks like in individuals and societies. 

Formula companies focus on human milk as the only important element of breastfeeding – and claim near equivalence between their product and human milk. Yet human milk is a living, life-sustaining substance with a long evolutionary history and cultural meaning.

Human milk is specific to our species. It is dynamic and adaptive – ever-changing in response to local environments. Human milk contains bioactive compounds and has a unique microbiome that varies by setting and over time. New technology, including the culturing of human cells, cannot replicate any of this.

Through complex interactions among mothers, infants and their communities, breastfeeding provides infants with optimal nutrition and protection from infectious disease. Across cultures, lactation and human milk create relationships that bind families and communities together.

Ethically, scientists cannot do experiments on babies yet parent advisers are suggesting experiments on children that goes against what is good for babies. CIO is an example of a violation of species-normal child raising. Like spanking, it is the kind of toxic stress that can cause mental health problems later.

A new study my colleagues and I just published (Gleason et al., 2021) provides insight into how play influences a child’s physiological development, specifically vagal tone.

Dr. Darcia Narvaez and her students conducted an experiment to increase ecological attachment—nature connection—through small daily practices. Each day participants practiced one activity that increased attention to and being grateful for the natural world. See here for the press release about the study, published in EcoPsychology. 

If you would like to take the anonymous pretest (and later a posttest) you can see how your attitudes and behaviors change after participating in the Eco Attachment Dance.

Click here to follow the dance on Instagram.

Or follow our daily posts on the Evolved Nest's Facebook page.

Or see the entire 28 day challenge prompts here!

The Meet the Wayfinders oral history collection of empowering and enlightening stories features interviews with nine professionals, parents, and scientists who found ways around breastfeeding advocacy barriers, or just broke them! The line-up includes Kindred's president, Darcia Narvaez; Kindred's current board member, Jamie Grumet; and one of Kindred's founding directors, Patty Kornwolf, RN-C.

Your collection includes an overview video, where you will learn the five hallmarks of wayfinder advocacy, as well as view highlights of the nine interviews. You will also receive a resource guide in PDF form(this document) to help you find the many references discussed in the collection.  Your conference link to the collection also includes the nine full interviews, ranging in 15-30 minutes each. 

In the Meet the Wayfinders’ Overview, conference participants will discover reasons why cultural change is difficult and how the breastfeeding advocates featured in this oral history collection were successful in breaking, transforming, and maneuvering around barriers in:

Creating support for families 

Register for the Global Online Movie Broadcast and Event - The Wisdom of Trauma HERE.

Nearly 9 million women of childbearing age are not covered by the Break Time for Nursing Mothers law, the federal provision that requires break time and a private space for breastfeeding employees to pump during the workday. The PUMP Act would close this gap. This week, Congress has a chance to act. Let's raise our voices together! 

“With the inclusion of the Momnibus, the Build Back Better Act makes over $1 billion in historic investments in the health and care of moms. It is nothing short of a game-changer for Black mothers as well as every parent bringing a child into the world. Now more than ever, it is critical that we pass the Build Back Better Act so that we can pass essential parts of the Momnibus as well. As a Black mother and grandmother, take it from me: Black mamas can’t wait!” 

America’s maternal mortality rates are among the highest in the developed world, and they are especially high among Black women and Native American women— regardless of their income or education levels. The actions announced today are part of the critical work this Administration is doing to address the maternal health crisis, close maternal and infant health disparities, and address the systemic racism and other factors that have allowed these inequities to exist.

“We know that many mothers and their children don’t receive the care they need to stay healthy throughout their lives,” said Acting HRSA Administrator Diana Espinosa. “These programs allow us to better tackle the root causes of these challenges and improve access to care for pregnant women, parents, and infants.”

It’s difficult in these divided times to find issues that Americans overwhelmingly agree on, but paid leave is one of them. Seventy-five percent of U.S. voters across party lines support a national paid family and medical leave policy, according to a survey conducted by Invest in America and Data for Progress. That includes 64% of Republicans and 91% of Democrats. In another survey, by the Global Strategy Group, 69% of likely voters across seven battleground states told pollsters they’d even be willing to pay more in taxes in exchange for the protection of a national law.

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Boldly original, Inflamed takes us on a medical tour through the human body--our digestive, endocrine, circulatory, respiratory, reproductive, immune, and nervous systems. Unlike a traditional anatomy book, this groundbreaking work illuminates the hidden relationships between our biological systems and the profound injustices of our political and economic systems. Inflammation is connected to the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the diversity of the microbes living inside us, which regulate everything from our brain's development to our immune system's functioning. It's connected to the number of traumatic events we experienced as children and to the traumas endured by our ancestors. It's connected not only to access to health care but to the very models of health that physicians practice.

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