Is self soothing the biggest con of new parenthood?

 They say if you tell a big enough lie and repeat it frequently enough, it will be believed. It will become a cultural truth, even if it has no factual origins.

They also say that fear can convince a person, or a society, to do just about anything; no matter how unpleasant the act may seem at first. If enough people are doing it, others will follow.  If enough people believe it, it won’t be questioned.

Terms like “it’s for his own good” are often borne out of our primal need to rationalize and justify choices that abrade our instincts. To help us justify decisions that deep down, we know just don’t feel right.

Of course, with anything in life there are extremes; encouraging our children to brush their teeth or eat their greens is unquestionably looking out for “their own good”. But, other practices like discounting their basic emotional needs; not so much.

I have no doubt that this post will find me in hot water; people have a habit of shooting messengers especially when an inconvenient truth is being delivered.

And that’s ok, because I’m not writing to be popular. Rather, I’m using the written word to advocate for the needs of those who can’t speak for themselves. To shine a light on the truth. And, as uncomfortable as it may be, to throw unquestioned mistruths into the arena and start a conversation.

Because the further I venture into my parenting journey, the more I feel many detached mainstream parenting practices can be traced back to the mistruths we’re told when our children are young.

And if we can be convinced to disengage with our babies, where does it end? Unknowingly, we allow cultural beliefs to set the stage for a lifetime of disconnection.

From cry it out to time out, it begs the question; how are we convinced to crush our compassion in the first place? What rewards could possibly justify being non-responsive to our children’s needs?

When it comes to infant sleep the prize we’re promised is self soothing. The theory is that by ignoring a baby’s needs we’re actually teaching them a valuable lesson; how to soothe themselves so that, as parents, we won’t need to continue doing it for them.

Strengthening this theory is the ultimate motivator: fear. Parents are scared into believing that if they refuse to teach their baby how to self soothe, they’re failing to teach a very necessary life skill.

Thankfully, self soothing is an illusion. And when we shatter an illusion, it has no power over us; our love can’t be leveraged and our sleep-deprived desperation can’t be taken advantage of. We’re immune to being duped into believing that we need to carry out harsh parenting practices in an attempt to achieve something that doesn’t even exist.

It’s critical to expose and debunk these myths before they embed themselves in our subconscious; creating unrealistic expectations, fueling unnecessary frustration and driving a wedge between us and those we love most.

Because, no matter what some may say, parenting matters.

Our choices can have powerful consequences, serving to either strengthen or weaken our mutual connection. To build or erode trust and to grow or diminish our confidence as new parents.

In a modern world that places such a high value on the species-inappropriate expectation of solitary sleep we need to feel emboldened to ask tough questions, to scratch beneath the surface and seek the truth. So, why is self soothing the biggest con of new parenthood?

Because self soothing is a physical impossibility for babies and young children. The skill of self soothing is referring to the ability to regulate one’s own emotions; a developmental milestone that can’t be rushed. The last part of the brain to mature is the neocortex; it is the rational or analytical part of our brain that enables us to assess a situation and mediate our response.

In infants and young children, the neocortex is extremely undeveloped, quite literally making it a physical impossibility to rationalize and deal with strong emotions and unmet needs. This is why young children rely on us, their parents, to externally regulate their emotions for them until they are capable of doing it for themselves.

Because it fuels the practice of non-responsive sleep training. For me, self-soothing and non-responsive sleep training are like the chicken and egg theory. Which came first? I don’t know. But, what I do know is that two lies are stronger than one. What these myths rely on are massive assumptions, the desperation of sleep-deprived parents and the failure to fully examine what is really happening.

What parents observe is that their baby eventually stops crying after practicing one of a variety of techniques that involves leaving their baby to cry without comfort. But just because parents don’t hear their baby crying doesn’t mean they’re sleeping through the night and it doesn’t mean they’ve miraculously learned to self soothe. It means they’re silent through the night. Babies continue to lightly or fully wake as often as biology dictates, but they’ve learnt if they cry nothing happens so they stay silent.

Because it teaches babies to freeze. When babies are silent, it doesn’t necessarily means they’re calm and peaceful. Because, when babies are left alone, with physical or emotional needs they can’t meet, it is a stressful experience for them. Their blood cortisol levels rise and their fight, flight or freeze response kicks in. The only choice babies have is to freeze or develop a behaviour called ‘learned helplessness” or as Dr. Sears describes it ‘shutdown syndrome’.

Because it has a material effect on brain development. During the first three years of life, a baby’s brain grows from a mere 25% to 80% of their ultimate adult size. This period of rapid brain development is critical to long term mental and emotional health. Early childhood experiences literally fire and wire the brain our children will have for the rest of their lives.

Two regions of the brain, the amygdala and hippocampus, are especially susceptible. The hippocampus is key to memory and stress modulation as well as behavioural regulation, while the amygdala helps process emotions.

A longitudinal study in 2012, involving neuroimaging of healthy and depressed preschool children, showed that the more nurturing mothers were towards their children, the greater their hippocampal volume became. The positive effect of maternal support was greater in healthy children and a similar response has been shown for the amygdala. These findings provide prospective evidence of the beneficial effect of early supportive parenting experiences on healthy brain development.

Because it trains children to believe that their needs don’t matter. When we ignore a baby’s communication, they learn that their needs don’t matter. Babies who learn this lesson early in life are predisposed to experiencing insecure attachment, which can lead to a myriad of negative mental and emotional outcomes.

If we teach our children that, as parents, we’re unreliable in responding to their communication when they’re young, how likely are they to feel comfortable confiding in us when they’re being bullied at school? Or will they freely choose to come to us when they’re teenagers and feeling peer pressure to make choices that don’t feel right for them?

Because babies believe they, themselves, are the source of their experience. Young children believe they, themselves, are the source of their own experience. How we treat our babies lays the foundation for the beliefs our kids will come to hold true about themselves for the rest of their lives. Babies can’t understand that we’re intentionally choosing not to respond to cries because an author recommended to leave them to cry for X number of minutes, so that they can learn to self soothe. From a baby’s perspective all they know is that they’re communicating a need and nobody is coming.

If we repeatedly ignore our babies they’ll believe they’re not worthy of attention, comfort and affection. But if we shower them with unconditional love, they’ll believe they’re loveable, valued and worthy of healthy relationships.

Because it sabotages the REAL path to teaching children how to self-soothe. Our children learn how to effectively regulate their own emotions through observation; by observing us modelling healthy emotional regulation. Nurturing close, connected and respectful relationships with our children when they’re young offers the greatest assurance that they will not only be able to self soothe when they’re neurologically able, but that they will develop empathy and healthy pro-social behaviour.

‘Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.’ Marie Curie

While it may be possible to train babies and young children not to cry out when they need help, it is important to acknowledge it is not the same as self soothing. A child who is left to navigate emotions or situations they’re incapable of coping with is not happy, calm and stress-free.

The path to a happy, calm and stress-free baby is to be responsive to their needs. To pick them up. To hug them silly. To hold them, even if we can’t stop their cries. To reassure them through our actions that our love is unconditional and we will have their backs no matter how inconvenient or uncomfortable it may be at times.

Now is the time to trust our babies. To have faith that when they are developmentally ready, they will spread their wings and fly. And one day, in the not too distant future, they won’t need us any more. And we will look back and feel gratitude for the moments, that despite our sleep deprivation, we held our babies, drank in their sweet innocence and sang to them in the black silent stillness while nobody was watching.

(Source: Raise Good)

No evidence and little research – it’s no wonder that women and babies continue to die

 A series of fatal failings in maternity care is evidence of a systemic problem within the NHS

Giving birth used to be one of the most dangerous things a woman could do. In parts of 15th-century Europe, women wrote wills as soon as they knew they were pregnant. In the 17th and 18th centuries, around one in 25 women died in childbirth. It was a danger that cut right across class, from queens to domestic servants, and one that women had to face over and over again. For their babies, the risks were even higher.

It is a miracle of modern medicine that the joy of getting pregnant no longer has to be tempered with the very real prospect that you or your baby may not survive the birth. A true marker of human progress is the fact that maternal and infant mortality have dropped dramatically in the UK even as births have become more complicated, with babies getting bigger and women having children later.

But in recent years, horror stories have emerged of women and babies suffering dreadful maternity care in a number of NHS trusts. Bereaved parents and spouses have fought to be heard in the face of a culture of cover-up and medical professionals blaming mothers for the deaths of their babies. First, there was the inquiry into baby deaths at Morecambe Bay foundation trust, which came about as a result of the tireless campaigning of James Titcombe, whose baby died in its care. It found a “lethal mix” of failings caused the avoidable deaths of at least 11 babies and one mother. Last year, an interim report was published into baby and mother deaths at Shrewsbury and Telford; covering more than 1,800 cases over 20 years, it is one of the biggest ever NHS scandals.

Some midwives and institutions have pursued an ideology of ‘normal birth’ at ‘pretty much any cost’. Photograph: UK Stock Images Ltd/Alamy

It described how babies and mothers needlessly died or were left with profound disabilities as a result of terrible care; babies suffered fatal skull fractures as they were forced out using forceps, and women were left screaming in agony for hours as medics belittled their pain and told them they were “lazy”. An inquiry is currently underway into baby deaths at East Kent, and last week the Independent reported that dozens of babies had died or been left brain-damaged at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust.

The vast majority of mothers and babies will experience good maternity care in the UK. But this crop of scandals shows there is a systemic problem with the quality of NHS maternity care, with too many mothers and babies losing their lives as a result. More than 1,000 babies die or are left with severe injury each year as a result of something going wrong during labour. It goes beyond the current crisis of underfunding: the Care Quality Commission has found that four in 10 maternity services require improvement or are inadequate. Women of colour are disproportionately affected: black women are four times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than white women.

When it comes to childbirth, this predisposition to disbelieve women in pain has been particularly toxic

There are two deep-seated cultural factors that are holding back maternity care. First, it has become increasingly well documented that women are disproportionately disbelieved when they say they are in pain, because there is a perception that we are oversensitive to pain, or exaggerate it. This is undoubtedly a factor in poor-quality healthcare for women.

Second, women’s healthcare is under-researched and under-evidenced. This is true of conditions that affect both men and women – diagnosis and care for women who suffer strokes and heart attacks is poorer because the research has predominantly focused on men – as well as things only women experience, like the debilitating pain of endometriosis. Research out last week showed that women are continuing to struggle to access treatment for the menopause: only 37% of women seeking help were given HRT despite Nice guidelines stating that the majority of women can benefit from it.

When it comes to childbirth, this predisposition to disbelieve women in pain and to underemphasise their medical needs has been particularly toxic, allowing an ideology to take hold that so-called normal non-medicalised birth is best, regardless of what a woman herself thinks or feels. Until just a few years ago, this was widely embraced by the establishment: a working group including the National Childbirth Trust, the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, advocated for “normal birth” without medical interventions such as an epidural or caesarian section.

This has certainly been a factor in women and babies being denied life-saving care: at Morecambe Bay, midwives pursued non-medical births “at any cost”, bullying those doctors who tried to intervene. At Shrewsbury and Telford, there was a multi-professional focus on “normal birth” at “pretty much any cost”.

The best kind of birth is obviously a birth that delivers a baby safely, leaving a mother unharmed. For plenty of women, that will involve an epidural or a caesarian section. Terms like “normal birth” are stigmatising and shaming.

But while the RCM formally dropped this language in 2017, it lives on strongly in some parts of the midwifery profession. There are still midwifery conferences that promote “normal birth”. The University of Central Lancashire – a major midwifery training centre – still runs a course on “normal birth”. And a former president of the RCM last year submitted evidence to a select committee that stated women were not afforded the luxury dogs and cats have to “go off somewhere quiet and just get on with the process”, and argued for reduced obstetrician levels in labour wards.

Failures in maternity care are not just about understaffing and underfunding: they are linked to a deep-rooted societal perception that women are not to be trusted with their own bodies or to be allowed to make their own informed choices about birth. How much more evidence do we need that institutionalised sexism at the heart of our healthcare system has cost women and babies their lives?

(Source: The Guardian)

Babies born in Japan to drop below 900,000 in 2019 for first time

The number of babies born in Japan fell an estimated 5.9 percent this year to fewer than 900,000, the first time since the government started compiling data in 1899, the welfare ministry said Tuesday.

The dwindling number of births will put more strain on welfare finances to support the snowballing costs of supporting an aging population, undermining economic growth, analysts say.

The annual total is expected to fall by some 54,000 from the 918,400 born the previous year, hitting a record low for the fourth straight year.

The expected drop below 900,000 will come two years earlier than had been projected by a research institute of the ministry.

The number of babies born in Japan fell an estimated 5.9 percent this year, to fewer than 900,000 for the first time. | KYODO

This was the biggest decline in births since 1975, driven by the lower number of women age 25 to 39, said a ministry official in charge of compiling the data.

The government is hoping for a birth rate of 1.8 percent — which would appear to be a tall order given the rate was 1.42 percent in 2018.

The number of deaths is projected at 1,376,000, a postwar record. The nation’s natural population decline is estimated at 512,000, topping 500,000 for the first time, after exceeding 400,000 for the first time last year.

The number of newly married couples is estimated to hit a postwar low of 583,000, down 3,000 from last year. The number of divorces is projected to reach 210,000, up 2,000. As reasons for the expected sharp drop in the number of newborns, the ministry also cited the plunge in the number of couples married last year.

The ministry believes that the current trend will continue.

A demographic forecast released in 2017 by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research projected that the number of babies born in Japan, including non-Japanese babies, would total 921,000 in 2019, 902,000 in 2020 and 886,000 in 2021.

(Source: JT)

Top fertility doctors got woman pregnant with someone else’s babies, lawsuit alleges

Couple forced to return babies to natural parents after tests confirmed they were not related

A US fertility clinic that brags to be the “mecca of reproductive medicine” got a woman pregnant with someone else’s babies, a lawsuit alleges.

A New York couple of Asian ethnicity, whom the court documents only refer to with their initials to avoid “embarrassment and humiliation”, paid the California-based CHA Fertility Centre tens of thousands of dollars to have children – but then wound up giving birth to non-Asian babies.

Adding insult to injury, the couple even had to relinquish custody to their natural parents after tests confirmed the babies were not genetically related to them.

The incident started to unfold in January 2018, when they decided to travel to California after struggling to have children, the New York Post first reported.

Higher rates of maternal deaths and stillbirths among black mothers are 'tip of the iceberg', experts say ( Getty Images )

They eventually underwent treatment to prepare for In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) with CHA Fertility, which describes itself as one of the world’s “premier fertility treatment networks” and claims to have “fulfilled the dreams of tens of thousands of aspiring parents from Southern California and beyond in over 22 countries.”

During IVF, an egg is removed from the woman’s ovaries and fertilised with sperm in a laboratory, according to the NHS.

In all, the couple alleges they spent some $100,000 on doctor fees, medication, lab expenses and travel costs.

The couple decided to have two female embryos implanted in August 2018.

But months later, sonograms started signalling that something wasn’t right – they showed the wife was carrying twin boys, not girls.

CHA Fertility allegedly dismissed the results, saying the sonogram was inaccurate.

When the babies were born, it became apparent that they weren’t of Asian descent. DNA tests then revealed that the two boys were not even genetically related to the parents.

The couple was eventually also forced to give custody of the children to their natural parents.

The couple doesn’t know what happened to their actual embryos that were supposed to be used.

They accuse CHA Fertility, its doctors and related companies of medical malpractice, intentionally inflicting emotional distress and other allegations.

CHA Fertility has been contacted for comment.

(Source: The Independent)

How secondhand drinking ruins lives: ‘Every family has been touched by this’

Passive smoking is treated as a serious hazard. So why have we been so slow to wake up to the dangers alcohol poses to those who live with – or have a devastating encounter with – a heavy drinker? 

Helen Witty thought she had taught her children all about the dangers of drinking. She was raised with the knowledge that her great-grandfather’s alcoholism had led him to suicide. “It’s in the family,” her mother warned her. In a classic expression of the ripple effect of harmful drinking, Witty kept her own consumption modest. And she taught her two children to understand and to be careful of the long shadow cast by other people’s drinking.

But what none of the family had prepared for was the day when Helen Marie, Witty’s 16-year-old daughter, stood in the drive of their Florida home wearing her skates; she wanted to destress before a big school play. She flipped around, blew her mother a kiss and said she would be right back.

 Family members of people killed by drink drivers hold pictures of their loved ones during a Mothers Against Drunk Driving rally in Washington DC. Photograph: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call

She didn’t return. When her father went to look for her, he found a crime scene. Helen Marie had been hit while skating on a bike path by a 17-year-old driver who had been drinking tequila and smoking cannabis. Instead of bringing his daughter home, her father had to identify her body.

Helen Marie was killed by another person’s abuse of alcohol in a tragic example of so-called secondhand drinking. While the concept of secondhand, or passive, smoking is familiar, secondhand drinking is a growing field of study. Last week, the Alcohol Research Group at the Public Health Institute in Emeryville, California, published research showing that 53 million Americans each year experience harm from another individual’s alcohol use. That is one in four men, and one in five women. Given that passive smoking is treated as a serious public health hazard in countries from Mongolia to Colombia, Australia to the UK, why are governments so slow to notice, let alone challenge, secondhand drinking?

“Secondhand smoking really changed public opinion and paved the way for legislation to make bars and public places smoke-free,” says Sir Ian Gilmore, the chair of the Alcohol Health Alliance and the director of the Liverpool Centre for Alcohol Research. “There is undoubtedly harm from secondhand smoke, but the range and magnitude of harms is likely to be even greater from alcohol.”

“We are only just starting to appreciate the long-term impact of these harms,” adds Katherine Karriker-Jaffe, a senior scientist at the Alcohol Research Group in the US, and the author of the research published last week. Her team worked with 10 categories of harm, from harassment to assault. Although she cannot recall experiencing any secondhand harm herself, she is something of an anomaly because, as Gilmore points out: “There is hardly a family that hasn’t been touched in some way, whether it’s a child of an alcoholic or someone who has been punched on a night out. There are so many examples; it is genuinely unusual to come across a family where someone hasn’t been affected by alcohol.”

Often, the effects of alcohol use can ripple from one life into another. All too easily, a person who suffers a secondary harm can become a perpetrator of further harms.

Sam is the birth mother of a child with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). When she was pregnant, her then partner had a problem with alcohol. “It was an abusive relationship,” she says. “I struggled with what was going on. When you’re in that part of your life where everything is overwhelming …” She trails off. She drank on average a bottle of wine a week, with “the odd binge”.

Sam’s son is now 12, but at the time he was conceived the UK government did not advocate abstinence during pregnancy. (Today, 41% of women in the UK are thought to consume alcohol while pregnant.) Sam believed her pregnancy was proceeding well. Every scan showed that her son was growing as he should be. The possibility of FASD “kind of flittered and then escaped my mind”.

 A report suggests 41% of women in the UK drink alcohol while pregnant. Photograph: Jamie Grill/Getty/Tetra

Sam’s son was nine and had repeatedly been excluded from mainstream school when he was finally diagnosed with partial FAS (foetal alcohol syndrome). “When the paediatrician confirmed my fears, I broke down and cried,” Sam says. “You have to come to terms with the fact that you harmed your child. You gave your child brain damage. There is a massive part of you that just wants to block it out. But you can’t. You have to live it, day in, day out.”

Sam’s long list of her son’s symptoms, which include sleep issues, manic behaviours, depression and low social maturity, is balanced by an equally long list of what she appreciatively calls his “highest qualities”: his creativity, his IT skills, his loyalty to friends and “massive heart”. She is clearly a loving, attentive mother who is highly attuned to her son’s needs. At some point, when her little boy has sufficient emotional maturity and stability, she will need to muster all of those qualities to explain to him his diagnosis.

It is the ultimate discharge of maternal responsibility, but Sam worries that the disclosure may take her away “as his one safe person. This is what secondary alcohol use has created in my family,” she says.

Even when a person harmed by secondary drinking acts to intercept the repercussions, the psychological impact can be inescapable. In 2014, Jabz Musinga’s father died after falling into the River Aire in Leeds. It took several weeks for his body to surface, but Jabz, 25, knew what had happened as soon as she saw the security video of her dad walking drunkenly beside the water.

The certainty must have felt strange, because she had spent her childhood “on tenterhooks”. What she had witnessed in her own home, her father’s behaviour, “carried into my adult life, trickled into my dating life”, she says. “I had low standards of what to expect from a guy, and even from friends. People easily took advantage of me.”

She soon found herself in an abusive relationship. “It was very brief. I put my foot down straightaway. It was like two weeks and I said: ‘This is not going to work.’” She was thankful, she says, that she was “able to stop” – which suggests that she may also have been able to continue. It took a particular conviction to intercede.

“It was very hard to say: ‘I’ve been affected by someone else’s drinking,’” Jabz says. “The focus tends to be on people who have addictions,” not those around them. But she has no doubt that alcohol changed her. “It shaped my personality. I would be a completely different person if it hadn’t happened. I do think about it, once in a while – the person I would have been,” she says, as if a ghost self shadows her. “I think I would have been more confident. Maybe a better person.”

Jabz sounds adjusted and happy in her life, but that last note of self-rebuke recalls the words of the MP Liam Byrne, another child of an alcoholic father and a patron for the National Association for Children of Alcoholics (NACOA), a charity that Jabz volunteers for. “You don’t know what’s normal, so you construct these perfect templates of what you think good looks like,” he says.

Self-medicating with perfectionism, Byrne wrote “long lists of attributes” to live up to – “a blueprint for being a superhuman with super powers”. He is 48 now. How old was he when he wrote his last list? He sighs heavily. “Forty-three? Forty-four?”

Secondhand drinking covers such a spectrum of human experience that a wide range of measures is required to confront it. Byrne, whose experiences have helped him to connect with the homeless population of the West Midlands, where he is campaigning to be mayor, points out that about 2.5 million children in the UK have an alcoholic parent, and 50% of these “go on to develop problems themselves”. Greater education of frontline workers with children, including teachers and GPs, would help – something that the all-party parliamentary group Children of Alcoholics, which he founded, is working to change.

Witty, who is now the president of the charity Mothers Against Drunk Driving, would like stiffer laws against underage drinking. Sam would like more support for children with FASD – and their mothers. At present, nearly 80% of the NHS’s clinical commissioning groups do not provide diagnosis for children with FASD, according to a freedom of information request by the National Organisation for Foetal Alcohol Syndrome-UK. Karriker-Jaffe is interested in the degree to which “negative impacts for people with heavy drinkers in their lives appear to be stronger for women than men”. But why can’t all the harms of secondhand drinking be addressed with the same sort of legislative determination that denormalised secondhand smoking?

“A single act, if I had a wish, would be to introduce a minimum unit price combined with increasing duty on alcohol,” says Gilmore, of the Alcohol Health Alliance. He cites the “duty escalator”, introduced by the Labour government in 2008, pushing up duty on alcohol by 2% above inflation year on year. “That was the first time we saw outcomes like cirrhosis deaths plateau off and begin to fall. Unfortunately, George Osborne as chancellor removed that duty escalator.

“[With cigarettes] we have relentlessly pushed the price up.” Gilmore points out. “Quietly, but relentlessly. And that’s made a huge impact. The UK is the leading European country in reducing smoking rates. The government has a real opportunity to show it is at the forefront of reducing alcohol-related harm, including harm to others. It needs to stop leaving alcohol to the free market like soap powder and treat it as a potentially serious health risk, as it has done with tobacco.”

There are differences between smoking and drinking, of course. More than 90% of the 181 governments to have signed up to the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHOFCTC) have implemented some form of smoking ban; Article 8, which relates to secondhand smoking, is the most implemented of all WHOFCTC articles. But with alcohol, the desired outcomes – the appropriate limits – are more variable, more open to discussion. And no doubt the normalisation of alcohol in an array of social situations, from family celebrations to weekend binges, means that its abuse remains highly stigmatised: a harmless pursuit that has simply exceeded control.

“People say that if you smoke you harm others, but with alcohol you only harm yourself,” says Amy, 30. She vehemently disagrees. Her sister began to drink in her early 20s – just “having a wild weekend”, as medical staff initially described it to the family. Within seven years, she died of heart failure. “Anyone else who had a terminal illness would have an abundance of understanding from friends, colleagues. But you don’t have that support,” Amy says. “In fact, you don’t have the ability to talk about it without stigma.”

Amy, who is from south Wales and volunteers for the charity Alcohol Change UK, was training for a new job while her sister’s condition deteriorated. “I’d be in the hospital, then come straight to work as if nothing had happened. I work in a fairly professional environment, and I know it sounds silly, but I wouldn’t want it [her sister’s alcoholism] to impact on people’s view of me as a professional,” she says.

She is not alone. The day after we speak, Karriker-Jaffe emails to say that she would like to alter her answer about her own experience of secondhand drinking. “I watched an extended family member struggle with an alcohol use disorder that I believe eventually contributed to her death,” she says. “I think about her often in relation to this work.” Karriker-Jaffe adds that she is unsure why she did not mention this on the phone. “Stigma, I suppose.”

Her revelation, as an expert in this field, suggests that alcohol abuse, and the harms of secondhand drinking, need to be destigmatised in order for its scale to be properly confronted. In the UK, it is widely seen as deplorable to smoke in the company of children – but even the most conscientious parents display few qualms about drinking. Does it matter, for instance, if children see a parent habitually reach for a glass of wine to de-stress? Byrne laughs drily. “It does, yeah. Because you need to be able to model self-care.”

“We need to reframe what we believe is problem drinking,” agrees Josh Connolly, a life, leadership and performance coach who has experienced secondhand drinking as the child of an alcoholic parent, and as an alcoholic parent himself. “I say: come away from quantity and how often you are doing it. Because if your children know you get them to bed, get the wine out, have one glass of wine and relax, what they see is that they can’t help you relax: you go and get a glass of wine. It’s about the behaviours, the feelings that alcohol use creates.”

Twelve-step programmes, including that of Alcoholics Anonymous, helped Connolly eliminate alcohol from his life. But, in his sober years, he has found that his presence can make drinkers feel uncomfortable in their relationship with alcohol – and this, he thinks, is where everyone who enjoys alcohol could benefit from some self-appraisal.

“The strange thing, as somebody who is seven and a half years sober, is that I now face more stigma from society for not drinking than I did as a dad who drank,” he says. No doubt this reluctance to examine our relationship with alcohol helps to make secondhand drinking so hard to acknowledge. As he says: “Society doesn’t have a line to cross on this. So how is an individual going to have one?”

Maybe it is time to explore not only the ways in which we have, as individuals, experienced a secondhand harm from alcohol – but also those in which we may have perpetrated one.

(Source: The Guardian)

Government should shame parents who give phones to toddlers, head of Britain’s strictest school says

Pupils struggle to revise for GCSEs due to smartphone addiction, warns Katharine Birbalsingh

The headteacher of a school dubbed “the strictest in the country” has called for a significant government campaign to shame parents who give their mobile phones to toddlers. 

Katharine Birbalsingh, who founded the Michaela Community School in London, said putting phones in front of pre-school children can make it harder for them to read later on, Tes reports.

The head of the school, renowned for its strict behaviour policy, warned that excessive screen time could also have a negative impact on children’s social interactions and mental health.

Speaking at an event organised by the think tank Policy Exchange, Ms Birbalsingh said: “Government should have a massive campaign, and I mean millions need to be spent on this, where on every billboard we are talking about this.

“Where if you see a parent putting a phone in front of a toddler there would be a sense of shame.”

Ms Birbalsingh, who called on the government to do more to tackle problems with social media, said some of her pupils struggle to revise for their GCSEs because of smartphone addiction.

The headteacher added that she knows of children who are on their smartphones until 2am or 3am on school days and are sleeping through the day.

Ms Birbalsingh said: “Parents will then argue they want the smartphone because it’s a great babysitter. You hand the smartphone to the child and then the child doesn’t need looking after.

“It means that they are no longer able to play board games, talk to each other or make friends or ask questions, or be interactive in a social way. Of course that affects their mental health.”

She added: “I’m telling you, social media is our number one problem, and if government wants to help schools, that is where they should be putting their money.”

Her comments came on the same week that education secretary Damian Hinds warned that children are growing up with a “warped” view of what is normal because of false images on social media.

The minister has called on online celebrities and social media influencers to take fewer selfies to reduce negative body image among children.

It followed a global study which revealed that heads in England are more likely to face problems with cyberbullying and misusing social media among pupils than in any other developed country.

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “There is undoubtedly a problem with excessive use of mobile phones and the impact this can have on young people in terms of their mental health and wellbeing and how they interact in the real world.

“We need to educate young people to navigate this technology in a positive way so that it is a useful tool rather than a damaging addiction and we all have a part to play in that process.

“We would support more help and advice for parents, but we do not think that a campaign to shame parents would be the right approach.”

Michael Freeston, director of quality improvement at the Early Years Alliance, added: “It’s important we monitor screen time but, for the time being at least, we don’t have any hard, long-term evidence to say whether or not it is harmful.

“Tablets and phones are already a part of our everyday lives and that relationship between people and technology is likely to be even more important when today’s youngest children become adults.”

(Source: Independent)

Leaving kids with nannies for long hours is an act of negligence: UAE cops

A psychologist noted that leaving kids to maids and nannies may affect their behaviour and actions.
Leaving children with nannies or caretakers for a major part of the day "poses a threat to their safety" and can also negatively affect their behaviour, the police have warned parents. The police said doing so can be considered an act of "negligence" as it leaves children vulnerable.

The Abu Dhabi Police on Saturday launched an awareness campaign to educate families about the negative effects of leaving children under the care and supervision of nannies and maids for extended periods of time.

Colonel Saeed Hamad Al Kaabi, acting director of social support centres at the force, said: "The police are conducting campaigns and awareness programmes for families to protect children's psychological, physical and public safety. The centre is focusing on protecting and caring for families and children. Our commitment is to use the best police practices and precautionary measures to ensure that children receive the best standards of family stability."

He appealed to parents to not leave their children with the domestic help for long hours, explaining that the country's law will hold them responsible for negligence and failure to do their duties. He stressed the need to take necessary measures to ensure children's safety and wellbeing.

According to Al Kaabi, most nannies do not possess the required skills to raise children and deal with their character development, "which negatively affects their psychological, health and behaviour". He urged mothers to provide care and closely monitor kids and protect them from risks.

Risk of losing kids' love
Parents risk losing kids' love if they don't spend enough time with them, said psychologists practising here. Nasir Al Riyami, a psychologist and hypnotherapist at the Sheikh Khalifa Medical City, said leaving children with relatives and nannies is a growing trend "as we live in a busy world". But families need to be aware of the risks involved. "Parents should know that they are at the risk of losing child attachment," said Al Riyami.

"The child will feel neglected and this will affect their attachment towards parents. After they grow up, most of these kids will choose to spend time with other people and not their parents. Parents may need to sacrifice and spend time with their children for proper upbringing and to strengthen the bond."

On the child's safety and security under the care of nannies and maids, Al Riyami said parents need to know the caretakers well enough to hand them over the responsibility of taking care of their kids.

"Parents should accept nannies as part of their family because they are left with the responsibility of taking care of their children while they are away," he said. "Nannies and maids should be treated with respect. Pay them well and give them gifts for their services as this will boost their morale and eventually help in giving more attention to kids."

Dr Dolly Habbal, a PhD in clinical psychology at the Advanced Cure Medical Centres, highlighted the mother's role in child's upbringing in various aspects - religious, social, and psychological - stressing that the "present trend" of families leaving their children to be taken care of by others is "not a good idea".

"Raising a child is something important and requires parents' physical presence to instil good values, monitor what they do and watch on TV and teach them good morals and values," she said. "Significantly relying on domestic help to raise a child also negatively impedes a child's linguistic development.

"A mother's duty includes taking good care of her child. Families should limit the role of domestic help to house chores."

The psychologist noted that leaving kids to maids and nannies may affect their behaviour and actions.

"Upbringing of a child is parents' responsibility. They shouldn't let others do it for them or they will lose their love as they did not spend enough time with them," said Habbal.

(Source: Khaleej Times)

Fathers need to get involved in the first 1000 days of their kids’ lives

The first 1000 days of a child’s life are crucial. During this time the foundations for optimum health, rapid brain growth and child development are laid. New mothers undergo enormous emotional and physical changes in this time, too.

South Africa has made great strides in prioritising these first 1000 days since it adopted the National Integrated Early Childhood Development Policy in 2015. It’s also embarked on a number of initiatives that focus on improving maternal, newborn and child health.

But an important factor is missing from these efforts: the role that fathers have to play, particularly during the early stage of their child’s life.

In collaboration with other universities and civil society organisations we’ve been conducting studies on fathers since 2003. Our studies have found that “fathers” aren’t just biological parents. Very often, they are other important men in a child’s life: a grandfather, an uncle, a mother’s current partner, a teacher, pastor or a benevolent man in the community.

Only about 36% of children in South Africa live with their biological fathers. Our research nevertheless suggests that the vast majority of men want to be involved in their children’s lives, even if they live far away or are too poor to support their children as they would like to.

Dads have a critical role to play in their children’s lives. Samuel Borges Photography/Shutterstock

These issues of distance and poverty, as well as other social factors, must be tackled so that men are able to be fathers. That’s because having involved, engaged fathers benefits everyone: the child or children, the child’s mother and the father himself.

Science says dads matter
There is evidence that men experience hormonal and other changes if they have the opportunity of being involved with a partner’s pregnancy. Their testosterone levels decline and synchronise with the hormonal levels of the mother. This is likely to reduce men’s aggression and make them more likely to be involved and protective towards their partner and their child.

Fathers can also play an important role in providing practical and emotional support for the mother by encouraging positive health behaviours that indirectly affect pregnancy and foetal development. This is associated with increased child birth weight, and lower rates of preterm birth.

For example, father involvement during pregnancy can encourage mothers to seek prenatal care earlier, eat more healthily, exercise more and avoid alcohol, drug abuse and smoking.

Fathers also remain enormously important in the period after childbirth. Studies have shown that they influence vital decisions, such as whether women breastfeed, how long they breastfeed and how timeously they register their infant’s birth.

Fathers who are involved in their partner’s pregnancy and the early days of their child’s life are more likely to remain involved throughout the course of that child’s life, and likely to take on shared child care and responsibility.

When fathers are involved, others benefit too: research shows that father involvement is linked to greater maternal satisfaction and lower rates of maternal depression. And, crucially, positive father engagement is associated with higher educational achievement, higher self-esteem especially among girls, and lower levels of machismo among boys.

What holds dads back
But there are a number of barriers to father involvement in the first 1000 days. These exist at many levels: individual, family, societal, institutional and policy.

The main barrier is the high rate of children living away from their fathers, principally because of unemployment and poverty. Other reasons are migrant labour, family conflict and past or present incarceration. In some cases, a child’s parents may have separated or divorced.

In South Africa societal factors such as the high rate of male deaths due to violence and the HIV epidemic play a role, too. Cultural practices such as payment of costs related to inhlawulo (essentially about acknowledging paternity and granting permission to a man to be involved in the life of a child born out of marriage) and lobola – bride price – may prevent poor but willing fathers from being involved in their children’s lives.

Negative perceptions of men in South Africa are also a huge barrier. Common stereotypes include men being absent, strong, unfeeling, uninvolved, violent, disengaged, uncaring and “macho”.

Another factor is that health care services, especially during pregnancy and early childhood development, are targeted at women since they’re considered children’s primary caregivers. Facilities seldom cater for the inclusion of men.

Possible solutions
South Africa needs strategies for reaching out to fathers early and more effectively. But messages, interventions and service delivery to get men more involved need to be tailor-made to suit specific father groups. For example, young fathers still at school need support to acknowledge paternity and to negotiate involvement with his partner’s family.

Poor men who can’t financially support their children must be reassured that their children value their presence and interest as much as any material provisions. Health care facilities and workplace environments need to be family-focused, not only mother-child centred.

Policies and programmes should be put in place to facilitate work and family responsibilities being better balanced. This can be done by promoting equal parenting between mothers and fathers. Countries that involve fathers in pregnancy and early childhood, and give shared parental leave from work, such as Sweden, show the benefits of being and having engaged parents.

Social media promotion, advertising positive fatherhood messages on billboards, and taking fatherhood messages and services to places and events that fathers frequent, such as football matches, and car washes, could be effective.

(Source: The Conversation)

Anti-Sikh riots: Newborn twins were tossed into fire like lifeless objects, says family

On Monday, as the Delhi High Court sentenced Sajjan Kumar, the women, sitting at their flat in CRPF colony in Ludhiana, said are grateful for those who took the fight forward.

Unwell after her delivery on October 31, 1984, Charanjit Kaur, in her twenties then, hadn’t even spent much time with her newborn twins (a boy and a girl). Now 59, she still remembers stifled cries of her newborns who were snatched from her sister-in-law’s hands, tossed in fire and burnt alive by a mob in front of their residence in Sultanpuri area of Delhi, two days later on November 2. The family lost seven members, including two newborns.

Bhupinder Kaur (70) recalls how their residence was attacked and five men, including her husband Bant Singh, brothers-in-law Shingara Singh and Kulwant Singh (aged 30-40), uncle Magar Singh (in sixties) and a nephew Kulwant Singh (in twenties) were burnt alive in front of her.

“My sister-in-law Charanjit had delivered twins on October 31. I was cradling them when mob attacked. After all five men were killed, the mob moved towards us and children. I was trying to hide babies and suppressed their cries by putting my hand on their mouths. But the attackers pushed me to the ground and snatched the babies. They were tossed in fire as if they were lifeless objects and burnt alive,” says Bhupinder.

On Monday, as the Delhi High Court convicted and sentenced Congress leader Sajjan Kumar for life imprisonment for alleged killings of five Sikhs in Cantonment area during riots in 1984, the three widows sitting at their flat in CRPF colony of Dugri in Ludhiana (allotted to riot victims), said they want to convey heartfelt thanks and gratitude to those families who took fight ahead against Congress leader and kept going till justice was delivered.

Charanjit, Bhupinder, Surjit at their home in Ludhiana. (Express Photo by Gurmeet Singh)

A separate case for alleged killings of six Sikhs and rioting in Sultanpuri of Delhi is pending against Sajjan Kumar in Patiala House Courts in Delhi. A witness, Cham Kaur, identified him in court, saying that she saw him instigating mob in Sultanpuri.  But like many other 1984 riots cases, this case did not reach courts even though the three women have copies of handwritten applications stamped by Sultanpuri police dated November 14, 1984, preserved as ‘proof’.

“We were unable to take our case to court because we had no money, manpower or resources. But we are thankful to those who took this fight ahead and kept it going. Through them, we have got justice today. My children, whose lives were ended in just two days, got justice today. I do not even have any photograph of babies to remember how they looked,” says Charanjit, wife of late Kulwant Singh.

Surjit Kaur (65), whose husband Shingara Singh was burnt alive, says, “We were in shock for many days. Later, neighbours and locals told that Congress leader Sajjan Kumar was leading and instigating the mob in our area, Sultanpuri. We had no courage, resources or manpower to pursue the case… everything was lost already. We moved to Ludhiana in 1985 and lived in a cattle shed for three years. We worked as domestic helps to feed four other children. For a few years, we kept visiting Delhi but then it just wasn’t possible to take the fight forward.”

“The attackers were shouting- ‘Inhone hamari maa ko maar dia. (They killed our mother)’. We had a photograph of Indira Gandhi in our home and also those of Sikh Gurus. Attackers came inside and demolished all photos except that of Indira Gandhi. They did not touch Indira’s photo,” says Surjit.

“First they crushed heads of five men with stones and then set them on fire with tyres around their necks. Our Hindu neighbours tried to stop mobs but they too were threatened. For three days, we kept sitting near burnt bodies so that stray dogs don’t drag them away. It was only on November 5 that neighbours arranged wood and cremations were done. We did not even had money to buy wood. Later, we shifted to a camp,” says Bhupinder.

Gurdeep Kaur, head of women’s wing of 1984 Sikh Katle-Aam Peerit Welfare Society (Punjab), whose two brothers-in-law were also allegedly killed by a mob in Mangolpuri of Delhi, says, “The mobs were being led and instigated by Sajjan Kumar in Sultanpuri and Mangolpuri areas but women who were left behind had no resources or money to take cases ahead. No FIRs were registered by name and all they have are handwritten copies of applications. There are hundreds such cases which have not even reached courts yet. We had submitted 135 such affidavits in 2005 when Nanavati commission was constituted requesting to register fresh FIRs.”

Senior advocate HS Phoolka said, “Case against Sajjan Kumar for allegedly instigating mobs in Sultanpuri is pending in court. Two witnesses Cham Kaur and Sheila Kaur have identified him.”

(Source: The Indian Express)

Everyone is missing a key reason the US birth rate is declining

In the U.S., women are essentially punished for having kids, writes Emily Peck in HuffPo. Read on: 

Katia Hills, a healthy 27-year-old married woman, said she was afraid to have another child after what happened the last time.

Before she got pregnant with her son in 2014, Hills was working at an AT&T store in Elkhart, Indiana, where her career was taking off. She was promoted to sales rep after just a few months. She loved her work selling cellphones and tablets. Her evaluations were good.

Then her managers learned she was expecting. The punishments piled up, according to a discrimination lawsuit she filed against AT&T last week in federal court. If Hills needed to go to the doctor or was late because of morning sickness, she was docked a “point.” Employees who lose enough points under AT&T’s system face the possibility of losing their jobs.

The points started adding up. At the same time, Hills observed that her nonpregnant colleagues did not get any penalties when they were late to work.

“I was being treated a lot different,” Hills told HuffPost. “It was devastating.”

In an emailed statement, AT&T said it’s reviewing Hills’ complaint. “We do not tolerate discrimination of any kind, including for an employee’s gender or pregnancy.” The company noted it provides “generous benefits,” including various types of paid and unpaid days off and leaves of absence.

"I was being treated a lot different. It was devastating." Katia Hills

Pregnancy and the arrival of a new child should be a time of joy and excitement, but for working women in the United States, it’s often a time of financial stress and uncertainty. Women who dare become mothers are subject to additional discrimination, bias and harassment.

Katia Hills and her son. She says she’s afraid to have another kid after the discrimination
she faced at work the first time around.

Is it any wonder they’re having fewer children?

Last week, the CDC released a report revealing that the U.S. birth rate ― the number of babies born nationwide ― is the lowest it’s been in 30 years and is below the “replacement” rate needed to sustain the population.

One New York Times article said “social factors” explained the decline; women were putting off childbirth in favor of their careers, and an opinion piece on Friday blamed the patriarchy. Bloomberg said economic factors were the culprit. Conservatives blamed social media and pornography, claiming everyone is just having less sex. Fox News personality Tucker Carlson twisted his argument until he somehow pinpointed male immigrants as the culprit.

But all of these stories ignore a basic reality: Most women in the U.S., even before they get pregnant, know how little social support exists for them as mothers.

A shocking 88 percent of workers get no paid leave in the United States, according to the Labor Department. About 1 in 4 mothers go back to work less than two weeks after giving birth, according to a 2015 report. This often leads to devastating health outcomes for parents and babies.

Having kids often isn’t financially viable.
For low-income women, motherhood can throw you into poverty. For higher-earners, pregnancy knocks you off track for promotions and pay raises.

A clear wage penalty for mothers is also not helping. Even though more than 70 percent of families rely on a mother’s income, moms working full time earn about 71 percent of what fathers make, according to a March report from the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. That’s a full 9 points lower than the average gender wage gap.

“To the extent that some women would want to be mothers if it was financially viable, but don’t want to risk good careers or poverty, that’s not a free choice,” said Elizabeth Oltmans Ananat, an associate professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke. “Women are painted into a corner.”

Birth rates are rising for older women and declining for younger ones, according to CDC data.

Though the economy has recovered from its crash in the previous decade, the economic picture for many families has not. Wages are stagnant in the United States, despite low unemployment. A recent study from the Federal Reserve showed that 4 in 10 Americans don’t have an extra $400 for an emergency expense.

Ananat also points to rising levels of student loan debt, a weakened social safety net, a historically low minimum wage and a declining number of good jobs for less-educated women and men. Combine that with a lack of paid leave and “rampant discrimination” against mothers, and women like Hills are starting to think they can’t afford a baby.

“We’ve done better at getting these women access to contraception,” she said. “But we haven’t made it financially viable to have children.”

What’s more, as economic prospects for men have declined in recent years, women have increasingly become primary breadwinners.

Hills said she didn’t really think about any of these economic concerns before she got pregnant. She was shocked by what happened.

Despite racking up penalty points at AT&T, Hills was able to make it through to maternity leave, which the company does offer. But her boss made that rough, too. He called her a lot, asking when she’d come back; she spoke to him about returning part-time, for starters. He said he’d allow that, but only if she came back four weeks after giving birth. She declined.

The second day Hills returned from maternity leave, she was told she had accrued too many points and was fired.

“I just felt shattered. I just saw so much potential with that company,” she said.

Women at every income level get punished for having kids.
Higher-educated professionals also fear motherhood, and not without reason: Women who become mothers are often viewed as less invested in work, even if there’s no indication that’s true.

Women who worked at law firm Morrison Foerster sued the firm this year for putting them on the “mommy track,” a road that leads to lower salaries, less prestigious work and fewer promotions.

The suit alleges that when the women became mothers, the firm pressured them to work longer hours but also denied them assignments “because of stereotype-driven perceptions that they lack commitment to their jobs.”

“The stereotype becomes self-reinforcing, and women become stuck,” the suit said.

For reasons like these, female lawyers are 16 percent less likely than their male counterparts to have a child before their law firm makes a decision about whether or not they become partners, according to a yet-to-be-published working paper from economists at Wellesley College and the U.S. Naval Academy.

That means female lawyers delay having children until their late thirties, explained Nayoung Rim, one of the study’s co-authors.

The percentage of lawyers delaying childbirth is higher in states with fewer work-family benefits and higher reported levels of sexism, Rim said.

The study also found that mothers who did get promoted to lucrative partner positions were often far more qualified for them than their male peers ― indicating that mothers face a higher “promotion threshold,” Rim said. If you have a child, you must work even harder to overcome the stereotype that you’re not devoted to your work.

“They expect women to prove themselves even more relative to a man,” she said.

Rim believes the study’s findings can be extended to other high-demand careers, including in consulting and academia. They also help explain one piece of CDC data: The only age group that’s seen birth rates rise since the previous report is women ages 35-44.

For women earning low wages, there never seems to be a good time for parenthood.
Left with only one income to depend on, Hills and her husband eventually moved in with his parents. Their dream to buy a house went “out the window,” she said.

Two law firms and the American Civil Liberties Union are now representing Hills and another former AT&T employee who also said she was discriminated against. The hope is that more women will join the litigation and force AT&T to change its policy, which the suit says violates federal anti-discrimination laws.

“I don’t want anyone to feel what I felt in worrying about starting a family,” Hills said.

As her son approaches his third birthday, Hills and her husband have managed to move into an apartment, and she has a new job in sales. Still, she doesn’t feel safe enough for pregnancy.

“I’m scared to have a second child because of what I went through,” she said. “I wish I didn’t feel this way. It’s beautiful to have a family. Having a son is the most amazing thing, and I wish I could’ve enjoyed it with none of this extra stress.”

China sperm bank demands Communist Party loyalty from donors

A Beijing sperm bank has demanded loyalty to the Communist Party from all potential donors.

Peking University Third Hospital said in a statement on its WeChat web page on Wednesday that donors must "love the socialist motherland".

The post also promised 5,500 yuan (£622; $872) to those successful individuals who manage to pass medical tests for fitness and sperm quality.

The statement was later deleted from social media on Friday evening.

It had said that all applicants must be men aged between 20 and 45 and that they must not have any genetic or infectious diseases, or show any signs of weight problems, colour blindness or hair loss.

The men must also have "favourable political qualities", the statement read.

It added that applicants must "support the leadership of the Communist Party, be loyal to the party's cause and be decent, law-abiding citizens, free of political problems".

It is not clear how the hospital plans to verify the ideological loyalty of donors.

A doctor on the hospital helpline told the South China Morning Post: "It would be fine as long as you consider yourself suitable".

China's other sperm banks have not asked for party loyalty from their prospective donors.

Peking University Third Hospital launched the drive for sperm donations on Wednesday, and while the WeChat post has been deleted, it will run until 23 May, AFP news agency reports.

According to China's National Health Commission, there are only 23 sperm banks nationwide - and many have a shortage of donors.

China relaxed its one child policy in 2015, leading to a surge in demand for donated sperm.

In order to use the services of a sperm bank, families must prove the would-be father is infertile or carries a genetic disease.

The campaign has drawn gentle mockery from Chinese social media users, with one WeChat post reading: "Love for the party starts with a sperm."

Another message, on microblogging site Weibo, pointed out: "Acquired traits can't be passed down."

(Source: BBC)

Israel agrees to open graves in search for 'stolen babies'

Families allege thousands of Yemeni Jewish children were abducted after state’s founding

Israel has agreed to open graves believed to hold the remains of children who died shortly after the country’s founding, in the latest move in a long-running debate over whether the babies were stolen from their parents.

Families and activists believe that several thousand children, mostly from poor Yemeni Jewish communities, were systematically abducted by childless Jewish families of east European descent. Other Arab and Balkan Jews have also claimed infants were taken after they arrived in Israel.

It is alleged that the babies were stolen and given to Jewish families of western origin in Israel and even abroad, mainly those who could not have children themselves.

Three government investigations have found that most of the missing babies had died, pointing to poor conditions in reception camps. Yet families say that when they were told of their children’s deaths, doctors refused to hand over death certificates or even bodies. Some believe their children are still alive and suspect the graves to be empty.

The state prosecutor’s office has now agreed to a request from 17 families for the graves to be opened, allowing for DNA tests to be carried out.

“The decision was made in light of the public importance of getting to the truth regarding the death and burial of minors from Yemen, the east and the Balkans, whose deaths were reported to family members in the years after the founding of the state,” the office said in a statement. It was not clear when the process would begin.

Close to 50,000 Yemeni Jewish refugees were brought to Israel during 1949 and 1950 in a series of secret airlifts coordinated by the Jewish Agency, an organisation that brings Jews to Israel. Only around 50 Jews are believed to remain in Yemen. Many of the refugees arrived malnourished after spending months in transit camps in Yemen and Israel.

In 2016, Israel’s national archive announced the launch of an online database of 200,000 documents aimed at putting to rest the decades-old allegations.

The Achim Vekayamim association, representing dozens of Yemeni Jews, welcomed the decision to open the graves but warned of limitations.

“We demand the government of Israel take responsibility in the name of the state for the kidnapping of the children, and to pledge to take practical steps to reveal the truth in this frightening scandal,” the group said in a statement. “Only accepting responsibility and revealing the truth in full will bring healing to the families, to society and all of Israel.”

(Source: The Guardian)