The racial politics of Baby Bjorns

That's Thing 1 playing Daddy with my doll Camilla in a Baby Bjorn. Thing 2 looks on from a pram.

Run to the Anti-Racist Parent blog and read Mamita Mala's take on the parenting fad known as 'babywearing'in The Racial and Economic Politics of Babywearing :

Many, if not most indigenous and people of color communities around the globe wear their babies. From the continents of Asia, the Americas and Africa, indigenous women from ancient times wore their babies, mostly so that they could get back to the daily chores of life while taking care of their young. Babywearing was practical. So practical in fact, that on those continents, it is considered an act of the lower, poor classes. After all, wealthy women had people to do their chores for them, including carrying and taking care of their babies.

And it’s that fact that makes the whole babywearing movement in the U.S. so interesting. The babywearing community is mostly white and upper middle class to upper class and they better be. Wearing your baby doesn’t come cheap. Simple pouches can run 70 dollars and up. “Asian” style carriers are in the 80 dollar range and wraps, long pieces of cloth , are 100 dollars plus. On web boards and at meetings, mama’s show off their stashes of different kinds of babywearing gear, which includes special coats, vests, covers and leg-warmers for wearing your baby in the winter.

I call it a fad exactly because of what Maegan describes : the appropriation and monetization of almost indecent proportions of a practice indigenous and traditional communities of color have been doing for millenia.

Go read the whole thing. NOW!

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