DADWAGON

From a new Dad Blog called Band of Fathers, which I heard about from my “real world” friend and colleague Charlotte G., comes a debate about a movie called, simply enough, Babies. They pose a reasonable question: would dudes go see this? Or (in my words) is this just meant to be a lushly filmed lactation aid for moms who need to produce more milk?

I will defer on that question. (I actually found the trailer below quite entertaining.) But I am not sure how I feel about the choice of the four babies. They picked one new baby to follow from four countries: Mongolia, Namibia, Japan and the U.S.

That’s the point, right: to show how different (and similar) babies are across the globe. But they really chose the extremes. So the Namibian baby isn’t from Windhoek, for example, which is a proper city of almost 300,000 people. No, it’s from Opuwo, in the Himba heartland, where villagers still mainly wear mud instead of clothing (really). In other words, it’s from an idealized and frankly anachronistic Africa that is much different from the current Africa, which is much more urban, for better or (often) worse. And the U.S. baby isn’t from a regular ole town in the States, but from San Francisco. And judging from the shots of baby dance classes, etc., it’s likely that this baby is also an outlier, being raised on the yuppiest fringes of American society.

Obviously, the director was going for contrast. But I wonder if the film doesn’t slip into stereotype in the process. Just sayin’. Watch the trailer (and the movie when it comes out) and decide for yourself.