Babies

This post is courtesy of a belated Mother's Day celebration with my mom. For a little over a year I have been aware of a documentary entitled Babies. The trailer, linked here, is a fantastic representation of the movie.

This documentary follows four babies through their first year of life. The families are in Namibia, Japan, Mongolia, and the United States. This unnarrated film not only shows the day-to-day life of the new babies, but it also gives a taste of the culture in each country. It doesn't proselytize about a particular way of life or argue any type of cultural relativism. It simply documents an interesting idea, and then lets the viewer decide how they feel.

I went to watch the film with my mom as a belated mother's day celebration. We both came away knowing more about the importance of birth and motherhood in these cultures and learning a lot about each country specifically.

I would highly recommend this film for anyone interested in other cultures, and especially for those specifically interested in child-rearing. This unadulterated take allows each person to learn and digest the information on their own, which is a welcome change in this often controversial field.