Uncle John’s Presents Mom’s Bathtub Reader Read online

  Many pundits considered it immoral to create “test-tube babies.” The doctors were condemned for tampering with nature. There were worries about monster babies or the government creating breeding farms like those in Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World.

  Then, nine days before her due date, Lesley developed toxemia, and Dr. Steptoe decided to deliver the baby via cesarean section. On July 25, 1978, Lesley and John had blonde-haired, blue-eyed Louise Joy Brown. Her birth was so special that it made the cover of Time magazine. If every baby is a miracle, Louise was a bit of an extra miracle—after all the dire warnings, she was healthy and normal—not a monster baby at all.

  HAPPY 25th

  Lesley’s famous pregnancy brought new hope to hundreds of thousands of infertile mothers. Since 1978, proud parents have had more than one million babies through the use of in vitro fertilization. About 1 percent of babies are born with the aid of IVF and doctors think that the numbers will go higher as the technology continues to improve.

  In 2003 Louise Joy Brown had her 25th birthday. Despite all the publicity that surrounded her birth—and still surrounds her birthdays—Louise has confounded critics by brushing off celebrity and remaining as ordinary as the day she was born.

  “I just get on with my life,” Louise has said. “Just normal—I just plod along.” Engaged to be married, she is a Bristol postal worker who, as the press likes to pun, now makes “deliveries” of her own.

  Louise also has a younger sister, Natalie. Their proud mum showed her faith in technology by once again relying on IVF for Natalie’s conception.

  “I’m proud of being the first test-tube baby. But I don’t know if I could go through what Mum did. I hate hospitals.”

  —Louise Brown

  Lit 101: The Play’s the Thing

  Remember all those classic plays with all those classic moms who did all those classic things? Test your knowledge with our little Literature 101 multiple-choice test. No fair peeking at the answers either.

  1. The Play: Medea by Euripides, 431 BC

  The Plot: Medea is a sorceress and the daughter of a king. She betrays her father and kills her brother to help Jason, the man she loves, steal the Golden Fleece. The two settle down together in Corinth and have two sons. All is well until Jason abandons his family to take up with the Corinthian king’s daughter.

  What’s a mom to do?

  __ A. Kill everybody. Kill Jason’s new bride, the Corinthian king, and your two sons.

  __ B. Get liquored up and crash the wedding.

  __ C. Knit sweaters for your sons from the GoldenFleece.

  __ D. Have your grandfather provide a chariot drawn by dragons and hightail it outta there.

  __ E. Both A & D.

  2. The Play: Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, c. 424 BC

  The Plot: Jocasta, the queen of Thebes, is upset because the Delphic Oracle has prophesied that her husband, King Laius, will be murdered by their own son.

  What’s a mom to do?

  __ A. Go on the pill.

  __ B. See a midwife about herbs that will ensure the birth of a girl.

  __ C. Hand your son over to a shepherd who will take him away and kill him.

  __ D. Declare the oracle a fraud and have the king pass a decree that outlaws it.

  __ E. Get a second opinion from the Psychic Hotline.

  3. The Play: Hamlet by William Shakespeare, 1603

  The Plot: After the death of her husband, the king of Denmark, Gertrude marries Claudius, her late husband’s brother, who becomes the new king. Her son, Hamlet begins acting oddly, claiming he’s seeing ghosts and insisting that Claudius had a hand in his father’s murder and that his mother’s quick remarriage is unseemly. Is Hamlet crazy or is there a method to his madness? Gertrude can’t tell if he’s faking or not.

  What’s a mom to do?

  __ A. Kill your son and new husband. Rule Denmark by yourself.

  __ B. Consult an elderly windbag for advice.

  __ C. Hold a séance to consult your dead husband.

  __ D. All of the above

  __ E. None of the above.

  4. The Play: Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare, 1587

  The Plot: Tamora, queen of the Goths, has been taken prisoner by Roman general Titus Andronicus, along with three of her sons and her lover, Aaron. Once in Rome, Titus has Tamora’s eldest son sacrificed to avenge the deaths of some of his own sons during the bloody war against the Goths.

  What’s a mom to do?

  __ A. Trick Titus’s surviving sons into falling into a pit and be blamed for the murder of the emperor’s brother.

  __ B. Have your lover trick Titus into chopping off his own hand.

  __ C. Arrange for the heads of Titus’s sons to be brought to him on a platter, along with his own hand.

  __ D. Enjoy the pastry served at a party hosted by Titus.

  __ E. All of the above.

  Answers on page 299.

  Mom’s Got You Under Her Skin

  Feel like mom’s always getting under your skin? That’s because she never left!

  Thomas Wolfe once wrote that you can’t go home again. Well, it turns out that it might be just as tough to leave home and mom too. It’s true—at least on a cellular level.

  CELL MATES

  Even if you’re all grown up, you can still have blood and tissue cells that you picked up during your time in the womb. Meanwhile, there’s a good chance that mom can’t part with parts of you either. Decades after a woman gives birth, she can still have cells in her body that came from the babies she carried during her pregnancies. The cells are actually descendants of stem cells that have transplanted themselves, taken root, and begun reproducing in both mom and baby.

  In fact, women who’ve had sons have been known to have male cells in their bloodstream for up to 27 years. A woman who has been pregnant can have both her mother’s cells and her kids’ cells floating around—no wonder moms sometimes say they have trouble keeping their own identity straight.

  HAS MOM INVADED YOUR INNER SPACE?

  This foreign-cell phenomenon is called microchimerism. Foreign cells are few (up to 61 fetal blood cells per tablespoon of blood translates to less than one in a million). Medical researchers using genetic tools to identify foreign cells believe they are a common phenomenon in both sick and healthy people.

  The impact of mom’s cells staying in your body is still a mystery. While there’s evidence that foreign cells might encourage autoimmune diseases (where the body mistakenly attacks its own tissues), some scientists believe that a mom’s cells will be shown to benefit her offspring. The jury is still out.

  Meanwhile, if you feel an inexplicable urge to wear clean underwear or close the door because you weren’t born in the barn . . . you know the reason. Seems there’s a bit of mom in all of us.

  “Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one’s own Trojan horse.” —Rebecca West

  “And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see—or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.”

  —Alice Walker

  Mom Makes the World Go ’Round

  In the ancient world, mom could explain the mysteries of life.

  We all know motherhood is a powerful thing. But did you know it could make the seasons change, bring stormy weather, and turn night to day?

  THE MOTHER OF ALL WINTERS

  For a time, the earth knew no winter. It was always warm, always sunny, and always growing season! People owed this eternal summer to the Greek goddess Demeter, who was in charge of agriculture and vegetation. Demeter had a beautiful daughter, Persephone, who was the apple of her mom’s eye.

  But everything changed when Hades, god of the underworld, noticed Persephone and realized she was a total babe. He doubted that mom would consent to let her daughter marry him and live underground to preside with him over the souls of the dead. So when Persephone
was out picking flowers, Hades split open the earth below her and took her underground to rule as his queen.

  Meanwhile, a worried Demeter searched the lands and seas for her beloved daughter. When she finally found out about the kidnapping, Demeter fell into a funk. She let the world turn dark and cold.

  Hungry and frostbitten, the unhappy gods came down from Mount Olympus. They tried to reason with Demeter and reassure her that empty-nest syndrome was completely normal, but the kid did have to marry someday. They brought Demeter gifts and begged her to restore the fruits and blossoms of summer. The mourning mom told the gods, more or less, to go to Hades. The earth remained cursed, cold, and barren.

  Finally, realizing that even tackling the lord of death was easier than arguing with a grieving mom, the gods went down to see Hades. “Enough!” they cried. “We’re freezing! Let that kid go home!” Hades reluctantly returned Persephone to her joyful mother, who immediately caused the dead earth to bloom again.

  Life seemed to be headed back toward eternal fruits and veggies, but alas, it was not meant to be. Persephone overlooked the first rule of visiting the underworld—don’t eat anything or else you will not be able to return to the land of the living. In her misery, Persephone had turned to food. (Hey, who hasn’t?) She tasted the seeds of a pomegranate, so by celestial laws she had to return to Hades for at least a third of the year. Now when Persephone dwells underground, her mother sadly lets the earth go cold and dark, a phenomenon otherwise known as winter. It’s only when Demeter is reunited with her daughter that spring and summer can return and you can pack away your long underwear.

  THE MOTHER OF ALL SUNRISES

  The Aztec warriors in ancient Mexico believed in the fierce mother goddess called Coatlicue, “the Lady of the Skirt of Snakes.” In addition to her unique fashions, Coatlicue was known for her many, many children. One hundred and one, to be exact. She gave birth to a daughter, Coyolxauhqui, and a hundred sons, who became the stars.

  One day Coatlicue found a ball of hummingbird feathers, a bit of an oddity that she tucked into her bosom. Suddenly she got that old queasy feeling and realized that oops, she was pregnant again. But her feather-pregnancy story was so strange that her sons and daughter just didn’t believe her. (Can you blame them?) The kids wanted to know who the father really was. They decided their mother had dishonored them, so they decided to kill her. Seems that even goddesses can have dysfunctional families.

  But just as they were about to attack her, Coatlicue gave birth to Huitzilopochtli, the warrior sun god and son of hummingbird feathers. He came into the world ready to protect his mother with the help of a fire serpent and his strong sun rays. The fierce Huitzilopochtli destroyed his brothers and beheaded his sister, throwing her head up in the sky to become the moon.

  This murderous family squabble was the way the ancient Aztecs explained the sunrise. Every sunset launched a battle between day and night. When the sun came up, it symbolized the victory of Huitzilopochtli and his fertile mother over the forces of darkness.

  “A little child born yesterday

  A thing on mother’s milk and kisses fed”

  —Homer, “Hymn to Hermes”

  The Mother of All Mothering Advice

  When he advised American families on how to raise their children, Dr. Spock rebelled against the legacy of his own mother.

  “Trust yourself,” Dr. Benjamin Spock wrote. “You know more than you think you do.”

  With those calming and now famous words, the New England pediatrician revolutionized the way American moms bring up babies. His book, Baby and Child Care, was an immediate best seller in 1945 (selling for 25 cents) and went on to become one of the best-selling books of all time. Though there was no dedication to Spock’s mother on the cover, in a strange way you could say she’d been his inspiration.

  GOOD-BYE, DR. WATSON

  As mothers thumbed through Dr. Spock’s book for advice on everything from family dinners to diaper changes, they also learned that hugs and kisses wouldn’t spoil their babies. They were encouraged to ignore rigid feeding and toilet-training schedules in favor of flexibility with the individual needs of their baby.

  Hugs, kisses, and flexibility were revolutionary ideas for the 1940s. Prior to Spock’s book, the most influential baby-care expert was John B. Watson, who gave stern orders. “Never, never kiss your child,” Watson insisted. “Never hold it in your lap. Never rock its carriage.” Watson’s antiaffection theory was that mother love was dangerous; it was smothering and kept a child from developing into a strong adult. It left a “never-healing wound” that damaged the chances for a successful future.

  With Watson demanding that mothers tie their child’s arm to the crib if a toddler sucked his thumb, imagine the relief when Dr. Spock advised mothers that both they and their babies could enjoy the experience of child rearing. But if the moms who sought advice from Dr. Spock knew he was opposing the standard ideas of his day, they probably didn’t know that his advice also directly contradicted the views of his own mother.

  MEET THE NOT-SO-MELLOW MILDRED

  In 1903 Mildred Louise Stoughton and Benjamin Ives Spock gave birth to the first of their six children, Benjamin McLane Spock. Well-to-do Mildred had her share of maids, but she hired no governesses or nannies that might interfere with her child management. Papa Benjamin quietly watched from the sidelines while Mildred ran a strict home with the goal of raising perfect children.

  Ben’s mother took some of her child-raising ideas from Dr. Luther Emmett Holt and his book, The Care and Feeding of Children, a popular baby-care tome of the day. Other ideas were her own (how she came about them is anyone’s guess). But all of them were promoted with an eccentricity that made Ben feel peculiar when he longed to feel like a regular kid.

  Spock’s mother believed that children under 12 should have a special diet, constant exposure to fresh air, and a very early bedtime. Mildred rigidly enforced her ideas. No matter how Ben protested, his diet was always mainly vegetables, fruits, and eggs—and absolutely no bananas. (Odd, but true. Mildred wanted bananas nowhere near her children!) For a time, instead of going to a local school, Ben was educated in a tent school organized by his mother so that he would be outside in the fresh air while he was learning. Bedtime was exactly 6:45 p.m., even if other kids were still playing.

  MOM COULD BE COLD

  Mildred’s rules were so rigid that she was unwittingly cruel. The young Spocks slept out on the sleeping porch (in the fresh air, of course). Always. They were warmly dressed, with warm blankets, but they were also outside in the frigid winters of New Haven, Connecticut. Nights were so cold that after little Ben used a chamber pot, the urine froze. But rules were rules and there was no hope of getting back into the warm house after 6:45 until morning.

  Ben always knew his mother loved her children. In fact, the arrival of a baby in the Spock household was a celebration, and Mildred’s joy in her infants would later inspire Spock’s own career as a pediatrician. But Mildred was so stern and moralistic that it was almost impossible to win her approval. And when she thought herself in the right, she never hesitated to punish her children—though usually with deprivation or withering scorn rather than with spankings.

  If physical punishment was rare, hugs were even rarer. Ben found his mother intimidating and he wrote late in his life that, thanks to Mildred, “All my life, up to this day, I’ve felt guilty until proven innocent.”

  TAKING THE FIRST BOAT OUT

  As Ben grew into his teens, his relationship with his mother only got worse. Mildred continued to control Ben’s life, but now she also showed a strong puritanical streak. To get him away from girls, she sent him to a boarding school for boys. There the teenager experienced all the usual emotions of a young man trying to fit in—except homesickness (can you blame him?).

  Successful in his education, Ben went on to Yale University, but lived at home. His mother continued to dominate and frustrate him until 1924, when he competed in Paris on the U.S. Olympic rowin
g team. The United States won a gold medal, but Ben’s real victory was the joy of being so far from Mildred and emerging from under her thumb.

  THERE’S A DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE

  After graduating from Yale, Spock went on to attend medical school at Columbia University. He married and settled down in New York City—a sophisticated location far from mom. He opened a pediatric practice and fathered children of his own. But Mildred’s legacy remained, so much so that Ben felt it hurt his ability to be a loving father to his own boys. He decided that “there must be pleasanter ways to raise children.”

  A FLEXIBLE APPROACH

  Spock began formulating his own ideas on child raising and wrote them into a book. From the beginning of his work until the end, he had differences with Mom. Instead of putting an emphasis on raising the perfect child as Mildred had, he believed in supporting and loving every child as an individual. “Every baby needs to be smiled at,” Spock advised, “talked to, played with, fondled—gently and lovingly.”

  The pediatrician turned his back on Mildred’s harsh control of her children to make them better people. “Positive traits in children,” said Spock, “emerge naturally when they are given love and nurturing.” And where Mildred was stern and rigid, Spock was flexible. “You may hear people say that you have to get your baby strictly regulated in his feeding, sleeping, bowel movements, and other habits—but don’t believe this. He doesn’t have to be sternly trained.” (Translation: if the sleeping porch is too cold, you can bring your child indoors, and if he likes bananas—no problem!)