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¶ … Mother's Love" by Nancy Scheper-Hughes
The anthropological study discussed by Nancy Scheper-Hughes entitled, "Mother's Love: Death without weeping," brings into lucidity the theoretical debate of "nature vs. nurture." The article discusses the issue of how, because of external influences and factors, there have been an alteration on women, especially, mothers' propensity to care and love for their children -- a phenomenon more popularly known as "motherly instinct." Hughes analysis shows that an ethnographic study on mothers in the town of Bam Jesus in Brazil, where, evidently, nurture prevails over nature -- that is, the social environment has a more vital role than "motherly instinct" (or nature) in influencing the mothers' attitude towards raising her children, especially those in poor health. The researcher points out two primary factors that influence the perpetuation of "passive infanticide" or mortal selective neglect among mothers in Bam Jesus: the prevalence of poverty and dominance and strong influence of Catholicism among Bam Jesus residents. Poverty, the first factor, makes nursing for newborn infants impossible for mothers who have to work during the day in order to survive everyday and provide food to eat for her children. In effect, because of parental neglect, infants die from hunger and/or neglect from his/her mother's care and attention. Moreover, apart from poverty, what further alleviates the situation and leads to the prevalence of passive infanticide is the mothers' fatalistic belief that some children who are "wanting to die," while there are also survivors, those who managed to live after five years. This reality among Bam Jesus mothers serves as evidence of the pervasiveness of poverty and religion in decreasing a mother's propensity to love and care for her child, especially if this child is expected or 'looked' as if s/he will not survive long enough, thus refuting that mothers inherently possess the instinct to love and care for her children.
Children born in Alto lack the traditional protection of breastfeeding, subsistence gardens, stable marriages, and multiple adult caregivers. In these shantytowns that spring up around urban centers marriages are "brittle" and single parenting the norm. Woman are forced to seek employment, working as domestics or in the fields of the sugar plantation for as little as a dollar a day, and cannot bring their babies with them, consequently older
Abu-Lughod (2002), focusing on superficial issues such as female dress codes in the Muslim world not only detracts from important underlying social and political issues. The notion that Muslim women need to be "saved" is a relic of a colonial past. Muslim women may have no trouble reconciling traditional garb like head scarves or even burkas with life in the modern world. Even when life in the modern world
The downside of these customs is more obvious in a modern world. Rural Irish villages typically had only about a dozen households, so marriage between second cousins was common (Schepper-Hughes, 2001). Prior to the 1950s, most marriages were arranged, so the experience of romantic love and attachment was uncommon. Under the weight of both social and religious sanctions against homosexuality, gay men and women could find themselves facing a life
Brazil's Street Kids Brazilian Street Children: A Historical and Causative Perspective The presence of children working and living in the streets of Brazil's cities and towns is nothing new. In the 1960s, these moleques, or scamps and rascals, were known for their ability to survive on the street using their own wits (Scheper-Hughes and Hoffman, 1994). They would try to find work when they could, beg in the streets when they couldn't,