Children who are in arms all day, who sleep with their parents, who breastfeed... Later it is said that they are more autonomous...

I'm not interested in all these theories that say what they're going to be like as adults to justify what we do to children. I give him hugs because I see that the moment I hold him, the child is happy. Will he be happy in 30 years? There's a lot going on in 30 years. This will affect everything, but you can't have a magical belief. But right now my baby is not the same if I comfort him when he cries or if I let him cry.

But those who have allowed themselves to cry from the beginning until they are silent have the appearance of being more autonomous.

Kids are not dumb. When they see that crying is useless, they stop crying. There have been many more strikes with democracy than with Francoism. Does this mean that the workers were more satisfied with Franco? I'd say no... it's

funny how we don't even see parity in the government and in the management of the house. It is often said that if the child has been given a rule, it must be enforced, otherwise the child learns to get away with it. When a judge issues a sentence, there is a right to appeal to the Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court takes the opposite of the previous judge’s ruling, no one will say that “the judge is losing authority”... Democracy is based on the separation of powers, and in families alike, parents do not need to defend a single discourse in everything. Let one of you correct the other when you screw up.

Why is it wrong to breastfeed poor children and/or sleep in the same bed as their parents?

It's an envy. If you breastfeed a 1-year-old, you may be upset by a friend: “I gave him a bottle and he grew up very well!” With the other issues of life people don’t get like this, nobody will tell a butcher “I’m a baker and mine is a very good trade too!” Everyone has their own life, and nothing happens. Then why does the one who breastfeeds, sleeps with the child, or carries the child in his arms meet with true condemnation? Because it’s a very important thing in one’s life, because it indicates how you raise your children and how your parents raised you, and many people would love to do all of that. Anyone who doesn’t really envy doing this will not be angry.

The speech about milk says that everyone is free to decide. Is this so in practice?

Breastfeeding a two-year-old is worse than feeding a baby. The opposite pressure is also beginning to be felt, some women complain that they look bad for giving them a bottle, that they feel that they are bad mothers. There are a lot of uneducated people, in one way or another. People who respect each other respect each other. As a pediatrician, if a mother tells me that she is going to give her a bottle, I will explain how to prepare the bottle, and if another tells me that she wants to breastfeed, I will explain how to breastfeed. What happens is that I’ve heard hundreds of women say “I wanted to breastfeed but I couldn’t” and I’ve never heard anyone say “I wanted to bottle but I couldn’t”. And that tells me that today, those who want to breastfeed need more help. Whoever wants to give the bottle always manages to give it.

For what reason?

Because no one doubts it's possible. If a baby starts feeding a bottle and refuses, no one says, “You’ll have to breastfeed.” But if a child refuses to breastfeed, “you may need to give him a bottle...” The whole world has a bottle of light that can be delivered. But with the chest we all think that in some cases it fails. And the breast, physically, can fail in one out of every 1,000 cases. But in practice it is failing in half of the cases. And the bottle can also fail in one out of every 1,000 cases (because the baby is allergic to this milk, for example).

Some friends decide not to give milk to the one-year-old. They give him yogurt and cheese.

With yogurt and cheese this child gets more than enough milk. An adult does not need to drink milk. That's everyone's decision. Milk is not bad, but it is not essential. There are no animals that take milk from another kind of animal, and there are no animals that continue to take milk once they leave their mother's breast. Now, if someone by conviction does not want to donate any dairy products, including yogurt and cheese, breastfeed for at least two years. The human being should breastfeed for at least two or three years, as advised by the World Health Organization, UNICEF and others. If the baby who has been breastfeeding for more than two years does not drink any milk after that, nothing will happen.

These friends had a great discussion with the pediatrician. Looks like the kids are from Osakidetza, and the parents must be lying.

The children of the Spanish State are too medicalized. It makes sense to involve the pediatrician in some aspects of nutrition because it is part of their job. But the things that pediatricians often say have nothing to do with their work. And it is often the parents who insist on asking the pediatrician for advice on anything! If you have to put a leech in the soup, or if you have to peel the eggplant... It seems that anything the child does is a matter for the pediatrician! At other ages of life, this does not happen. The response of the pediatrician in these matters is no more or less valuable than that of the grandmother or the hairdresser. The degree does not give him training because he has not learned how to raise children. That sort of thing, the best thing, is to ask Grandma. On the one hand, if you ask him because he is very happy, and on the other, because he has raised at least one child who lives, which you do not know if the pediatrician has succeeded or not.

The grandmothers scare me a bit because they fix everything with a “this has always been like this”. Since when is that “always”?

The key is the age of the grandmother. Some of those grandmothers who say “always,” when you force them to question, recognize that they didn’t do what they say they did. What has always been done is to carry the children in the arm and sleep with the children. They carried the children in their arms because they had no other way. It was not until the mid-19th century that a stroller was invented. And they slept with the children because there were two rooms in the house where there were seven children. By the middle of the 20th century, on the initiative of some pedagogues, psychologists and doctors, they began to say that if they did not take children in the arm, they would have been ill-educated, the same with sleep, etc., etc. And of course, his parents ignored him. The books of the 1930s and 1940s are cursed by their mothers: “Ignorant mothers”, “irresponsible mothers”, “those who do not keep the word of the professional”... Some grandmothers complied with the doctors’ words and today’s mothers are told to do the same. But other grandmothers, the older ones, who did not obey the doctors’ advice, received so much rebuke, they heard so many times that they were doing badly and that they were bad mothers, that they do not want their daughters to make the same mistake. I have seen that many of these grandmothers were the ones who guessed that they were themselves when they were told what burdens they were getting rid of, and that it was the doctor who was wrong. They change their faces and stop saying that nonsense.

How can work and life at home be reconciled?

I think we should start admitting that we only have one life. You cannot be a chemical engineer and an architect at the same time. You're either one or the other. Why do they make us believe that work and life at home can all be done at the same time? The balance in history has been to do everything at the same time, but not everything at the same level. There was a time when the woman was going to work with the baby hanging on her back. But of course, no one expected him to work as hard as the childless one. The businessman knew that this woman would make more interruptions, that she would give

less... But the businessman, if you include your working hours, and you give the same, cares little if your baby is well or sick. For that reason, the rights of mothers had not come from businessmen; the Government must force the businessmen, because it was up to the Government to protect the people.

Unfortunately, the Spanish Government has been restricting the rights of mothers rather than increasing them for some time. The 1951 Convention of the International Labour Organization was signed by the Government of Spain, which stated that the mother was allowed 12 weeks after the birth of the child. In Spain even at that time, the mothers were 16 weeks old, so what the rabbit said was perfectly fulfilled. But the year 2001 has not yet been signed by the Spanish government, it will be for some reason. The Convention states that a permit must be issued for 14 weeks, which is apparently still in effect, but it states in an annex that, in the localities where it is possible, it should be issued for 18 weeks. If the world’s 10th industrial power can’t do it, who should?

Our society does not give priority to the education of its children. It doesn’t seem important to society when the future depends on it! It is clear to us that the future depends on the infrastructures and the AVE is built, and the reservoirs, etc... And the growth of the citizens of tomorrow is not important? But this is not given an economic and social priority.

What's the solution then?

What other European countries have: a low of about one year, and in many countries they have a couple of years to choose from, charging part of their salary.

But doesn't a woman lose her world of work by staying at home to take care of children for so many years?

If I say no, we're all calm. But if I say yes, that the woman who takes care of children loses her working life, then what does the woman who goes to work leaving the children lose? We have to be consistent. We cannot say that in working life it is essential to be present, otherwise you lose your seniority, you lose your chances of ascending, you lose everything, and instead it is the same whether you are with the child or not. If one field is lost, the other field is also lost. Everyone has to decide what to prioritize.

I think another problem is that people who write books have very good jobs. The theory is that work is what develops people as people. But who writes these theories? Journalists, lawyers, university professors... with interesting works. Most people don’t work on such things. Is it really that important that we go for eight hours to put tuna in the can? Or to clean the scales?

It would be good to look for ways to ensure that childcare is not a major issue for women to pursue their careers. But that doesn't mean we don't have to take care of the kids.

What is the father’s role? Modern fathers want to take care of the care equally, while more progressive books put the protagonism back in the mother...

Men have been having a hard time finding our job lately. We have been accused of many things: we were sexist, we did not participate in the care of children... Sometimes we want it to have a function outside of what has been educated, other parents have looked for another function on their own, others are a bit lost, in other homes both mother and father are out of place with the question of functions, some mothers are insistent that the father spend a lot of time with the child and basically envy the father because they do not spend so much time with the child... Often you do not want society to separate you from what you want to do with the rule of day...

The most important thing is that parents have the right to raise their children as they wish.

It is the mother who is most responsible for the care during the first three years, because biologically it is so. It is the mother who gives birth, the one who breastfeeds, and the children (this is a psychological event whether you like it or not), because they have a special affective connection with only one person. This person may be the mother or the father, but may be the only one. Parents, who are wise, never ask, “Who do you love more, Mom or Dad?” Children need their parents for years. The mother may leave the job for the first three years to take care of the child, and then the father may leave it for another three years to take care of the child in subsequent years. And so both parents would have three years of “lost” in their career, and the children would gain six years of great attention, thus being very happy.

In My Child Doesn’t Come You Explain How Many Personal Problems Are Confusing When It Comes to Eating, And How Much Harm They Cause. On the other hand, with the culture that exists in us for the kitchen and the tableau environment, is it not possible to reduce the children's meal to a simple diet? Always the same puree, it is fed to him individually, at an intense pace, one box after another... Can't it be done any other way?

Of course it is, what is not understandable is why it is done this way! The main goal of starting to feed other foods besides the breast after six months is to get them used to the adult diet. Because a child up to a year old doesn’t really need anything but the breast to live. Since the goal is to get to eat normal homemade food, the most logical thing is to provide normal homemade food. Every household eats a variety of foods, so it’s not logical that every child in the Spanish state eats the same thing!

I only say one thing to my parents: think about what you want your child to eat when he is three or five years old. Do you want your child to eat “seven cereals with honey” when he is five years old? Do you want me to eat a puree made with half an apple, half a banana, half a pear and cookies? Well, give it to him. But if you want me to eat rice at the age of five, or lentils, or macaroni... There's something to give her. What are you going to get used to when you have to make a special effort to get used to these tastes, if once you have managed to like them you will have to make another effort to get rid of these types of foods and get used to the homemade foods? Just give me the house from the beginning and you're done!