[R]eports to the Surgeon General ... represent the final word upon the efficient and devoted sense of responsibility of our people... in this obligation to our fellow citizens. Overwhelmingly they confirm the fact that the general mortality rate, infant mortality rate, epidemics, the disease rate--are less than in normal times. There is but one explanation. That is, that through an aroused sense of public responsibility, those in destitution and their children are receiving actually more adequate care than even in normal times.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Just imagine for a moment what life in this country might have been if women had been properly represented in Congress. Would a Co...ngress where women in all their diversity were represented tolerate the countless laws now on the books that discriminate against women in all phases of their lives? Would a Congress with adequate representation of women have allowed this country to reach the 1970s without a national health care system? Would it have permitted this country to rank fourteenth in infant mortality among the developed nations of the world? Would it have allowed the situation we now have in which thousands of kids grow up without decent care because their working mothers have no place to leave them? Would such a Congress condone the continued butchering of young girls and mothers in amateur abortion mills? Would it allow fraudulent packaging and cheating of consumers in supermarkets, department stores and other retail outlets? Would it consent to the perverted sense of priorities that has dominated our government for decades, where billions have been appropriated for war while our human needs as a people have been neglected?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Families suffered badly under industrialization, but they survived, and the lives of men, women, and children improved. Children, ...once marginal and exploited figures, have moved to a position of greater protection and respect,... The historic decline in the overall death rates for children is an astonishing social fact, notwithstanding the disgraceful infant mortality figures for the poor and minorities. Like the decline in death from childbirth for women, this is a stunning achievement.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nor did the world have to await scientific progress to save the bulk of its children. The highest levels of infant mortality were ...never necessary. Children have always been something of an option. The only revolutionary change which modern medicine has offered us, very recently, is the expectation that all our children will survive and the confidence to invest our affections in them. But whether this will ensure that they will stand higher among our values will also prove to be a matter of attitude.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Normally an infant learns to use his mother as a "beacon of orientation" during the first five months of life. The mother's presen...ce is like a fixed light that gives the child the security to move out safely to explore the world and then return safely to harbor.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Fathers have a special excitement about them that babies find intriguing. At this time in his life an infant counts on his mother ...for rootedness and anchoring. He can count on his father to be just different enough from a mother. Fathers embody a delicious mixture of familiarity and novelty. They are novel without being strange or frightening.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The glorious dream of full father involvement in infant care will not become a widespread reality overnight. But it can happen, an...d it eventually will happen,... A lot of progress may take place in a short period of time if we just lighten up, step back, and give the guys a decent chance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A father who will pursue infant care tasks with ease and proficiency is simply a father who has never been led to believe he could...n't.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let's face it. With the singular exception of breast-feeding, there is nothing about infant care that a mother is innately better ...qualified to do than a father. Yet we continue to unconsciously perpetuate the myth that men just don't have what it takes to be true partners in the process.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »