How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm
What can you tell us about your new book How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm?
The book is my own personal exploration of how different mothers and fathers raise their children around the world, from early potty training in China and more permissive discipline in Japan to baby carrying in Kenya. I both investigated and tried the things I thought might be interesting or useful to incorporate in my own family's routine. It was fun, helpful and often comical. I'd say the best thing about it was that it helped me relax once I realized that there are many ways in the world to raise a happy, healthy child.
Your own experiences led to the release of this book - can you expand on this for us?
When I was pregnant with my first daughter I was living in Argentina, and I couldn't help notice how late children in Buenos Aires went to bed - they were regularly allowed and even encouraged to stay and up well past hours considered acceptable in the US. Like midnight and beyond, for toddlers even. The Argentine public also treated pregnant women with greater "care," for example, you were urged to the front of any line, given priority on airplanes and seats on buses immediately. Children were welcome in most places at most hours. It made me think a lot about my own values and their origins. I also thought about all the cultural differences in parenting in my own family, which includes Chinese sisters and parents, American parents, Korean brothers and sisters-in-law, and a Swiss sister.
You were adopted when you were a baby - how did this affect your upbringing?
I was born in rural Taiwan, but raised in middle America so my upbringing was drastically different from that of my siblings in Asia, from food, expectations of work to traditions and values.
You are a freelance journalist – has this aided the release of this book?
It helped give me the time to do it.
What is the biggest difference between the culture you were brought up in in the Midwest and your Asian roots?
The culture in Taiwan/China is complex and varied, but there are many vast and small differences. But in my own biological Chinese family the basic value that boys are more useful and important than girls shaped the very nature of our family, and led to the "giving away" of a younger sister and me, and the adoption of a boy. Though it's a value that is less prominent in modern families, it influenced to the very core how my Chinese parents shaped their family. My American parents valued girls and boys equally and taught me that I was as important as anyone and could be anything I wanted.
Which author who writes books of this ilk do you most admire?
For mainstream books, I have not read so many mainstream books of this type. I thought the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom was a provocative, but also funny book that hit a lot of nerves. There are some very good more academic anthologies of writings by cultural anthropologists. Our Babies, Ourselves by Meredith Small and The Anthology of Childhood: Cherubs, Chattel and Changelings by David Lancy are among the more accessible to the general public.
Who do you most like to read?
Tons of authors. Not sure I can pick one.
What is your favourite book?
I don't I have a favourite; there are so many I like. Among my favourite fiction works is the English Patient. I'm reading right now Far from the Tree, by Andrew Soloman, a really fascinating, if very long book about parents who are different (ie nondeaf parents of deaf children) from their children.
What surprised you most while writing this book?
Lots of things surprised me, from the way certain Japanese parents would let their kids fight out problems, to the way parents in third-world countries such as China view body waste and training.
What is next for you?
With two young children I feel like I live day-to-day, even hour-to-hour. I'd love to start getting more sleep! Professionally, I'm teaching writing and journalism at Northwestern University's School of Journalism and I am researching my next book.
Female First Lucy Walton