Uncle John’s Presents Mom’s Bathtub Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  THEY LONG TO BE CLOSE TO MOM

  Aka moms and babies are literally very close. As she does her housekeeping and cooking chores or goes into the forest to forage, mom will carry her baby in a sling strapped across her chest. Aka babies rarely are given a chance to have a good, long cry. As soon as they show signs of distress, either their mother or one of her close female friends is right there to rock them. Even at night, when she catches her forty winks, the baby remains physically close, resting beside her.

  Dad is happy to be just as affectionate as mom. An Aka dad spends much of his time within close reach of his children and is always ready to take over the hugging, kissing, or cleaning of baby. With the amazing support system that dad and female friends or relatives provide, an Aka baby is sure to have his or her needs met on demand!

  As they grow older these children are continually protected and affectionately indulged. They become part of a close-knit community that then takes on the task of teaching them to hunt and forage in the forest. There are few punishments and almost no beatings of children. In Aka society, beating a child is grounds for divorce.

  RAISING PEACEABLE FOLK

  According to Dr. Hewlett, the Aka may be a living embodiment of “attachment theory,” which proposes that an infant’s experience of mothering can influence the way a child relates to the world. For example, an attentive mom who promptly cares for her infant’s needs creates a child secure in his environment, who trusts caregivers and the people in the world around him. In contrast, a cold or unresponsive mother can produce an anxious or aggressive child who lacks the ability to trust. According to attachment theory, the supernurturing Aka moms make their kids prime candidates for growing into secure, trusting individuals who are calm and peaceful as opposed to overly anxious or aggressive. And that’s just the type of people that the Aka appear to be.

  The cooperative Aka have no tribal headman or chief. Instead, they spread power among men and women in the small hunting bands. They share food and cooperate rather than compete. They use humor, tradition, and ritual to make group decisions. And they settle grievances in the same way—with cooperation and without aggression or violence. The worst punishment the community gives is usually to ignore someone. The Aka avoid battles that could tear their close hunting alliances apart. Because of the secure start Aka children have in life, they are able to carry over this peaceful, trusting way of life to adulthood. The United Nation Development Program describes Aka pygmies as a “joyful people.” And that joy could be the result of the way Aka moms nurture their kids all day, every day.

  THE LESSON THAT COULD BE LOST

  Though the world wants to keep learning from the forest people, sadly, the Aka are under siege. C.A.R.’s forests are exploited by loggers, and murdering bands of militias have turned the country into one of the most dangerous places on the globe.

  As the great African forests disappear, their people and traditions may disappear forever, but if the world can somehow help the Aka protect their forests, they may save themselves. Then Aka moms could teach the world more about fostering sharing, compassion, and nonviolence—not a bad deal.

  Moms’ May Days

  Mark your calendar so you don't miss these maternal

  celebrations all over the world!

  First Sunday in May

  South Africa

  Second Sunday in May

  U.S.A., Denmark, Finland, Italy, Turkey, Australia,

  Belgium, Japan, and many other countries

  May 10

  Mexico, Guatemala, Bahrain, India, Pakistan,

  Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, and many other countries

  Last Saturday in May

  Central Africa Republic

  Last Sunday in May

  France (it is called “La Fête des Meres” here!) and Sweden

  Mom Takes a Dive

  “If swimming would make his daughter grow up to look like Esther Williams, then father was willing to pay for the lessons.”

  —International Swimming Hall of Fame

  By the time she retired from film in 1961, Esther Williams had swum her way through 26 movies and into the hearts of American moviegoers. Young girls across the nation begged their parents for swimming lessons after seeing an Esther Williams’s film.

  POOL SHARK

  Esther Williams was born on August 8, 1923, in Inglewood, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. It was Esther’s mother, along with the Parent Teacher Association, who convinced the city to provide a swimming pool for the neighborhood. Esther learned to swim from her sister. Soon she was spending all of her time at the pool. In order to pay for swimming time, she counted towels in the locker room. During lunchtime, when the pool was virtually empty, lifeguards taught her more advanced swimming techniques. She even learned the butterfly stroke, which was not usually taught to girls at that time. At the National Senior Outdoor Championship in 1939, she led her 300-meter and 400-meter medley relay teams to victory by being the first woman to use the butterfly stroke in competition. By the age of 18, she had won four U.S. championships in breast-stroke and freestyle. For the 1940 Olympics, she was America’s gold-medal hope. Unfortunately, Williams never competed because the games were canceled when World War II broke out.

  GETTING ON SWIMMINGLY

  After seeing Williams’s picture in the newspaper, Billy Rose invited the young athlete to audition for his San Francisco Aquacade review, a musical performed by hundreds of swimmers and divers with singing and special effects. Rose handpicked Williams to star opposite Olympian and screen star Johnny Weissmuller. Swimming in the Aquacade at the 1940 World’s Fair, Williams caught the eye of MGM moguls.

  CHLORINE QUEEN

  MGM quickly put the 18-year-old under contract and she made her film debut opposite Mickey Rooney in Andy Hardy’s Double Life (1942). Two years later, she was starring in Bathing Beauty (1944), Hollywood’s first swimming movie. Williams soon became one of the top-10 box office attractions. Her trademark aquatic musicals were wildly popular. By the end of World War II, she had become a pinup favorite with returning GIs.

  MATERNAL MERMAID

  Even with her busy film career, Williams found time to have children. She continued to work through all of her pregnancies until about the fourth month when she would get too sick. Sadly, during her fourth pregnancy, Williams’s grueling schedule did take its toll and she miscarried.

  “I don’t know to this day how I managed to fit into those bathing suits when I was pregnant,” she says, “but I did . . . somehow I stayed a size 10 through it all.” Even today, she refers to each child by the movie she was filming before they were born. She was pregnant with Benjamin during Neptune’s Daughter (1949), Kimball during Pagan Love Song (1950), and Susan during Easy to Love (1953).

  Williams taught her children to swim soon after birth. “One of the reasons I gave them this gift of swimming so early in their lives was because I loved having them with me in the water. And when I saw them take to it, it was a shared joy that we had in common.”

  MERMAID TYCOON

  From early on, Williams knew that her movie career wouldn’t last forever: “I mean, how many swimming movies could they make?” In 1958, she began a swimming pool company specializing in aboveground pools. Thirty years later, she and husband Edward Bell launched the Esther Williams Collection of fashion swimsuits.

  FIGHTING GRAVITY

  Williams started designing her own swimsuits when she realized that the designers for her movies didn’t swim. She never asked for screen credit, but all of her swimsuits and many of the dresses she wore on the silver screen were her own designs. Aiming at a broader market, her designs are for more mature women. Some were even based on her classic costumes. “Somebody has to give a little thought to the woman who has nursed a baby and I want to apply my knowledge of what feels good in the water for that woman,” she said.

  The Power of Motherly Love

  After decades under the microscope, mom’s love can get some respect!

&
nbsp; If your mom gets on your nerves when she ruffles your hair or smooches your cheek, relax. Scientific investigators have discovered that a mother’s loving stimulation aids in the development of the brain’s circuitry and reduces stress.

  DON’T MONKEY WITH MOM

  In the late 1950s, a psychologist named Harry Harlow performed experiments that made him a villain in many animal-rights circles. Harlow took infant rhesus monkeys from their mothers and substituted a wire-mesh “mother” with a bottle for the infant to nurse from and a cloth “mother” that the baby monkeys clutched for comfort. Harlow wanted to study the effects of severe affection deprivation on the little animals—and he got effects all right!

  Harlow’s monkeys all became severely disturbed. When they weren’t acting out aggressively, they often showed an autisticlike syndrome, clutching themselves and constantly rocking back and forth. Harlow’s troubled animals revealed how much they needed socialization, touching, nurturing and . . . well . . . plain old motherly love.

  WINNING THE RAT RACE

  If mom’s TLC—or lack thereof—could throw such a monkey wrench into behavior, could it also affect brain chemistry? Studies at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, proved that if baby rats got more licking and grooming from their mothers, their genes activated more brain receptors for benzodiazepines (tranquilizers). The added receptors increased the brain’s response to the calming chemical.

  When baby rats had more fondling from their mothers, they were also higher achievers. While they swam through a floating labyrinth to look for submerged objects (a ratty I.Q. test), the well-nurtured young’uns learned faster and had the best memories. Turned out that the ratty Einsteins each had a hippocampus (a part of the brain dealing with stress control, attention, and memory) containing more synapses than those pups that had less mothering. Attentive mothers could actually improve the neurological systems and even the genetics of the pups. So could foster mothers if they fondled their foster babies.

  A MOTHERING CRISIS

  Okay, the effects of motherly affection are powerful if you’re a monkey or a rat, but what about in us humans? Most researchers never expected—or wanted—the chance to work with human children who lacked any maternal or parental care. But they got it anyway.

  In 1989, a repressive dictatorship in Romania fell, and an international crisis arose. The state had forbidden birth control, but people were too poor to feed their big families. Thousands of kids had been left in Romanian state orphanages. They were warehoused in cribs or on dirty cots. Aside from being fed and changed, they were left alone without toys and with little touching or affection.

  Sadly, many of these orphans showed autistic behavior problems (social withdrawal and repetitive rocking or movements) similar to Harlow’s monkeys. Harvard researchers also found that the orphans’ cortisol (a stress hormone) measures were very high compared with children brought up in family homes. The orphans also showed signs of being more anxious and fearful than other children.

  THANKS, MOM!

  The findings from these studies, along with other research, convinced many neuroscientists that our brains are molded not only by our inherited set of genes, but also by our earliest interactions. According to Alan Schore, assistant clinical professor at the UCLA School of Medicine, the most crucial component of these earliest interactions is the primary caregiver—usually the mother.

  We don’t know about your stress level, but if you can read this page—give mom extra hugs of thanks for helping make you so smart. And never underestimate the power of a mother’s love!

  “If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.”

  —Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

  Bad Moms Movie Festival

  Moms gone wrong—They’re no fun to live with, but they’re sure fun to watch. Here are our flick picks for the best in bad moms.

  Mommie Dearest—Come on, you know the words: “No more wire hangers ever!” This is a classic of the celebrity child-abuse genre (there is, thankfully, not that much competition). Faye Dunaway plays 1940s star Joan Crawford as completely unhinged and cruel, particularly to her adopted daughter, Christina, whose real-life memoir is the basis for the movie. Dunaway’s portrayal and the breathless, trashy, camp vibe of the entire film are so over the top that even Christina Crawford was taken aback. “They’ve turned it into a Joan Crawford movie!” she memorably complained. It’s no joke—this film was so successful in defining the public’s image of Joan Crawford that these days when people think of Crawford, they don’t actually think of the woman herself but of Dunaway’s portrayal of her. That’s some delicious Hollywood irony for you.

  Cinderella—A classic evil-stepmother tale, lovingly animated and bibbity-boppity-boo-ilized by the folks at Disney. Some people prefer Snow White’s wicked stepmother—and to be fair, the wicked queen did order one of her minions to cut out Snow White’s heart. After all, most of us don’t know anyone who would literally cut out our hearts, but we do know someone who would figuratively stab us in the back. What Cinderella’s evil stepmom has going for her is a streak of pettiness as wide as the ocean. She doesn’t want Cinderella dead (because then who would do the laundry?), she just wants to make sure Cinderella is very alive and dreadfully unhappy. Eleanor Audley, who also provided Maleficent’s pipes in Sleeping Beauty, struck just the right tone of cruelty as the stemother when smugly telling Cinderella she could to go the ball only after her impossible list of chores was done. The scene where she breaks the glass slipper rather than let Cinderella try it on is a classic of cinematic venality. Sadly, the film never shows the stepmom getting her comeuppance, although a 1998 live-action version of the story, Ever After, has the evil stepmom ending up in a nunnery, doing the laundry. Turnabout is always fair play.

  The Grifters—Anjelica Huston (who, it must be noted, plays the evil stepmother in the just-noted Ever After) does something terribly, terribly monstrous to her son, played by John Cusack in The Grifters. Scratch that—she does two terribly monstrous things to her son, one right after the other, and the reason she does is because she is a con artist for whom relationships take a back seat to the score and the cash. You might think that Cusack’s character, a con artist himself, would know this about his own mother. But, see, he’s not a very good con artist. And he’s perhaps a little too trusting of people he shouldn’t trust, including, alas, dear old mom. No, we won’t tell you what horrible things Huston’s character does. Watch for yourself. You’ll be in awe of her.

  The Manchurian Candidate—Angela Lansbury is best known these days for playing an animated teapot in Beauty and the Beast and a mystery writer who always seems to be around when people drop dead in Murder, She Wrote. But in this controversial 1962 film, she tried on another role for size—that of an ambitious and domineering political wife wrapped up in a plot to assassinate a presidential candidate, a plot that just happens to involve her war-hero son (played by Laurence Harvey), who’d been brainwashed to be the triggerman. It’s a very complicated plot, and Lansbury’s part is equally complex. She plays a mother happy to use her son for her own political gain. Call it “Assassination, She Wrote.”

  White Oleander—Prefer your bad moms to be from the 21st century? Look no further than 2002’s White Oleander. Michelle Pfeiffer plays a mother whose somewhat impulsive murder of a boyfriend causes her teenage daughter to get shipped from foster home to foster home, each with foster moms of varying niceness. All the while Pfeiffer’s character hovers over her daughter’s psyche, offering her poisonous advice and commentary during visiting hours. Pfeiffer comes across as a marvelously interesting sociopath, which is why at least one film critic compared her character to Hannibal Lecter. Which is not usually a quality one wants in a mother, especially one’s own. The movie’s ultimate tagline: “No matter how much she damaged me, no matter how flawed she is, I know my mother loves me.” Which is, indeed, one way of looking at it.

  Haunting Dysfunction

  Stil
l angry after all these years.

  At the ruins of Castle Rising, in Norfolk, England, tourists hope to glimpse the ghost of “She-Wolf” Queen Isabella, who has haunted the castle since the 14th century.

  THE QUEEN TAKES A LOVER

  Queen Isabella was born in France, and she had been given in a political marriage to King Edward II. Though they had four children, they also had one of the worst royal marriages in English history—which is really saying something. King Edward II was a weak king, who lavished his attention on lovers other than his queen. In 1325 the queen took a lover of her own, Roger Mortimer. Not only did she gain a boyfriend, she also found an ally against her husband. Roger and Isabella gathered an army, attacked, and defeated Edward. He was forced to abdicate and transferred the throne to his young son and heir, the future Edward III. Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, became the virtual king until the young heir came of age.

  EXILING THE SHE-WOLF

  Isabella didn’t stop there. She had her husband imprisoned and schemed with Mortimer to secretly have him murdered. After that she and jolly Roger did quite well—until Edward III reached his majority, became king, and decided to avenge his father’s death. King Edward III executed Roger but spared his mother’s life. She “retired” to Castle Rising, where she was furious at her son for sending her away. Today, according to legend, she haunts the ruins of the castle, still furious after 700 years—and still screaming at Edward III and her fate.