Child Rearing Parenting Taboo National Geographic Documentary

By whom should children be raised?

By parents, most would say, but the answer isn’t always that simple

and it varies from culture to culture.

What one group sees as the ideal way to raise a child may be another’s taboo.

Meredith Small: Every culture believes that what they’re doing is the perfect thing for children.

Narrator: Meredith Small is a professor of anthropology at Cornell University.

Small: It’s only when we step back and look at the other cultures that we can actually

look at our own cultures and see how different it is.

Narrator: A few years before China will host its first Olympic games, the people of its capital,

Beijing, are feeling the pressure.

For many in China, and especially its Communist leaders,

the 2008 games will be the most important ever.

In fact, China’s quest for gold means some children are growing up under circumstances

many might find taboo.

It’s a common scene—a family sharing a meal at home.

For ten-year-old Li Yang, however, this is no longer home.

And meals with his parents are rare, because Li Yang only comes here on weekends.

He’s an aspiring gymnast and he’s being raised not by his mom and dad, but by the state.

When he was just a toddler, the state-run sports system selected him for training.

Father: He was three-and-a-half years old when he was chosen out of pre-school.

His pre-school had 500 students and they chose two.

Narrator: Then, Li Yang’s coaches gave his parents a very difficult choice:

They could set their only child on course to become a professional gymnast,

but there would be a price.

At the tender age of six, Li Yang would have to leave his family’s loving care to live at

a state-run boarding school where he would undergo years of grueling training,

involving pain, tears, and the risk of physical injury.

Narrator: Many parents might find that price too high, particularly in China.

The country’s “one child” policy meant that Li Yang’s parents would be giving up

the only child they would ever have, but Li Yang’s father was eager for his son to go.

Father: I didn’t have any doubts.

Of course I wanted to send him there.

I hope he will be the world champion.

Narrator: For aspiring gymnasts, there is no better training ground than the

Shi Cha Hai sports school in Beijing.

Shi Cha Hai graduates often go on to China’s national gymnastics team, one of the world’s best.

But when Li Yang first enrolled, he was just six, far too young to understand what was at stake.

Li Yang: When they picked me, I didn’t know anything, so I didn’t think much about it.

Now after I’ve learned some, I think that learning gymnastics is pretty good.

Narrator: It may be great training, but it comes at the cost of a traditional childhood.

Playtime is replaced by grueling workouts.

Susan Brownell: Parents recognize that the sports school life is what they call bitter.

They recognize that these athletes have to endure a lot of physical fatigue and pain.

Narrator: Susan Brownell is an associate professor of anthropology at

the University of Missouri St. Louis.

Brownell: The parents, probably in most cases, hope that the child will become a star,

will make an Olympic team, win a gold medal, win glory for China.

Narrator: From the start, the lives of these budding Chinese sports stars are far removed

from the comforts of home.

Every morning, each child is awoken at six a.m., and not by his mother.

Woman: Listen up, Li yang, you count.

Li Yang: Okay, one, two…

Narrator: Even before breakfast, the students begin their training with a run.

It’s boot camp for six-year-olds.

In a world without parents, it’s up to senior students like Li Yang, just 10 himself,

to show the younger boys how to get by on their own.

Meals always mean cafeteria food, not mom’s home cooking.

Then, it’s time for school, but here too the children are paying a price.

Li Yang has only half-a-day to spend in class.

By noon, his school day is over.

Then, while most kids his age are in their afternoon lessons, Li Yang reports to the gym

for three hours of strenuous training.

Li Yang is learning less than kids who spend all day in school, but the longer he trains,

the less he can afford to give it up.

Li Yang: I’ve trained for seven years already.

If I stop now, then my efforts would be lost.

Narrator: But in the end, all this may be for naught.

After the years of training, the time spent away from his parents, Li Yang may not make it

because, in fact, very few do.

Brownell: Realistically, as you find anywhere in the world, including the U.S.,

very few of the children actually make it to the top.

And the rest may get some benefits out of having gone through this kind of process and

some may actually come out of it worse than they would have if they had just

pursued a normal life in the regular school system.

Narrator: More and more in China, where the government insists most couples

have just one child, fewer families are willing to take that risk.

In fact, many people are starting to view the state-run sports schools as taboo.

Man: It’s good to train the body, but it’s better when one obtains good grades.

I don’t think there’s much future in that.

They just do it for the country.

Narrator: The athletes at the Shi Cha Hai sports school soon learn that training is

excruciatingly hard work.

Their coaches can be strict; they rarely offer praise.

Coach: What, your butt doesn’t have any strength?

What’s wrong, didn’t you eat enough? Why are you so slow?

Narrator: Jiang Changzhu is the head gymnastics coach.

Coach: To be a coach is very difficult.

On one hand, we have to train them; and on the other hand, we have to take care of them.

We’re more in contact with them than their parents.

Narrator: But many parents might question this kind of care.

To help the children increase their flexibility, the coaches teach them to stretch their

backs and limbs beyond their natural limits.

Even the five and six-year-olds are bent, crushed and pulled, sometimes until they cry.

Coach: I guess I would say the ones who cry aren’t as flexible,

which is a requirement of the sport.

There’s no way to avoid it.

Li Yang: You haven’t cried since you came here?

Boy: I don’t believe that.

Boy: I haven’t cried since I came here.

Narrator: The school discourages parents from watching the training.

But Li Yang’s father is not harboring any illusions.

Father: It’s not bad for a child to face some hardship.

Only after hardship can there be sweetness.

Brownell: Parents really do not have much say in how the school operates.

The coaches answer not to the parents, but to the administrators above them.

It’s not like in the U.S., for example, where the coach is being paid by the parent

to coach the athlete.

Narrator: Every child must also face the daunting prospect that just one accident

could result in a permanent physical injury or worse.

Woman: All roads have danger.

If you want to be an athlete, you have to be willing to sacrifice things for your life.

Narrator: Coming up, a budding young gymnast competes at a world meet

and suffers a tragic injury.

And later, meet toddlers being raised in prison.

Few understand the sacrifices gymnasts face better than Sang Lan.

In the 1990s, Sang Lan represented China in competitions around the world.

Then at the 1998 Goodwill Games in New York,

she made a slight hesitation during a practice vault and landed on her head.

She was 17.

Sang Lan: I could tell that the injury was quite serious.

Narrator: Today, Sang Lan has little feeling below her mid-chest.

Sang Lan: But I really couldn’t imagine that I wouldn’t be able to walk in the future.

I really couldn’t imagine it.

Narrator: It’s a sobering reminder of how dangerous this path can be.

In Sang Lan’s case, she was able to bounce back.

A university student, about to launch her own TV sports show,

she insists her gymnastics training gave her the fortitude to carry on despite her injury.

Sang Lan: People will always have times when they feel regret.

You may think if I hadn’t started training in gymnastics,

then these things wouldn’t have happened.

But I feel you can’t think of it that way.

I still love gymnastics.

Narrator: It’s a sentiment shared by other former gymnasts,

even after their long years of bone crushing work.

After graduating from Shi Cha Hai sports school, Kui Yuan Yuan went onto win

a bronze medal at the 2000 Olympics.

Now retired at age 22, she has opened her own gymnastics school in Beijing.

Kui Yuan Yuan: I think that after training in gymnastics, as I grew up,

none of my difficulties were greater than the ones I faced in training.

I think if I could get through that, then I could face anything.

Narrator: Of course, there are many advantages to life as a young Chinese gymnast,

in spite of the risks and hardships.

Li Yang’s mother works 15-hour days, so she is not home to care for her son.

Life at an athletic school provides supervision, as well as the companionship

of other children, no small thing for a generation of only children raised

under China’s one child policy.

And twice a week in the evenings, parents can stop by and visit.

Father: Did you finish your homework? Did you train well?

Narrator: And although many Westerners may find it odd to give one’s children

over to the care of strangers, it’s not so unusual in China.

Brownell: There is a tradition in China of sending your children off to live with other people

if you think other people can provide better opportunities.

In America, we tend to think that families live together and being together all the time

is one of the essential things about being a family.

But in China, people are able to maintain very strong notions of family and

a sense of emotional connectiveness even when they're apart.

Narrator: Will Li Yang fulfill his dream and make the Olympic team?

It’s too soon to tell.

He and his parents have given up the daily joys of family life for the slim chance,

the very slim chance, that Li Yang will become a star gymnast for China.

The parents of young Chinese gymnasts like Li Yang are willing to let them

be raised by coaches.

But there are other places where the idea of having children raised by strangers

of any kind would be taboo.

There, the bond between mother and child is deemed so important that

mothers will take their children with them even into the most hostile of environments.

Tihar Prison in New Delhi, India.

It's the largest prison in Asia; 75,000 prisoners shuffle through here every year.

India's leading terrorists, criminals and drug lords are kept here.

Even the women's ward is full of inmates charged with theft, drugs, and murder.

It’s the last place a child should call home.

Yet this is where about 50 children live, learn and play.

They are the children of women prisoners. Some were born here.

Others have lived here for months, even years.

Nearly all of them have little memory of the world outside.

Sapna: They don't see the moon because they're locked up.

Lajjo: Ice cream, chocolate, you get that outside, but you can't get any of that in here.

Narrator: A prison is never the ideal place to bring up a child, but sometimes,

it can be the best place to do so.

In some countries, the idea of making a child pay for the sins of its mother would be taboo.

Man: I wouldn’t make the kid live there; that doesn’t seem right.

The kid didn’t do anything wrong.

Woman: They’re the ones that took the risk to get into prison;

the child shouldn’t have to go down with them.

She gives up every right and every freedom as soon as she gets convicted.

Narrator: But here in India, people see it differently.

The women's prison here in Tihar has eight wards housing 500 women.

Tihar has been called a model prison: quiet, disciplined, orderly.

But there's one building where the rules don't always apply.

It’s called the children's barrack.

And this is where the real outlaws live.

Meet Rohit, the terror of Tihar.

His mother, Lajjo, is struggling to keep him in control.

Lajjo and Rohit have been in prison for over three years.

Lajjo is charged with being an accessory to the murder of her sister-in-law.

Lajjo's husband stayed in Dubai and she left her older daughters with her family,

but Rohit she brought inside.

Lajjo: He was a year and a half old when I brought him in. I was breastfeeding him.

He couldn't have lived without me then.

Narrator: But Rohit is now five years old, and Lajjo is still fighting her case.

Like Lajjo, about 90% of the women inside Tihar are not convicts.

They are women awaiting trial.

The Indian courts are so clogged that it takes them years to grant bail or hear a case.

So the law allows mothers to raise a child in prison until the child turns six.

For most people, keeping kids in prison would be highly taboo.

But many of these inmates opt to bring their children inside.

Lajjo: We choose to bring them here if we aren't able to convince ourselves

to leave the kids; we wonder how they'll keep our kids outside.

The way a mother loves her child, nobody else can do that.

A mother is, after all, a mother.

Narrator: It’s a role most Indian women take to heart.

And the one crime they don't want to be accused of is being an unfit mother.

Dr. Manju Mehta: In Indian culture, in lots of our prayers,

in lots of our sayings, the mother has a status which is almost next to god.

So it’s become very important that the mother has to take care of the child.

If anything goes wrong in the child, the blame is on the mother.

Narrator: Dr. Manju Mehta is a child psychologist at the

All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, India.

Dr. Mehta: In India, so far even culturally, the fathers have not been very active

in bringing up children.

And that is why the mother feels that she cannot leave the child to father or other relatives

and she feels that whatever the environment is,

she would be the best person to take care of her child.

Narrator: In many countries, mothers aren’t given the choice.

It’s not a question of what’s best for the child, just what’s the best punishment for the mother.

Small: In Western culture, if a woman has to go to prison, she’s separated from her child

as if the child will be perfectly fine without her.

Someone else can bring the kid up.

But I think from the Indian perspective, they consider this some kind of child abuse to separate

this bond that is so important to them.

And for Indian children who don’t follow their mothers to prison,

the situation outside the prison walls can be more abusive than within.

About 18 million children live on the streets of India trying to survive any way they can.

Some resort to begging, others to drugs and prostitution.

Many of the mothers in prison are from the poorer segments of society.

They know that without their guidance, their kids could easily wander the alleyways.

But in the confines of a prison, their children are safe and in their care.

It’s Rohit's turn to lead the prayers at the prison nursery.

The children are kept here while the mothers perform various prison duties.

Inmates like Sapna act as nursery schoolteachers from nine to four every day.

Sapna: They learn their alphabets, poems, numbers, all the things that are taught in a nursery.

Narrator: Sapna's making them practice their alphabets.

But Rohit's already thinking big.

Sapna: My daughter says the same thing.

She says, "I’ll become a judge…"

That's my daughter, Mino.

Narrator: Sapna's in prison on a kidnapping charge.

Her husband is an alcoholic and cannot take care of Mino.

So Sapna has brought her inside.

Sapna: I think it’s better inside.

These children don't care about the world.

All they care about is having their mother, and good food to eat, that's it.

Narrator: It’s in prison that the children learn to love their mothers.

But it’s a lesson that will last them a lifetime.

Dr. Mehta: In the initial ages, the mother-child relationship develops the sense of

trust and mistrust in the child.

So if the mother is able to take care of the child at that particular time,

he would develop a sense of trust in other people also.

But the children are paying a heavy price for this security.

Coming up, Rohit leaves prison for the first time in three years.

Then, journey to a place where kids run wild and learn to smoke at age six.

The taboo of raising kids in prison stems from a harsher reality.

Sapna: They don't see the moon, because they get locked up at six in the night.

They’ve never been to the zoo.

Inside, you just get to see cats, nothing else.

Sapna: The kids who are from the outside would have seen other things.

The kids born here, they have just seen the warden and these bars and us, that's it.

Narrator: These children are limited, not just in their movement, but in their entire reality.

A situation that may work for very young children becomes

increasingly difficult as they get older.

Dr. Mehta: When we look for the younger children,

their basic needs are related to security, belongingness.

But when we come to the older children, their needs are a little different.

Their stimulation and their environment has to be more enriched.

In the prison environment, their experiences become very limited.

That sad reality has become increasingly clear to Lajjo, who worries about Rohit’s future.

Lajjo: If he stays with me, I don't know how long it will take me to get released.

And then the child's education gets affected.

Narrator: After more than three years in prison,

Lajjo has decided to send Rohit home to live with her daughters.

Narrator: Although there are special hostels that look after prison kids,

Lajjo is hesitant to entrust her son to total strangers.

Lajjo: I would never give my son to anybody else.

I am sending him only because it’s my own daughters.

Narrator: It’s Rohit's big day and Lajjo is giving him his last prison bath in cold water.

Lajjo: I am sending him home so he'll study, grow up and become a good human being.

He says that we wants to study and become a big man.

However far he may go from me, he’ll definitely remember his mother.

Dr. Mehta: I wouldn't say that all the negative parts of the prison

can be ruled out by the mother's love.

But one has to make the compromise, because if the child is outside the prison,

he doesn't have care of the mother.

First, let the child's basic needs be fulfilled with the mother and

when he is out of the prison, he can learn other things later in life.

Narrator: It’s time for the final hand-off.

At the meeting window, four feet of wire separates Lajjo from her family.

Seeing them never gets any easier.

Lajjo: When you get separated from your family, you feel terrible.

It’s been three years since I left my kids; I really miss them.

Narrator: And now, Lajjo is moments away from losing the last child she had.

Lajjo: I brought him up since he was so small, so now I feel he's going far away from me.

But he's going home after all.

They'll take good care of him.

They won't let him feel that his mother is not there.

Narrator: There is just one more door that locks Rohit from the outside world.

Lajjo's family waits eagerly in the sunlight.

Rohit can hardly contain his excitement.

After three years in prison, Rohit leaves Tihar, hopefully, never to return.

Everything he has known and loved lies behind him.

He has no idea what this new world is going to be like, but he is ready to take it all in stride.

For Lajjo, prison has never seemed a bleaker place.

Lajjo: I had dreamt a lot of things for him, but they brought and dumped me into this prison.

Now I’ll keep him at home.

I won't let this prison influence his life.

Narrator: Inside the prison, it’s just another day.

For now these children have their mothers to watch over them.

Sapna: A child's future is in the mother's hand.

If the mother is not there, then who will help them make their future?

That's what every mother wants: her child to study, do well and become someone.

That's a mother, only a mother does that.

Narrator: And like every other mother, all these women want is what's best for their children.

For the moment, they've found it in this prison.

The mothers in Tihar Prison prefer to have their children grow up under their watchful eyes.

And in today’s world, mothers everywhere worry about what can happen

to children raised without enough supervision.

But there are cultures where children are given an unusual amount of freedom and thrive on it.

Would you let your children play with fire?

Or smoke cigarettes at age six?

Or go swimming in a nearby river without a parent or lifeguard in sight?

How about if your kids wandered off on their own for hours or even days without coming home?

If these were your kids, such behavior would probably be taboo.

Woman: If my child were gone for several days without any contact,

I would be calling the police, hunting the back woods, looking everywhere for that child.

I totally disagree with a six-year-old being unsupervised doing anything

let alone in a body of water.

Man: Parents who let their six-year-old child smoke cigarettes

should not be allowed to have children.

Woman: If my six year-old was caught building fires, I’d probably beat his behind.

I would never let my child go off six days, six minutes, six hours

without me knowing what in the world is going on. Never.

Narrator: But among the Mentawai people on Siberut Island in Indonesia,

Western parenting rules don’t apply.

In fact, parents aren’t even as important as in many cultures, because here,

children are raised as much by relatives and each other as by their mothers and fathers.

Goibiat is about seven or eight years old. Nobody knows for sure,

since time is less important here.

He lives with his extended family in the village of

Sakuddei in a big house built on stilts to protect it from flooding.

The house and the clan that lives in it, including grandparents, three aunts and five uncles

is called an uma…in this case, “Uma Sakuddei.”

Among the Mentawai, the nuclear family is far less important than the clan

usually five to ten families related on the father’s side.

Children grow up with many adults to interact with

or not, because kids here are given free rein.

They may roll in the mud or spend hours hiking through a forest

filled with dangerous wild animals, entirely on their own.

Much of what Goibiat learns comes from imitating his cousin Kelak, who’s about 12.

Small: Older kids teach younger kids.

Adults don’t have to watch them.

It really frees up adult time.

This is probably the way the human evolutionary path started.

Four million years ago, we lived in small kin-based clan groups, so it was always like that.

At the uma, Goibiat’s life is a mixture of play and simple chores.

My favorite things to do are canoeing and swimming in the river near uma.

Then I go to the chicken farm to feed the chickens and then out to play again.

When the boys get a little older, they’ll venture out for days at a time,

welcomed into any home along the river.

Here, miles from towns and cities, danger comes not from other people, but from wild animals.

The latest harrowing attack dominates tonight’s storytelling.

The clan gathers together as grandfather relates how he and the uncles battled a wild boar.

Storyteller: A few hours out, we saw the wild boar, so Riaba tried to shoot it.

That made the pig mad and it charged and attacked Siruruk and gored him with its tusk.

Narrator: As they listen, family members change the wounded uncle’s bandages.

Many parents elsewhere would shield children from his pain. Here, it’s accepted as a part of life.

Uncle Ja Gao works on his arrows.

He’s the family’s best hunter, the one who mortally wounded the wild boar.

Storyteller: Ja Gao shot the pig with an arrow.

We’d finally killed it.

This was the biggest, strongest pig we had ever hunted.

Maybe it had some magical strength that made it so hard to kill.

Narrator: Adults don’t shield children from the spoils of hunting, either.

Wild animal skulls hang from the rafters of the uma.

Western children might call it a haunted house.

But here, youngsters learn that animal spirits serve their ancestors,

which in turn protect the family.

The next morning, it’s the boys’ turn to go hunting with the uncles,

time to continue their lessons.

In this society, relatives provide much of a child’s education.

Uncles Ja Gao and Gabari are uniquely qualified.

They’re shamans, among the society’s elite who can communicate with the spirit world.

Today their prey is a lot less ferocious than wild boar: plants.

The young boys wield sharp machetes.

They’re lethal weapons, but no one seems to worry that they’re in the hands of children.

But like boys everywhere, Goibiat and Kelak aren’t just thinking about their lessons.

They’ve managed to uncover what passes for candy in this part of the world,

sago grubs, the larvae of the Capricorn beetle.

To Goibiat, as delicious as a chocolate bar, but just a bit more wriggly.

The uncles pick up their pace.

Tonight will be an important night in the uma.

A man sick with fever has arrived from a neighboring clan.

The shamans know exactly which plants to choose for the healing ceremony.

That’s why they brought the boys along.

Mentawai shamans are entrusted with passing on their knowledge

of as many as a thousand plants in this tropical forest.

Someday Goibiat too could be a shaman, if he watches closely and learns their secrets.

Coming up: The shamans try to placate angry spirits.

Goibiat’s education continues that night in the uma.

The children’s presence is accepted at the healing ceremony.

Nothing here is censored.

Once in a trance, the shaman’s goal is to placate angry spirits,

whom they hold responsible for illness and suffering.

The children stay up late into the night.

There are no scoldings, no worries about getting enough sleep.

They’re not excluded, they learn first-hand.

Ceremonies like this are at the heart of uma life,

in a culture struggling to hold on to its traditions despite constant pressure from the outside.

For Goibiat’s way of life is beset by change.

He has grown up a free spirit in an extended family,

taking his lessons from the forest around him.

Yet at the same time, the Indonesian government has long urged his people

to live as nuclear families in villages where children can attend school.

These changes have had mixed results for Goibiat.

His parents are now building a second home in a village with a school,

half-an-hour downstream from the uma.

Goibiat’s father, Gulakeu, has decided it’s time to give his son a more formal education.

Aman Gulakeu: I want Goibiat to go to school and learn to write and to speak Indonesian.

I want him to be smart and then help with the family business.

If I have dried coconut, he can deal with the trader.

Narrator: Traders are increasingly important to the Mentawai.

They bring them tobacco, to which they are addicted.

But though Gulakeu has high hopes for his son, the boy sees little relevance in his schoolwork.

His heart remains back at the uma, where he’s used to a different way of learning.

Goibiat’s lack of interest worries his teacher.

Teacher: Every single time I see him, he goes to school without his book, pen,

and most of the time he just listens and watches.

He often doesn’t even go to school because his parents take him to the jungle

or to the uma to work in the forest.

Narrator: In Western culture, it’s considered taboo to let your child cut school.

But to Goibiat’s father, the old ways of learning still outrank the new.

Gulakeu: I would like him to stay in school for two or three years,

but after he’s finished, I will teach him the Mentawai way.

I was taught these things by my parents, and now it’s my turn to teach Goibiat.

He will learn from me and then when he grows up he can continue the tradition

by teaching the next generation.

Narrator: In America, parents celebrate taking their children to work one day a year.

But what Mommy and Daddy do all day isn’t a mystery to Mentawai children.

From an early age, they’re initiated into what it takes to make a living.

Small: Children are part of the work force.

They’re a part of what’s going on.

They’re in the fields; they’re running around.

In America, you can go through day after day and not see a single child.

Narrator: In teaching his son, Gulakeu emphasizes practical skills.

Gulakeu: I teach him to walk in the jungle.

We have to be quiet when we see a monkey, so I teach him strategies for hunting.

And then I teach him to find the good wood to build a house in the future when he needs it.

Also some rattan to make a string for the bow.

The things that I teach him now, to feed the pig, to go to the river,

it’s going to be his duty in the future.

It’s already evident the boys are learning their lessons well.

Cutting school may be taboo elsewhere, but Goibiat uses the time to perfect his survival skills.

Who’s to argue; in less than a decade, he may well have a family to feed.

But he won’t lose sleep over it.

For the Mentawai believe in taking life slow.

The spirits disapprove of rushing around, so there’s always time, for the children.

Time to make certain they learn the traditions of the clan,

to prepare them to take their places as Mentawai adults

and pass on the culture to the next generation.

Small: The tightness or the looseness of the bond between

a mother and an infant and what is expected or what is acceptable in a society

is actually a picture of the society as a whole.

How do they feel about relationships how do they feel about family,

how do they feel about work?

It’s all part of the ideology of a culture.

Narrator: What one culture considers proper another considers taboo.

From the freedom of the Mentawai children, to the tight bond of mothers and children

in Indian prisons, to the challenging life of the young Chinese gymnast,

our choices in child rearing say a great deal about who we are.

What parenting style is taboo for you?