The Better Baby

According to today’s British newspaper The Guardian, a young couple suspected of leaving their baby in the baggage hold of a motorbike while they gambled was arrested Thursday after the boy’s dead body was found in a gutter, police and media reports said.

The arrest of Motoki Tamiya and his wife, Mika, both 21, comes amid public outcry about the treatment of children after a separate case in which a preschooler was abandoned by his father at an anonymous drop box meant for unwanted infants.

“We could say that we are witnessing the deterioration of Japanese society,” ruling party lawmaker Tsuneo Suzuki told parliament, referring to recent cases of child abandonment.

“We must stem this appalling destruction of family and community morals,” he said.

The 1-year-old boy is believed to have suffocated while shut in the motorbike’s storage compartment as his parents played pachinko, media reports said. Pachinko is a popular Japanese game similar to pinball.

After discovering the baby was dead, the couple is suspected of dumping the body off a remote road in the mountains of western Japan earlier this year, local police official Seiho Yasui said. The couple was arrested on suspicion of illegally dumping the body.

The body was found in April, but appeared to have been dumped months earlier. Police identified the baby Wednesday after DNA tests linked him to his mother, Yasui said.

She had told welfare workers in January she felt she could not raise the baby and wished to give him up, according to news reports.

On Tuesday, authorities said a 3-year-old had been left at a baby drop box at a hospital in southern Japan.

The drop box was created after a series of cases in which newborns were left in parks and supermarkets, triggering public outrage and government warnings against abandoning babies.

LOS ANGELES, May 15 (UPI) — Being born in a baby-friendly hospital increases the chance the infant will be breastfed for six months, found a study of inner-city U.S. hospitals.

The research for the International Lactation Consultant Association, published in the Journal of Human Lactation, found that the rates of breastfeeding at six months decreased for families with public insurance or if there was an early feeding problem.

The study found that those mothers who gave birth in a baby-friendly hospital breastfed at rates comparable to the overall U.S. population, suggesting that the baby-friendly initiatives were positively affecting the health of those babies.

They looked at the factors influencing a mother’s decision to begin to breastfeed while in the hospital and what influenced whether that baby was still being nursed at six months.

The Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative was established by the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund to help the participating hospitals become centers of breastfeeding support.
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Beware the idiot box
By Susie O’Brien
May 01, 2007 01:00am
Article from: Herald-Sun
CHILDREN can be harmed by television even if they are not watching it, medical experts say.

Australian developmental pediatrician Dr John Wray said evidence showed a loud TV on in the background could delay young children’s language development.

The warning comes as calls mount for TV rationing and total bans on TV for under-threes.

“TV being on in the background 24/7 can be harmful, because children learn to tune out human voices, which can mean a delay in the processing of one-on-one voices,” Dr Wray said.

“This can be particularly damaging for kids with a predisposition to autism who may be drawn to the television,” he said.

“In many households, children fall asleep in front of the television and turn it on first thing in the morning.

“By the time children finish school, many spend more time in front of the TV than they do at school,” he said.

He advised parents to gradually reduce the time the TV is on, and increase one-on-one interaction.

In Britain this week, Dr Aric Sigman, from the British Psychological Society, said TV rationing was the “greatest priority for child health”.

He believes no child under three should watch TV, children should not be allowed to have TV sets in their bedrooms and that governments should provide guidance on how much TV children should watch.

Dr Sigman believes there are 15 ways in which over-exposure to TV can harm children, including by fuelling obesity and short-sightedness and causing premature puberty and autism.

Dr Sigman says three- to seven-year-olds should watch only half an hour of TV a day, and children aged seven to 12 up to an hour. Children aged 12 to 15 should watch no more than 1½ hours, and over-16s two hours.

Dr Wray said he thought blanket bans were unnecessary, but welcomed the guidelines for older children.

“When it comes to television, the content is important. And the more children are extended by it the better,” he said.

Debra Richards, the CEO of the Australian Subscription TV and Radio Association, disagreed that TV was harmful to children.

“Television is a valued medium which provides content specifically aimed at children,” she said.

“It’s about choice and diversity, and children like it because they want to be entertained and informed,” she said.

She said parental supervision allowed children to safely watch programs designed for them.