Pueblo chico, infierno grande
Or, small town, big hell – we should know what that means by now, through direct experience of living in just such a place, except that there are lots of people around who don’t actually realise that it’s a big hell and who think that living in a pressure-cooker is normal, with everyone telling everyone else what to do, and offering unsolicited advice or pursing lemon-lips in disapproval.
A small story on www.timesofmalta.com some days ago attracted a stream of comments that reflect the ‘pueblo chico, infierno grande’ mentality to perfection, as does the very fact that the story was considered newsworthy in the first place. But I forget: our national newspapers also serve the purpose of a parish news-sheet at times. I am not criticising them in this. They are there to serve their market, and their market is a pueblo chico.
The big news is that, for the first time ever since the law was amended two years ago to allow mayors to marry people in local-council offices, a mayor did so last Sunday. With delicious irony, it was the mayor of San Lawrenz, one of the tiniest local councils in Malta, and even better, it was in Gozo. The bride was Maltese and the groom was Libyan.
Earlier this year, the mayor of Mosta – my mayor, incidentally, which is rather fabulous – made the news for the opposite reason. He refused to officiate at a civil marriage, on the grounds that he is a Catholic and that civil marriage goes against his conscience and his beliefs. Obviously, rational thought is not his strong point. Perhaps he expects nobody to marry unless it is by the Catholic rite and in a Catholic Church, even if they are not Catholics. He went even further than his own personal refusal to officiate, and declared that he would not permit civil marriages to take place on the council’s premises.
Fortunately, one of the bigger Catholic brains tackled him on that one. In an article called The Mullah of Mosta, the media specialist Fr Joe Borg wrote: “Though I am not planning on marrying either ecclesiastically or civilly I find this statement highly preposterous and offensive. Civil marriage was introduced in Malta by the Labour Government in 1975. Its introduction was beneficial to the (Catholic) Church. Before the introduction of civil marriage, all those who wanted to marry in Malta had to celebrate a church marriage. This forced also those who did not believe or who were not practising to perform an essentially religious act that they had no faith in. The introduction of civil marriage was positive to the (Catholic) Church because it helped her move away (at least in this aspect) from the cultural form of Christianity which characterised religious practice in Malta for centuries. Its introduction bestowed on an ever-increasing number of Maltese a basic human right. Now they could have their marriage sanctioned by the state and not by a church for which they cared not. People’s consciences were respected. Civil marriage is a right legally enjoyed by all who want to use it. No one, let alone the mayor of Mosta, can deprive them of this right. If he does not want to perform the ceremony I think he should have the right to abstain, but he has no right not to let the premises of the Mosta local council be used for this purpose.”
It appears that rather a lot of people in Malta reflect the mayor of Mosta’s pueblo chico, infierno grande mentality. The report on www.timesofmalta.com provoked a stream of comments that drew in divorce, the slipping of religious standards, and multiculturalism (my God, she married a Libyan).
One person saw a church marriage as something to do with tradition and heritage, rather than with religion. “What is so creative about getting married in a local council??,” she asked, multiple interrogation and exclamation marks having taken on a life of their own in cyber communication (apparently, in Malta, multiple exclamation marks indicate that heavy irony is being used, while multiple interrogation marks mean that the question is rhetorical). “Give me the beauty of our heritage and culture any day and that certainly abounds in our outstanding churches!! Just a matter of opinion. At the end of the day, each one to his own.” Indeed, madam – which begs the question as to why you felt the need to stick in your six cents’ worth.
Another person was brief and to the point: “Avvanz kbir, jien nghidlu tal-misthija.” Yet another one was more voluble, dragging breast-feeding into the non-issue of whether marriages should be conducted at local council offices (they can, there’s a law, and there’s no room for debate): “Another triumph for modernism and another nail into the coffin of Maltese culture. As they say what merits being “with it, modern and admired by the world” but then lose cultural soul, and ethos, and what makes us Maltese.” He added a postscript, carefully marked ‘P.S.’: “P.S. Being modern is not always an advance for humanity: e.g. the abandonment of breast feeding of babies (viewed as archaic, stultifying and female bondage) in favour of the modern and “liberating” formula feeding with the by now well known consequent negative repercussions on the development and survival of the child, especially in third world and developing countries.”
Funny how the conservative right and the woolly left are as one on the subject of breast-feeding, and intolerant of any liberal opinion which says that women should be able to use a bottle without being given a guilt-trip, because it’s poor hygiene and not bottle-feeding which harms babies.
The strange thing is that none of these people seems to realise that civil marriage has been around in Malta since 1975 (about the only good thing that government did, and then only to undermine and upset the Catholic Church, making the motivation all wrong). It doesn’t seem to have dawned on them that the civil rite was mandatory for all between 1975 and the early 1990s, when the government ceded some of the state’s rights (for which read, our rights) to the church in return for an agreement on church property and the setting up of the Joint Office. In that period, religious marriage rites didn’t count and went unrecorded by the state, which is why we all had to marry civilly as well as in church.
All those of us who married between 1975 and 1993 (I believe it was that year) were obliged to marry civilly even if we married in church. I married twice, once in church and once by the civil rite, in the sacristy with a ceremony performed by a public registry official, who by a happy coincidence also happened to be a guest at the wedding. It was the same for everyone else at the time, though from the kind of comments I’m hearing, I wonder what they imagine that ceremony in the sacristy was, if not a civil wedding. They can be forgiven their ignorance, given that the church and others didn’t help by using euphemisms: the couple popped into the sacristy ‘biex jiffirmaw’. Nobody actually came right out and said that it was an entirely separate marriage rite and, more to the point, the only one that counted and the only one that would go down in the public registry’s records.
The amendment to the law on civil marriage did not introduce civil marriage. It merely permits civil marriages to take place at local council offices, just as they had been taking place already at Villa Bologna, Palazzo Parisio, Villa Arrigo, hotels and restaurants, church sacristies, and wherever else people may choose to hold their wedding ceremony. Just look at this comment: “How come there is always something new, crazy or not in this tiny Malta. It looks like we are going down the drain like the rest of the world! Will there be a wedding reception for the council too?” Why not, if it brings in some extra income and helps pay for some more rubbish-bins? And I just love the thinking which holds that the rest of the world is down the drain and only il fior del mondo is not.
Here’s another one from somebody who hasn’t realised that civil marriages have been taking place in hotels, halls and church sacristies since 1975: “LOL.. I’m already imagining Las Vegas style weddings in Malta… with the Mayor dressing like Elvis..!!” Because, of course, if you have civil weddings then you have to go down the Las Vegas route, even though Malta has had civil marriage for 33 years and what you get is usually a bespectacled civil servant in a sober brown suit.
Then we have those who see this as a commercial opportunity, rather than a civil right: “As long as they generate revenue they can dress whatever they like!!!!!” One day soon, I might wake up to find that the average Maltese person has learned the difference in meaning between ‘dress’ and ‘wear’, but that’s by-the-by for now. Here’s another one: “This is a great opportunity for Wedding Tourism” – a proper noun, apparently – “especially for local wedding organisers. We can attract a lot more of these weddings with some creativity.” This person hasn’t realised that wedding tourism has been raking in foreign earnings for Malta for many years, with Ireland as the biggest market. What amuses me, though, is the implication that civil marriage in Malta is (1) a new thing, and (2) for barranin or Maltese who marry barranin.
Several of my friends and associates married solely by the civil rite, and this was years ago. I remember one particularly enjoyable celebration at an open-air nightclub on the outskirts of Rabat, at least 15 years ago. The irony is that these people are still together, bar one couple parted by death, while so many of those who married in church are not. I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I think it has a lot to do with the possibility that those who marry civilly do so primarily because they want to get married to each other, while with a church wedding, there are several other factors at play, including social pressure, the desire for a fairytale event and a big white dress, and the need to conform.
But all of that is irrelevant. What matters is that civil marriage has been around since 1975, and that the only thing different now is that you can be married by the mayor at a local council office. The question is, why would you want to, when there are so many more attractive locations. It doesn’t make us Las Vegas, and as can be seen from the reactions of some people, it doesn’t make us 21st century, either.
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Very good article, Daphne. It seems that people are still on some kind of time warp as regards civil marriages. As regards the mayor of Mosta, what did you expect from someone who is slightly eccentric BUT very Labour? Did he object to civil marriage legislation when it was introduced in the 70’s? No he didnt and i believe he was either a candidate or an MP at that time. Church marriages are for those who believe that the union should be a three way one, with Christ as a guiding light of the marriage. If other people believe otherwise and want to get married by civil rite, let them! I cant understand how so many people here wish to impose their moral beliefs on others. What is it with these people? Dont they have anything better to do with their time? They sound like Jerry Falwell and his US Moral Majority, made up of bible thumpers from the deep south. We need divesity in Malta before this insularity drives everyone mad.
On another note, I see that dear Mrs Tistatkunint has made the covers of both main Sunday Magazines, plus some more. What a feat! No one ever managed it before! Must have cost a bomb!. How come you didnt get her on the front page of your Taste? (hehhehe)
Thanks Daphne for this great article. I have lived abroad for more than 6 years and one day wish to return but the Maltese mentality scares me especially when you put it so bluntly in writing. I have lived in Austria and France and marrying in the City Hall which I assume for us would be the Local Council is part of the law. Couples have to go to the City Hall before going to church. There is an urgent need for the Maltese to be sent on training abroad to see what the real world is like!
Re breast feeding.. I was under the impression that the case against formula milk was that it was not as nutritious (especially the version sold in third world countries) and in this way the child did not get the benefit of the mother’s antibodies. As for the rest, LOL …if nothing else, the comments pages of The Times confirm the paucity of knowledge in this blessed isle. That people who can’t be bothered to look up the facts think they have a right to comment is, i suppose, the price of democracy.
[Daphne – Formula milk is perfectly nutritious, certainly more so than the milk of a tired, frazzled mother who isn’t eating or sleeping properly – regardless of what the Breast is Best Terrorists would have us believe. Health, strength, height and intelligence are largely genetic, and no amount of breast v. bottle arguments are going to change that. The fight against formula milk is taken out of context in Europe and North America. It started as a reaction to the marketing of formula milk in Third World countries where clean water and hygiene were absent, leading to widespread gastroenteritis among babies. The same situation does not apply in the western world, and even if a baby should get gastroenteritis, health care is immediately available and the child recovers within 24 hours. But as everyone knows by now, I have no time or patience for the Breast is Best campaigners. It’s just another way of terrorising women into staying in their place. At root, it doesn’t really have anything to do with the baby and everything to do with women’s role.]
Let’s not make fun of getting married in Las Vegas by an Elvis impersonator, as it happens to be what I want to do at one point in my life (although admittedly, it would be a renewal of vows, as I’m married already).
Let these people shout away and make an embarrassment of themselves. My wife and I had a lovely ceremony at Selmun Palace by a civil registrar and I wouldn’t change one bit of it. We made it a point of making it OUR wedding and not something to please relatives, official doctrine or anyone else.
Mario, on your point on Jerry Falwell – the great bigot who thought acceptance of homosexuality was a key factor in nine-eleven – may I be so bold to quote what Christopher Hitchens said about his demise: “If you gave him an enema, you could bury him in a matchbox”.
Good article – but you forgot to mention that the mayor stressed that they “will be getting married in church soon” and that he was “following them closely”!!
Daphne, would you write a similarly scathing article on a local doctor if said doctor refuses to carry out an abortion in an nhs hospital when and if abortion becomes legal in Malta?
[Daphne – No, I wouldn’t. This is because, unlike the majority of those who oppose abortion because the Pope told them to do so, I understand that opposition to abortion can come from SECULAR reasoning and be rooted in humanistic thought. In other words, there are non-religious reasons for objection to abortion. There are no non-religious reasons for objection to civil marriages. I think it is unfortunate that the Religious Right insists on making no distinction between abortion, divorce and civil marriage.]
@ G Attard : It is perfectly normal in Malta to get married in a hotel or the local council. Pat’s marriage wasn’t reported on the papers. Years ago a journalist got married in a hotel and we saw it on TV, no one frowned upon her, or commented about the couple’s choice.
If one gets married in a Church the signing of the papers of the civil marriage is also done in the church , sort of “one stop shop”.
Journalists tend to blow things out of proportion when they have nothing to write about,or want to deviate the public from the real issues….. our Daphne included.
I have travelled quite a lot and find no better place than Malta .
If one reads this “running commentary” only, one would think that men do not go out shopping alone or with their wives , here in Malta. This is far from the truth , at least in this part of the island where I live , this is a normal errand which we do daily, while wife is on the internet checking the family bank account or preparing to go to work.
Nowadays people in Malta are too busy trying to cope with their own ‘business’. We are more worried about the big political parties who are prying into our private lives , these Big Brothers are the modern version of the old nosey neighbours in our streets .
@ Daphne: breast milk is the best a baby can have from its mother, it’s good for the baby and beneficial for the mother.
May I also add that formula milk is second best for the baby and a mother should not have any guilt feelings if she cannot breast-feed her baby. The fathers should encourage actively the mothers to breast-feed their offspring .
Breast feeding should be encouraged not discouraged .It is beneficial for everyone.
[Daphne – “If one gets married in a Church the signing of the papers of the civil marriage is also done in the church , sort of “one stop shop”. You’re out of date there, John. In 1993, the Catholic Church was given special privileges over all other churches, during the negotiations for the transfer of its property for administration by the Joint Office. Since then, anyone who gets married in a Catholic Church doesn’t need to get married civilly too. Of course, what this means is that when it comes to filing for a civil annulment, if one of the two objects, then the other is left high and dry.
“Journalists tend to blow things out of proportion when they have nothing to write about,or want to deviate the public from the real issues….. our Daphne included.” Have you read the stream of comments beneath this story on http://www.timesofmalta.com? I think not.
“I have travelled quite a lot and find no better place than Malta.” Typical – so many people in Malta travel merely to receive reassurance that they live in il fior del mondo. Amusingly, they have their parallel in Little Englanders, who do the same. My response to travel is the opposite: I realise just on how many counts we fail, and that our advantages are all geographic and not manmade, which means that we cannot claim credit for them. Even the sense of community is the result of our small size, and in any case, it can be just as big a hell as it can be a positive thing.
Your views on breast-feeding are pointless. It makes absolutely no difference to a baby in the modern world whether it is breastfed or not. On the other hand, it makes a huge difference to the mother and her ability to get on with things. My sons were breastfed for no more than three weeks, and then only as a result of bullying and emotional blackmail at the state hospital. They are all strong, healthy and intelligent. I, too, was breastfed only briefly and have so far been as strong as an ox. I object to your advice to fathers to encourage their wives to breastfeed their babies. Fathers should stay out of it, since they are not going to be involved in any of the hassle, and indeed, it gives them an excuse not to wake up at night and prepare a bottle. As a three-times mother, my advice to women is this: don’t let anyone bully you and if they try, tell them in no uncertain terms to butt out because it’s none of their damned business.]
Well as regards to breast vs formula I am no expert. All I know is that my 3 boys are all bottle fed and even though the eldest is only 3 he is by far the tallest in his class and all 3 certainly show no signs of problems!
[Daphne – You don’t have to be an expert. As one prime minister once famously said, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. And that’s why you see so many puny breast-fed babies and so many tough and strong bottle-fed ones, because it’s all to do with genes – and also the fact, dare I say it, that lots of breast-fed babies are actually under-fed and under-nourished, and it shows.]
For the record: actress Brigitte Nielsen married her *fifth* husband in Malta in 2006.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Brigitte-Nielsen-Adds-Hubby-No-5-to-the-List-29129.shtml
[Daphne – But she was foreign, a show-girl and a heathen, so it didn’t count. Not like when a nice Maltese woman married a Libyan at a local council office in Gozo.]
Thanks for a great article Daphne. Do you know how the mullah of Mosta story ended? Is he still refusing to allow civil marriages on “his” premises and has anyone tried to force the issue?
[Daphne – Nobody has applied to be married there, but he has been told he will not be allowed to set his own rules.]
One other story last week that had me rubbing my eyes was the court case against the (former?) administrator of MUSEUM and how he made seven loans totaling more than one million Euros to a single individual over five years. Aside from the question of whether a society that offers catechism should be in the money lending business (only some of these loans were not authorized by the executive committee and the director), how in the world does an Church organization like MUSEUM end up having one million Euros in surplus cash for over the counter loans?
Once again, Daphne a very good article. In little Malta many people have little minds. They can only think whithin the parameters of what they think is right because that is what they were taught at Cathecism classes. Quite a lot of Maltese think that the Catholic Church’s doctrine is what any Maltese government should follow when legislating – other religious groups have no say and no rights eg re divorce- a Catholic cannot divorce so QED no one else can. No divorce law would interfere with a Catholic’s faith. Catholics won’t divorce (or are they afraid that a few Catholics will?).
Non-catholics and non believers should have this right. Try and explain this to some RCs! Mammia mia!
Some good news for a change –
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/09/1558241
obviously not as important as Mittsgate or Pianogate so it didn’t appear in the local press (as far as I know) – might have been good to use as another ‘alienating’ tactic to keep the cittadin’s mind off high bills and government corruption, eh?
Setting up a group to support milk. Hahaha. How low can one go? I’d rather advocate ensuring children eat fruit, vegetables and meat rather than consuming fats, junk food, pastizzi and the lot.
Mela l-ewwel jgeghlu lill-ommijiet biex jreddghu lit-trabi, umbad l-istess ommijiet jbellaw il-hnizrijiet li semmejt, lill-uliedom meta jikbru ftit iktar. U le le.
No wonder we’re a nation of semi-sumo wrestlers.
I’m rather surprised that comments posted on the TOM website were given importance in the first place…it appears to be such a shoddy forum.
Daphne, I’m not a woman, and have thus never breast-fed, but why is it more hassle than formula? My wife breast-fed for the first 8 months. She didn’t do it because she was forced to, and in fact until the day the baby was born, she had decided to bottle feed. We’d bought the whole lot, steriliser, bottles etc etc. Maybe the mythical mother/baby bond told her to breast feed, I don’t know, but she tried it once, and it just went on from there. As far as it being a hassle, it’s so much easier to pull up your top and offer the milk, sterilised and at the right temperature than faffing around with bottles. Isn’t it?
My wife had absolutely no qualms though of feeding our daughter wherever she was, whoever was looking. I guess that made it easier!
Oh, and as for the father not having to get up, our routine was when the baby got up, she would feed her, then it was my job to get her back to sleep(not always an easy job), allowing my wife to get some rest before the next feed. Worked for us!
[Daphne – Why is it more of a hassle? Because it takes for-bloody-ever, that’s why. You’re sitting there with a baby latched onto your tit – excuse the expression – while all around the laundry piles up, lunch goes unmade, there’s dirt and mess everywhere and, assuming the baby on the tit is not the only one, the other children are left to their own devices. Breastfeeding is for people with full-time maids (and full-time nannies if they have other children) or for those who are happy to live in near-squalid conditions. Oh, and it is virtually impossible to get babies into a routine when they’re breastfed, which means that they’re howling, screaming, sleeping, wanting to be fed at all kinds of unpredictable hours, and I honestly wonder how people cope under those conditions. The aim of all sensible parents used to be to get a baby to go to bed for the night by 7pm and not wake up before 6am. I hardly hear of that happening any more, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that babies’ routines were all shot to hell round about the time this batty breast-feeding obsession came into play. Your solution of both parents waking up, one to feed and the other to get the baby to sleep, may have worked for you, but my manager’s soul rebels against such inefficient organisation and use of resources. It makes far more sense for one to wake up and do all the duties while the other sleeps, taking it in turns that way. What exactly is the point of having both parents frazzled and awake? That’s what I mean about breast-feeding being damned inconvenient. Now if you had used a bottle, you could have done the sensible, efficient thing and taken it in turns. And I somehow suspect – I speak as a woman, remember – that your wife’s insistence on your getting up to rock the baby to sleep after she had fed it had more to do with resentment about your lying in bed than anything else, though of course, being a nice woman she would have told you that she needed to get her rest, rather than that she was cheesed off seeing you get yours.]
Tony Blair, Robert Mugabe & Mintoff all died & went straight to
hell……
Tony Blair said ‘I miss England, I want to call England
and see how everybody is doing there.
He called and talked for about 5 minutes, then he asked
‘Well ,devil how much do I owe you for the call????
The devil says ’10 million dollars.’ He wrote him a cheque and went to sit back on his chair.
Robert Mugabe was so jealous, he starts screaming, ‘My turn! I wanna call the Zimbabwe, I want to see how everybody is doing there too!’ He called and talked for about 2 minutes, then he asked ‘Well, devil how much do I owe you???? The devil says ‘5 million dollars.’ With a smug look on his face, he made a cheque and went to sit back on his chair.
Mintoff was even more jealous & starts screaming, ‘Me call Malta I want to talk to Eddie, Afred, Joe & Lawrence’
He called Malta and he talked for about twenty hours, he talked & talked & talked, then he asked ‘Well, devil how much I owe you????
The devil says ‘One dollar’.
Mintoff is stunned & says ‘One dollar??? Only one dollar??’
The devil says ‘Well if you make a call from one hell to another, you only pay local charges.’
@ Steve : my wife also chose to breast-feed our three sons, I did not force her I just did what was needed around the house, no maids. I would not tell you for how long she breast-fed them , because Daphne will pounce on me.LOL.
Breast milk is better it contains what the baby needs for its growth. When researchers developed formula milk I am sure that they checked what properties breast milk contains, and tried to imitate the natural formula. In China they went one step too much and melamine was added to formula milk, with disastrous effects.
If a mother cannot breast feed she should not feel guilty.
[Daphne – You know, John – you just illustrate my point that one of the few things the religious right and the woolly left have in common is breastfeeding. Your last sentence just about sums it up.]
Without putting too fine a point to it, I will say one thing: midwives and the breastfeeding brigade behave like Nazis and bully/force mothers to breastfeed against their will. My mum had 4 kids and we were never breastfed, not even for one minute. We’re all in good health. My mum drilled it into us that if we want to have wives/be wives with acute neurosis, then we should breastfeed our offspring. She is very adamant. A child on the breast never gets enough to fill its stomach, the result of which makes the mother very nervous. A vicious circle ensues. The child starts feeling the tension, will not sleep, and there’s chaos. Sadly, my sisters decided to breastfeed, and this is exactly what happened. My sister stuck it for almost a year, until my mother told her off and said that she wouldn’t babysit any longer a fretful child who was also constantly hungry. That made her see sense. My other younger sister, who should have known better, was “persuaded” to breastfeed, and promptly gave my niece influenza at two weeks. She stopped when my mother and our family doctor, who abhors breastfeeding, again intervened. My wife, being also bottle-fed, and being of a slightly wiser disposition, didn’t breastfeed. My son is the tallest boy in his class, thank god (no doubt having a near 7 foot grandfather helped, because my family is not tall), and he was never ill when a baby. He was like a bloody metronome with perfect clockwork. Feed, nappy, sleep for 3 hours, feed, nappy, sleep. He is also articulate, strong as a bloody ox, and not “marradi”. My daughter is different, she is strong and not prone to sickness, but man, she is a sleepless baby. She gets by with 4 hours, the rest she is awake and making her prescience felt…..a true representative of her sex! What I can say is this. I have seen many women come into my pharmacies who persist in breastfeeding while taking copious amounts of antidepressants, and who immediately change their lives once someone drills into their heads that they should bottle-feed. I also know many women who breastfeed with no problems and are serene about it, who generally manage. What can I say? Breastfeeding, like Marmite is not for everyone. Let’s foster free informed choice, not make the mother feel like a criminal if she doesn’t breastfeed. And no, I don’t believe that breast milk is best. That’s balderdash, and has never been conclusively proved by anyone. Except by those who resent the profits that formula producers make.
Daphne – No, I wouldn’t. This is because, unlike the majority of those who oppose abortion because the Pope told them to do so, I understand that opposition to abortion can come from SECULAR reasoning and be rooted in humanistic thought. In other words, there are non-religious reasons for objection to abortion. There are no non-religious reasons for objection to civil marriages. I think it is unfortunate that the Religious Right insists on making no distinction between abortion, divorce and civil marriage.
I really subscribe to this point of view. I object to abortion because its goes against my humanity, not because the church , in its finite wisdom, tells me its wrong. I can see the case where it may be necessary to abort however ,in cases where there is a clear miscarriage of nature that will result in a grossly deformed vegetative offspring.
Re-Breast milk and formula milk – Well let’s not generalise. Every mother should feed her baby what suits them best. I breastfed my son for a long time, went back to work two months after the birth and our house was always tidy. My husband and I juggled between us with regards babysitting and when the baby was eighteen months I sent him to day care in order to combine our working hours and he never drank an ounce of formula milk.
Today he’s five years old, very independent and definetely not puny, under-nourished or under-fed.
I think every mother should be given the right to choose what is best for her and her baby and not be co-erced to do what other “experts” say, be it for, or against breastmilk.
Daphne, you wrote that in hospital you were forced to breast-feed your babies, well in my case the opposite happened. I gave birth in a private hospital, and the first thing the midwife did was bring us a box of formula milk, but I was so determined to breast-feed that I threw it away upon arriving home.
@AXavier. Good one, but it’s so-o-o-o old. We used to tell it in the seventies when Malta was indeed hell under Mintoff!
Oh Christ. First it was Elvis in San Lawrenz, and now we ended up talking about breastfeeding with some parental pride about “my son being seven foot five and built like a brick privy” thrown in for good measure. What is it with you chaps?
As chico as the pueblo may be, this article is still about an obtuse town mayor and a few online comments. Hardly a prairie fire, let alone an infierno. A glow-worm, perhaps.
@ Daphne : what does breastfeeding have to do with politics or religion?
Where would you pigeon hole Janine , Mario Debono and Steve?
Religious right and wooly left ,….. u hallina!
I think you want to justify why you did not breastfeed your children for long . Your circumstances were different from other mothers who chose to breastfeed their babies .
No need to launch a crusade against breastfeeding !
[Daphne – What does breastfeeding have to do with politics or religion? Here is the short answer: traditionalism, conservatism, control of women on the one hand (the Religious Right) and on the woolly Left, anti-capitalism (the formula-milk makers), radical feeding (getting your tits out anywhere and everywhere, and God help anyone who objects), back-to-nature, nature and environmentalism as the new religion. I won’t go on. Breast-feeding is never just breast-feeding, which is why it evokes such strong passions which are, essentially, political (not party, that is) and religious. And no, John – my circumstances were not different; I was different. And that’s why I also rejected the tyranny of duttrina, unlike legions of other mothers of my acquaintance, who live non-church-going lives, think duttrina is dreadful, complain in public that it makes life impossible after school, and yet still conform to the rules. Whenever I hear those loud complaints, I want to say: hey, remember that duttrina is optional, not the law, so if you don’t like it, just don’t do it. It’s the same with feeding babies, unfortunately – all that pressure to conform, and, as Mario Debono pointed out here, all those new mothers with post-natal depression. Why?]
Daphne, I’ll grant you the fact that it’s difficult to get breastfed babies on a routine, but I still think it’s easier to just whip out a tit (your expression!) than mess around with bottles etc etc.
Anyway, I think the whole point here, as with abortion, is that it should be the woman’s choice (with input from her husband, as for better or for worse, they’re in it together, or at least they should be) what she does. It’s true the breast-feed brigade can be Nazi-like, but the anti-breast-feed lot can be just as tyrannical. What really gets me is those on either side who even though they’ve never had to make the choice themselves (breast vs formula or abortion vs life) who want to inflict there beliefs on others. Those who have been through it, although they have opinions, are usually less militant about it.
That breastfeeding is best for babies isnt something invented by those who are resentful of the profit of furmula makers…but confirmed by tons and tons of medical research . Anyway its everything about giving women the right to choose wheter she wants to breastfeed or not .and again breastfeeding isnt the cause of postnatal depression ..while having a ceasarean section makes you more prone..
[Daphne – No, it isn’t confirmed by ‘tons and tons of medical research’. There is no way on earth that medical research can confirm (or for that matter disprove) whether breast milk is better for babies than formula milk, because there are inbuilt deficiencies in the control group mechanism. So you have 20 babies, 10 of whom are breastfed and 10 of whom are formula-fed. Of the first group, three fail to thrive. Of the second group, three get colds. How does the research team conclude that failure to thrive is a direct result of breast-feeding, rather than other factors? Or that the other three got colds because they were bottle-fed? All babies are not born equal, and ‘research’ cannot take into account genetic and environmental factors. Using my own case as an example – the only one I feel comfortable talking about, not to drag third parties into it: let’s say I had been breast-fed for a year instead of being an Ostermilk baby. What would the difference have been? Would I have been 5’9″ instead of 5’7″? Would I have got a cold every 10 years instead of every five years as I do now? Would I have been even leaner than I was (past tense)? Would I have become a rocket scientist? I don’t think so. The last time this debate exploded, a couple of years ago, my cousin who is a gynaecologist sent me an article from the British Medical Journal, about precisely this subject: that studies on the superior benefits of breast-milk consider neither (1) genetic factors nor (2) the educational level of the mother. In the western world, the higher the educational level of the mother, the more likely she is to breast-feed. Working-class mothers are more likely to bottle-feed. So what happens in ‘research’ is that breast-fed babies give better showings for health and intelligence, when really their advantage is not that they were breast-fed but that they had a well-educated mother and, hence, a privileged upbringing.]
Imagine the looks on the face of some of the primitive people commenting in The Times, were they to learn that my wedding (in a local hotel) was officiated by a woman.
John Schembri: “In China they went one step too much and melamine was added to formula milk, with disastrous effects.”
That wasn’t a step further. It was a step backwards. Melamine wasn’t added to improve the milk. It was done to improve the milk producers’ profits.
@ Daphne:
From what you wrote I got the (wrong) impression that you didn’t breastfeed because you could not cope, like we did.
[Daphne – John, if I can cope with my current workload, you can bet your last cent that I would have coped with titty-feeding had I a mind to, which I didn’t.]
“My wife had absolutely no qualms though of feeding our daughter wherever she was, whoever was looking.”
According to Maltese case history you can be arrested for defilement if even a 16 yr old sees you do that! Even if said 16 yr old sees you doing it in your house! :)
But anyway, shouldn’t a person breastfeeding respect others right not to have to see it and do it in a secluded place? I don’t appreciate seeing a lactating mother’s tit whilst eating in a restaurant for example!
[Daphne – I agree with you there. I think it’s really crass, vulgar and offensive to others.]
The best thing would be to leave each mother to do as she wishes. Some mothers prefer to give out bottles, some prefer to spend 1,000 calories a day, while sitting down. And let’s face it, a lot of women need some help shedding the baby weight, and breastfeeding is a very easy way to do it.
To each, her own.
[Daphne – Yes, to each her own, but myths about weight-loss do no one any good. Lactating mothers need to eat more, and so they put on weight rather than shedding it. The lactating mothers of my time were all cuddly (their boobs alone must have weighed a few kilos), whereas I was a size 6 within days of giving birth.]
Daphne – Re duttrina: well said. I’d add the Ta’ Kana Course for good measure too.
X’differenza taghmel jekk hux halib tal-baqra jew ta’ mara? Din ghiduli biss.
Daphne:
With all due respect, but don’t you think that this diatribe is going way over the top? I mean did it occur to you that you are not really all that different from plenty of other women who did what they had to do in these and other circumstances , decades before you did, but unlike yourself did not feel the obsessive compulsion to keep reminding the world about it 24/7?
[Daphne – Decades before I did what I did, the breast-feeding terrorists and Nazis did not exist, which is why I and almost all my friends were bottle-fed. I do not remind the world about it 24/7. I bring it up roughly every couple of years, when I see that the Nipple Nazis are still at it, instead of minding their own business. I can’t stand the way they give vulnerable women – and women are at their most vulnerable when they give birth – a ruddy great guilt trip that nobody needs on top of all else they have to cope with.]
@Tonio oh I know that joke is old, no comparison to these days for sure, you missed out the irony though because that was the whole point.
I breastfed my first child for 5 months. She cried all the time, drank at all hours day and night and slept very little. As a hindsight, she probably cried so much because she wasn’t feeding properly. This was because after the first few minutes of feeding, she would fall asleep at my breast, only to wake up again as soon as I tried to slowly move her away from me to put her back in her cot. Then she would start sucking again and so on all day, and with breastfeeding, a mother cannot know how much a baby is really drinking. I was nervous, tired, upset, and the house in a constant mess (there’s not much a woman can do with a baby hanging onto her breast!). Why I stuck it out for 5 months? Because I too was brainwashed into trying to do what’s ‘right’ for my first baby. Thankfully, when I had my second child, I was determined to do what’s right by me – bottle feed. No one was going to send me on some guilt trip this time. One full bottle, 3 hours straight of deep sleep, another bottle, and so forth. Believe me, it was heaven after the experience with the first one, and looking back, I realised that I had not actually enjoyed those first months of motherhood. Oh and no one has mentioned what happens to a woman’s breasts after she stops breastfeeding (especially prolonged breastfeeding), but I won’t go into that – it’s still a sore point (no pun intended).
Daphne, when you refused to take your kids to duttrina, where you threatened that if you don’t, the church (read Curia) will not allow them to take the holy communion and confirmation sacraments? Because I was, and it was not a frivolous threat, the parish priest told me outright that if my kids did not attend duttrina regularly, he will have to report such details to Curia who in turn, and I quote ‘ma jaghtux permess li t-tfal jersqu ghas-sagramenti’. I then succumbed and took my kids to duttrina twice a week, again trying to do what’s right for them.
Thankfully now that I’m over 40, all the indoctrination, brainwashing, guilt trips, etc that I was brought up with, have all been washed away, and I make it a point not to make the same mistake with my kids.
[Daphne – Your child doesn’t need permission to receive holy communion for the first time. That’s one of those absolute-control myths. All he has to do is walk up the aisle and open his mouth at any mass at any time. Permission is needed only for that big-white-dress thing with all the children in the parish. As for confirmation, why bother? If your child decides at 18, 28, or 38 that he wants to be confirmed as a Catholic, then he can get it done himself, and if he doesn’t want to, then it’s his business. Anyway, I wasn’t part of this parish business because parish to me doesn’t mean community. It means prying.]
@Daphne
I want to say: hey, remember that duttrina is optional….
You’re wrong there Daph, children who do not attend for at least 75% of duttrina lessons will not have their First Holy Communion or Confirmation (whichever is the case). We have received a letter from the Parish Priest (at Tarxien at least) to confirm this.
[Daphne – You don’t need permission to receive holy communion. You just whizz up the aisle and open your mouth. You need permission for the big white dress parade, but again, that’s optional unless you’re the kind who thinks it’s obligatory to conform. Confirmation: why have your child confirmed? If he wants to be confirmed, he can get it done himself as an adult – without duttrina. Your definition of optional is clearly not the same as mine. The big white dress parade and confirmation are both optional, but if you don’t realise this, then of course, you’re bound to think that duttrina is obligatory too.]
@Daphne
Have you read this?
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20081207/local/boy-charged-with-attempted-rape-of-his-sister
It happened in Gozo (again)!
And this?
http://www.illum.com.mt/2008/11/30/t1.html
Especially
Alfred Sant u Joe Debono Grech, li sal-bieraħ kienu għadhom qed jissemmew li se jitfgħu n-nomina, baqgħu m’għamlux dan.
AS as MEP? They must be joking!!
Why is it crass and vulgar to feed your own child in public? It’s the most natural thing in the world.
[Daphne – So are crapping, vomiting and copulating, but we don’t do them in public.]
Yeah, can we go back to discussing politics? This breastfeeding business is getting on my tits.
[Daphne – So are crapping, vomiting and copulating, but we don’t do them in public.]
so you equate crapping, vomiting and copulation with nourishing your child from your own breast?
Pheeeeew, tall order.
:(
[Daphne – Don’t be disingenuous. I use them to illustrate the point that not all natural functions should be performed in public, and not all natural functions are deemed suitable displays for the eyes of strangers or even familiars. I have no more wish to see some strange woman suckling her child than I have to see her take a dump or indulge in some heavy petting. Exhibitionists invade other people’s privacy. The hilarious thing is that the women who have no qualms about noisily suckling their infants in a cafe then take those infants to some private spot to change their nappy after the inevitable post-feeding result. I wonder why they imagine we will find their baby’s bottom more offensive than their breast – or maybe they don’t mind us looking at their breasts, but they don’t want us looking at their baby’s bottom in case paedophiles lurk among us.]
“I don’t appreciate seeing a lactating mother’s tit whilst eating in a restaurant for example.” I agree.. and many mothers who do it make it a point of being as in-your-face as possible. Mind you, back in the 80s there used to be a small group of old men on the Tower Road promenade who’d stongly disagree with you. They would brave the midday sun for as long as it took just to get a glimpse of a tit.
@ Steve: Hunters use that ‘hey, it’s only natural’ excuse too.
Breastfeeding has an advantage that no one mentioned – it is free of charge.
[Daphne – No, it isn’t. It comes at a tremendous cost to the mother. If she doesn’t care, then fine, it’s up to her. But don’t say that it’s free because nothing is.]
I find myself agreeing with most of what Daphne says about this breastfeeding business. Women ARE pressured into breastfeeding and made to feel guilty, at a time when they are most vulnerable, if they do not wish to do it – which is a real shame. Not every woman can, or wants to, breastfeed.
Also, breastfeeding makes a difference between life and death in countries where clean water is not to be found, and the level of hygiene is abysmal. It does not make such a difference to the baby’s well-being in countries like Malta, where clean water is available, as well as education about the basics of hygiene and the sterilization of all the baby paraphernalia needed for feeding.
“A. Attard Wednesday, 10 December 0756hrs
Breastfeeding has an advantage that no one mentioned – it is free of charge.”
What’s more, it comes in attractive containers, at the right temperature and the cat can’t get at it either.
She’s back! :)
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20081210/letters/condom-promotion-is-an-invitation-to-sin
Thank God Malta is not Muslim. I say this only because judging from the mentality of many people we would have the worst version of Sharia law in place had the Knights not put up a good defence 500 years ago.
Just from a purely medical perspective.
Breast feeding has been shown to definitely reduce the risk of Coeliac Disease and most probably asthma. Coeliac disease is a fairly common disorder affecting around 1% of the Western World.
The so called Swedish Coeliac “epidemic” of the late 70’s and 80’s has indicated that coeliac disease can be precipitate through three factors, age at which gluten (cereal) is introduced, amount of gluten introduced and whether breastfeeding was ongoing or not when gluten was introduced. It is recommended that gluten should not be introduced before the age of 6 months and breastfeeding weaned slowly whilst gluten is introduced.
At present studies are being undertaken to identify the maximum recommended age of introduction of gluten as it seems that introducing gluten after the age of 1 year increases the risk of coeliac disease.
In addition, during the first few weeks after birth, the immune system of the baby is in fact enhanced through immune proteins present in the mother’s milk – something that cannot be fond in formula feed.
So though mothers should feel free and not pressurised to breastfeeding (psychologically this can cause some problems), we should give accurate information on the benefits of breasfeeding and not in an emotional way.
[Daphne – Why exactly would a baby in a highly developed society need its immune system enhanced? To guard against the common cold? Non vale la pena. And I’d be interested to see the controls for studies linking formula milk to coelic disease. With all the coeliacs I know, it seems to be genetic. There’s invariably more than one in the family.]
Kenneth Cassar – Your wedding was officiated by a woman in a hotel – so was mine.
“So are crapping, vomiting and copulating” Come on Daphne, be reasonable. What have crapping, vomiting and copulating got to do with breast-feeding? You’re in serious danger of becoming what you most despise! In the breast-feeding versus formula debate, you are clearly in the formula camp. If someone want’s to breast feed, and you happen to get a look at a tit, what’s the problem, why the hostility? I would have got you down as having an opinion (always), but also someone who respects other’s opinions. In this case you’re saying women can’t breast feed because you don’t want to see it.
[Daphne – What they have in common is that they are all bodily functions which third parties have absolutely no desire to observe, unless they happen to have a particular kind of perverse fetish. The problem isn’t with looking at tits, in the same way that the problem with seeing somebody excrete isn’t with catching an unwarranted glimpse of his or her backside. Other people’s bodily functions are off-putting to others. How difficult is this to understand? I’m not saying that women can’t breastfeed. My point, in case you missed it, is that women should do what THEY want to do, and not what others tell them is best. But they should know that breast and bottle do not equate in the social context and that just because the mother with the bottle brings it out anywhere and everywhere, it doesn’t mean they can do the same. They can suckle their kids where other people don’t have to look at them. Or do they not realise that it’s offensive and arrogant to force the spectacle on others?]
It’s not free of charge if you have to eat more. Now can we please change subject? This is getting boring. I need my fix of politics.
A. Attard – You must be a man, and a penny-pinching one at that!
Just an hour ago on Italian TV we saw a mother breastfeeding her baby, calmly talking to Raffaella “in diretta”. Caramba she won €207,000.
[Daphne – We see lots of other things on Italian television that we don’t necessarily want to see emulated in real life: the portrayal of women from empty-vessel valletta to casalinga fussing over white sheets, for a start. Or perhaps, given that the Italians have ceased to reproduce, they’re trying to start something up.]
I’m sorry but not all bodily functions are equal. How you equate breast-feeding with any of the other bodily functions I don’t know. We’ll have to agree to disagree on this one. You state that it’s ok for a mother to whip out a bottle and feed her baby in public, but to whip out her tit is not. You also say that it’s not the tit that offends you, so it must be the actual feeding baby. The container for the milk may be different, but the suckling baby is exactly the same. It must be the tit that offends you.
[Daphne – Steve, there’s a time and place for everything, that’s all.]
“there’s a time and place for everything, that’s all”
True, and anyone who has had a baby knows that it’s the baby that chooses both the time and the place. Only last week, I was on a crowded flight, and a mother breast-fed her baby half way through the flight. What did you expect her to do, go to the toilet to do it?
oh and btw, my comments here about breast feeding are not because I strongly believe that it’s the one and only true way of nourishing babies, but because I believe in a mother’s choice to breast-feed, and that she can do it where ever she may be, without the harsh looks of disapproval from those who believe she should find a dark alley to do it in.
Women all over the EU have been suckling their infants in public for decades and no one so much as turns a hair.
Breasts are meant to suckle infants not be used in some big advert plastered all over the main roads to sell a commodity. That is perverse, obscene, offensive and arrogant. In my humble opinion , of course.
[Daphne – Steve, there’s a time and place for everything, that’s all.]
Female nudity plastered in gigantic posters in public thoroughfares to sell cars, household appliances, roof compound, bathroom fittings is ok though, is’nt it , so long as it is to market a product.
[Daphne – I don’t think that’s acceptable either, Sybil. Every day just before I get home, I have to drive past a vast backside in a G-string, advertising a drink. It’s obscene.]
“[Daphne – Why exactly would a baby in a highly developed society need its immune system enhanced? To guard against the common cold? Non vale la pena. And I’d be interested to see the controls for studies linking formula milk to coelic disease. With all the coeliacs I know, it seems to be genetic. There’s invariably more than one in the family.]”
You really must share your vast experience in paediatric medicine with the rest of us.
[Daphne – I know just enough about the subject not to be conned by drivel.]
By the way, an added bonus of the bottle – My youngest son is barely two months and already sleeps uninterruptedly from 9 p.m. to about 8 a.m. Now if that’s not a bonus I don’t know what is!
[Daphne – People who are fixated on breast-feeding wouldn’t know what you’re talking about.]
[Christian Scerri – Breast feeding has been shown to definitely reduce the risk of coeliac disease and most probably asthma.]
In reality it is not known whether breastfeeding protects against the life-long risk of developing coeliac disease although it has been found to protect (though not guarantee)against the development of the disease in childhood. Therefore breastfeeding may only be delaying the onset of the disease rather than actually preventing its life-long development.
A genetic factor is certainly involved, as you would know, as is a racial factor, the disease being much more common in some peoples than others.
Daphne, Coeliac disease is a polyfactorial genetic disease – that is, there is a genetic contribution arising from the combination of a number of diverse genes as well as environmental factors. Thus it is not possible to accurately predict who shall suffer from this disorder or at what age. This is in contrast to the mode of inheritance of the disorders known as single gene disorders (and even here, the picture is not 100% clear either) such as dystrophy or thalassaemia or cystic fibrosis.
As for the studies, understand that for a study to be published in a journal of repute, it requires vigorous peer review and possibly re-testing (I know, I have just had a paper accepted for publication in a major journal on the discovery of a novel gene associated with coeliac disease, after two major reviews by three reviewers and re-testing with alternative methods).
The major study on breast feeding and coeliac disease was initially an epidemiological study on the whole Swedish population (basically it was based on the national register of coeliac disease cases.) At the moment, I am involved in a pan-european prospective study on 1500 at-risk (a particular HLA type – a major protein involved in immunity) new born babies born to coeliac families just to study this ideal time window of introducing gluten.
As for immunity – it has now been proven that it is a major component in various chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, coeliac disease,rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, psoriasis and cancer (some of these disorders affecting young and healthy individuals). A health immunity does not only mean an immunity against infection, but getting the immune system to attack the enemy and not turn on to the body’s own tissues. The role of foreign (non-human) proteins in the partially mature, young infant’s intestinal tract, could trigger an autoimmune reaction that can give rise to the disorders listed above.
As I said, I do not condone excessive pressures on mothers to breastfeed, but I am all for giving real and factual information and giving adequate time to individuals to ask questions and thus make a truly well informed decisions
Daphne , you make many assumptions to try to win an argument …….as Steve suggested : “let’s agree to disagree”.
[Daphne – I make no assumptions at all. I simply observe.]
thanks daphne for voicing your opinion on breastfeeding. I was adamant that I am going to breastfeed my daughter but after four months of what seemed like endless sessions of feeding at two hour intervals and with my baby not showing any signs of sticking to a routine, I decided that I’ve done my bit and started bottle feeding.
As if by miracle my baby started sleeping through the night and the endless crying stopped.
I would recommend my friends to breastfeed for the first weeks of a baby’s life but I really do not see any need for sacrificing your sanity just to do what everyone seems to be advocating. Midwives and all the rest tell you about the advantages of breastfeeding and they stop at that. They don’t tell you how frustrating it is. One siily excuse they give is that it helps the mum to bond with her child. As if a mother needs to breastfeed to form a bond with her child.
[Daphne – The one thing they don’t tell you is that babies sleep through the night as early as four months when they are bottle-fed. What I noticed when I had my children at St Luke’s was that the only women gullibly listening to the midwives were those who had had their first baby, and that the most experienced women all had their bottles out.]
“By the way, an added bonus of the bottle – My youngest son is barely two months and already sleeps uninterruptedly from 9 p.m. to about 8 a.m”
I don’t think we can dispute that, for the parents, bottle feeding is easier (as far as nights are concerned). Is it better for the child? I don’t know, but I think we should be considering what is best for the baby, and not the parents. Whatever that might be!
[Daphne – Forget the parents, plural: what’s best for the mother’s health and mental well-being is best for the baby, and that’s indisputable. A baby who feeds and sleeps irregularity, adding to the mother’s mental and physical exhaustion, is a major contributing factor in post-natal depression.]
The funny thing is that we midwives are always getting it because we don’t do enough for breastfeeding.
When I had my son way back in 1993 the midwife put the fear of God in me by saying that if I did not breastfeed him he will not grow. I did not take any notice and started him on a bottle immediately and now at 15 and a half years he stands at 6’2″. I am glad I did not take her advice!
@Moggy – yes you have a point on the age, but since these prospective studies have studied, there has not been enough time to check whether it confers a lifelong protection or not.
My own research has identified a certain haplotype (“design”) of DNA differences that show a protective effect (disease at an older age) whilst another haplotype increases the risk of childhood disease.
As coeliac disease can arise at any age, these prospective studies need a long time (30-40 years) to give us definite answers.
As doctors and health workers we have to abide by scientific proof as well as recommendations from knowledgeable groups (if we do not do so, we can be sued that we did not follow good medical practice). The European Society for Paediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition (ESPGHAN) Committee on Nutrition have put up the following recommendation:
“Exclusive or full breast-feeding for about 6 months is a desirable goal. Complementary feeding (ie, solid foods and liquids other than breast milk or infant formula and follow-on formula) should not be introduced before 17 weeks and not later than 26 weeks. There is no convincing scientific evidence that avoidance or delayed introduction of potentially allergenic foods, such as fish and eggs, reduces allergies”……”It is prudent to avoid both early (or=7 months) introduction of gluten, and to introduce gluten gradually while the infant is still breast-fed, inasmuch as this may reduce the risk of celiac disease, type 1 diabetes mellitus, and wheat allergy.”
As you can see that whilst the word “may” implicates some uncertainty, the recommendation is better to err towards being prudent rather than going head on.
As for the racial (I would rather use the word ethnic – ethnic differences exist but not racial ones) this seems to be more to do with environmental factors rather than genetic – basically asians who have rice as their main cereal have a lower incidence but those that move to the West and integrate a western diet have an increased incidence approaching the 1-1.2% of the Western world. BTW one of the highest areas is amongst the Saharawi population in the Sahara desert – around 5-6%.
Thanks, Christian.