Boundaries of Touch
Parenting and Adult-Child Intimacy
Publication Year: 2007
Published by: University of Illinois Press
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
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pp. vii-viii
Preface
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pp. ix-xii
Several years ago, I told a colleague of my concern about a very sweet young student who persisted in hugging me whenever she saw me. I had attempted to avoid her hugs like the plague, ducking into doorways, bathrooms, and offices when I saw her coming. ...
Acknowledgments
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pp. xiii-xiv
I am very grateful to so many people. My students have been an endless source of inspiration and insight. I only hope they have learned as much from me as I have learned from them. The members of my four writing groups including my Scholarship Circle at Wagner College, Pam Donovan, Robin Isserles, ...
1. To Touch or Not to Touch
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pp. 1-26
While working on this book, I stayed overnight at a hospital for the first time. I came home exhausted, pale after massive blood loss, and very afraid. On top of all of that, someone came home with me. He was noisy, demanding, easily dissatisfied, constantly hungry, and apparently never tired, at least not at night. ...
2. The Rise of the Expert, the Fall of the Mother
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pp. 27-68
Most of us probably remember Dr. Spock, one of the earliest “scientific” experts offering popular child-rearing advice, who continues years after his death to instruct us. But he and all those others who glut today’s marketplace with their recommendations and warnings are relatively new phenomena. In part, this is because of Spock’s new at the time pro-touch leanings. ...
3. Breasts versus Bottles and the Sexual Mother
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pp. 69-104
La Leche League International was started in 1957 by seven stay-at-home Catholic, white, middle-class mothers in Illinois. They met through their shared involvement in an ecumenical Christian social action and family organization. These seven women were part of the post–World War II childbirth reform community. ...
4. Babies in Bed: To Sleep or Not to Sleep (with Your Baby)
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pp. 105-130
In 1999, a government study caused an uproar among scientific, parenting, and child-rearing experts.1 The study, by the Federal Consumer Product Safety Commission, argued that parents should never sleep in the same bed with their infants or toddlers, on the basis that parents might, in their sleep, roll on top of their babies, ...
5. Violent Touch: Feminists, Conservatives, and Child Sexual Abuse
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pp. 131-150
These days, children are thought to be in grave danger of being touched violently, abusively, or sexually in public places like day-care facilities and schools. The result of this collective fear of touching is that children who spend significant time in (for example) day care may not be receiving the physical contact they need to thrive. ...
6. Touching Problems
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pp. 151-166
One human being sucking on another’s breast, or one snuggled up to another in bed, are acts containing multiple and significant meanings. Like other forms of adult–child touch, beliefs about breastfeeding and sharing sleep (or not) have been and continue to be deeply contested in the mainstream United States. ...
Epilogue
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pp. 167-168
As I said earlier, I am a mother, a white middle-class mother. Having the cool, detached eye of a researcher has helped me only marginally, if at all, to stay calm and clear-headed when it comes to child-rearing advice. I worry, and I worry over each alternative. ...
Notes
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pp. 169-186
References
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pp. 187-194
Index
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pp. 195-202
E-ISBN-13: 9780252091452
Print-ISBN-13: 9780252075810
Page Count: 224
Publication Year: 2007
