Babies ( Balmes, 2010 ) Is An Unusual Documentary Film

There were numerous powerful testimonies and striking findings noted throughout the and first two chapters of the book Birth Matters by Ina May Gaskin. As a health care provider, and therefore someone who is entrusted to care for individuals during their most private and sacred times, I found Gaskin’s statements regarding the environment and care surrounding birth experiences very impactful. According to Gaskin (2011), the “women’s perceptions about their bodies and their babies’ capabilities will be deeply influenced by the care they recieve around the time of birth” (p. 22). The statements made by Gaskin in Birth Matters not only ring true, but inspires one

In the film Babies Thomas Balmès elegantly and wordlessly captures the first year of life through the eyes of four unique cultures. This film follows four babies Panijao from Namibia, Mari from Japan, Hattie from the United States, and Bayarjargal from Mongolia. The main purpose of the film is to show how the four cultures differ in their behaviors with infants. One of the striking differences is the role the parents play in the documentary and how they interact with their newborn infants. In contrast, the film also shows the similarities in infancy even in vastly different environments and cultures.

The movie “Babies” was a beautiful film I loved it I actually watched it three times and could not look away it was a very eye opening documentary for me. It is about cultures and differences within them it was truly amazing seeing the different cultures and there parenting methods. I was truly shocked that these four babies are in four very different cultures but all of them were reaching their milestones and developing all around the same time. I would have never thought that the parenting styles would be so similar to each other. In the documentary each child was loved from their parents and family. Each family was very different but all still spent time with there baby and loved them. The film starts from them being born till they are one-year old it shows you how they develop from culture to culture. It shows attachment styles in all four cultures and the results were surprising.

The movie Babies, showcased the beginnings of a Mongolian child. Its environment, homelife, cultural upbringings and its day to day occurrences are highlighted, and based on what I’ve seen, I can say that the people of Mongolia conduct different cultural traditions as opposed to American societies which I am accustomed to. To be more specific, the way that children in Mongolia are raised, cared for, and get used to the real world are significantly different than America’s way of doing things, or at least my way of seeing things. The state of awe I was in when a newborn baby was wrapped up super tight was immense, I feared for the baby's life! You could hear the blanket making a rip-like noise as it was tightened. The second thing that struck me as odd

Carole Corbeil’s piece titled “ The Advertised Infant: Ivans Adventures in Babyland,” really speaks to the nurturing of infants by the modern parent. I really found it engaging how everything was put into the child’s perspective, in this we see the strong detest the child has to these gadgets. Its ironic to see the nuclear setup of the modern family, the children is born and is given by the parents to these pieces of electronic equipment to care for. These children are deprived from the attentiveness and love parents and the traditional upbringing that many of us have experienced. The parents in this piece are being selfish, as they seek alternatives in helping toe easily raise their child, so they have to bear less of the burden of taking

Netflix's Born in the Wrong Body presents transgender individuals and gives their families the opportunity to express what life is like in the eyes of a parent with a trans child. It initiates with "My Transgender Kid," a biopic about two diverse seven-year-olds that have one immense thing in common: they both identify as a sex they weren't born with.

Among the four families in the documentary, “Babies”, there were only some similarities but many differences. There were only a few similarities that I could recognize. One of them was between the Japanese baby, Mari, and the American baby, Hattie. They both participated in a mother and baby class, which involved interacting with others. Another similarity between these two babies is that both of their families got together at least once during the documentary to enjoy a home cooked meal and with conversation amongst each other. Surprisingly, those were only the main similarities I noticed throughout the documentary. In contrast, I did notice many differences among these families of different cultures and societies. One difference was that the baby from Africa, Ponijao, never wore a diaper. When she had to go to the bathroom she would freely go and the excess would be rubbed off on her mother’s knee. While on the other hand, the American baby, Hattie,

The article "Our Babies, Ourselves" by Meredith F. Small compares and contrasts child development based on the type of attention and care received while an infant. Each culture typically accepts the social normality’s around us to decide how to care for and react to situations with the child. The main ideas can be most easily broken down to Western and non-Western cultures. Western cultures for example seem to let the child alone more often, sometimes let a child "cry it out" and sleep in a room alone to try and reinforce an independence which seems prized in American every day society. Non-Western peoples such as the Efe in Congo, on the other hand, try to enforce a communal lifestyle and in turn have the baby always being taken care of by multiple individuals, not just of family, but also friends and community members to shape a future of trusting and communal behavior. The reason that humans are dependent on their parents for an incredibly

In Meredith Small’s article Our Babies, Ourselves she focuses on people’s social and psychological development through examining the different cultural aspects of raising a child. During this process she compares the American perspective of treating babies, to those of the Gusii and the Dutch. Throughout her examination many points are made that I believe can give the reader’s a valuable understanding of the impact of different means of parenthood on a child’s future development.

Development of a child have been a thing that most of the parents have been neglecting without noticing that it is very important in the development of a child’s character and social

The documentary Babies by Thomas Balmès is a film that takes place in four very different locations around the world. The documentary follows four babies and their families from when they are first born as they grow up and are able to walk. We watch Ponijao grow up in Namibia, Bayar grow up in Mongolia, Hattie grow up in San Francisco, and Mari grow up in Tokyo. Because the babies are from such different places, the documentary allows us to see what it is like growing up in cultures that we are currently unfamiliar with. The film opens up your eyes to the various forms of living in other areas around the world. In this paper, I will discuss the universal themes I noticed, my personal reflection of the film, the various

‘Babies’ is a documentary film which chronicles the first year of life of four babies spanning the globe. Documentarian Thomas Balmès fans out to the grasslands of Namibia, the plains of Mongolia, the high rises of Tokyo and the busy streets of San Francisco in a study of culture, societal structure, geography and tradition, along with parental love and the impact all these elements have on child rearing. In the hunting and gathering society of Namibia and pastoral Mongolia, Balmès follows Ponijao and Bayar and in postindustrial Tokyo and San Francisco we are introduced to Mari and Hattie. While the 1:18 film has no real dialogue, viewers are able to get a distinct feel for each baby’s personality, the role they play within the family

Once a toddler, the physical play with child and father can help their children to learn. They learn how to push their limits and take risks with specific physical play. According to the documentary, father plays a more important role than mothers in language development because they talk to their children like adults and not with “baby talk”. In the documentary, kids are told to describe what their parents do for them and they draw their father as the parent they play with and their mother cleaning and cooking for them. The dad is seen as the entertainer and the mother as the nurturer. Single fathers are also capable to take care as single mothers are but are done very differently. Some of those differences from single mothers are that single father have more emphasis to teach their children to be more independent. Single fathers create more of a daily routine in contrast to single mothers. Hardest role for the father to play is when their children become teenagers. Once their child becomes a teenager they are no longer the entertainers but the disciplinarian. The documentary states that fathers are more effective at controlling teenager behavior when they explain the rules rather than punish them, which is done better by fathers rather than mothers. In the documentary two different families are brought in for an experiment to show the difference of discipline with mother and father. The experiment shows that mothers

“Everybody loves babies”, a trademark quote from the documentary movie “Babies” features an insight on the many reasons babies are loved. Although many documentaries are narrated, director Thomas Balmès uses a different approach by eliminating a voiceover. By manifesting this film without narration, he focuses on a learning technique all babies go through in their early stages of life. Aiming for viewers to learn from observation, as babies do, we are left to focus on the babies, their environment and interactions. Through subtitles, this film reveals the different locations the footage of the four newborns are from. By viewing the babies different upbringings from different cultures, we learn how the various lifestyles of each culture impacts a child’s development. The babies are Hattie from California, Mari from Japan, Bayar from Mongolia, and Ponijao from Namibia.The film shows the infancy and toddlerhood period of the babies as well as their development physically, cognitively, and socially.

This investigation of maternal age is related to the area of study ‘sociocultural influences’ as it addresses the topics of family structures and environments and the ways in which these support the needs of the behavioural, cognitive and social and emotional development of children aged 0-8 years, as well as the roles and responsibilities of parents in the nurturing of children.