Jeffrey L. Fine - The Art of Conscious Parenting: The Natural Way to Give Birth, Bond with, and Raise Healthy Children

We dedicate this book to

The Blessed Holy One.

Our Endless Father-Mother-Creator

Who is Endlessly Fathering-Mothering-Creating

and

The Mothers and Fathers who will create and parent all the future generations

and

Our son Kesem Joseph Fine whose conception and life have been the inspiration for this book

The Art of
Conscious Parenting

This book has expanded my mind on what it means to be green. The Art of Conscious Parenting gives us a green parenting ecosystem for our children that, if followed, will guarantee that our kids will thrive and not just survive.

J. Stace McGee, president, Environmental Dynamics,
consultant to the U.S. Green Building Council

This book will help us return to a wisdom we all have in our very bones. When free of the often destructive messages we imbibe from our culture, conscientiousness and conscience become the keys to successful parenting, family life, and world community. We ignore these lessons at deep peril to ourselves and our children.

David H. Albert, author of And the Skylark Sings with Me:
Homeschooling and Community-Based Education

The Art of Conscious Parenting shows that ancient wisdom on early nurturing experiences is corroborated by a vast range of contemporary scientific studies. With rampant family dysfunction, depression, violence, and other endemic ills traceable to morbid patterns of child-rearing, we cannot afford to ignore the exciting challenges posed by this compelling, thought-provoking, and loving book.

Rabbi Avraham Greenbaum, author of Wings of the Sun:
Traditional Jewish Healing in Theory and Practice

Yet was I a son to my father,
tender and alone before my mother.
Then he taught me and said to me:
Keep my ways and live;
Acquire wisdom, acquire understanding.

So says King Solomon, the son of King David. The Fines have given every reader the opportunity to acquire wisdom and acquire the understanding to choose life for their future generations.

Rabbi Isaac Vachmann, Temple Shalom,
Pompano Beach, Florida

Jeffrey and Dalit Fines book lends insight into the sacred art of parenting and the science that sheds light on our deepest bond. No subject could be more important.

Alex Grey, author of Sacred Mirrors and Transfigurations

Contents

By Joseph Chilton Pearce

PUBLISHERS PREFACE

Theres Nothing New Under the Sun

... theres nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said, See this is new?
It has already been, in the ages before us.

ECCLESIASTES 1:9

EVERY GENERATION THINKS THAT it is the first to discover the wonders of life: the joy of falling in love, the process of giving birth, and the pain and sorrow of loss. And yet we do not start over with each passing generation, we simply go in cycles. We rediscover the old wisdom, hopefully we make improvements, keep those things that are true and good, and disregard those things that just do not work. While the past cannot be idealized, it can certainly be a place to return to, in order to find answers and inspiration.

In the sixties, many young people moved toward a more organic approach to everything: from what they ate to how they gave birth; from how they used fossil fuel to what kind of natural fabrics they wore. This emerging generation seemed to be on a path to a more gentle existence reaching back to the simplicity of an earlier time. Somehow, between the times of college kids practicing nonviolent resistance to when video games became so violent that they could cause seizures in children, the practice of childbirth and child rearing changed dramatically. Somehow our society jumped back to the cold, sterile hospital practices of the fifties adding new and improved drugs and technology, which won out over more natural rituals. Good parenting was defined by how many toys and electronic gadgets that Mom and Dad could buy for their young consumers. Now happily, Jeffrey and Dalit Fine have written a book about their journey to rediscover these new old ways and incorporate them into their lives and the life of their son. The obvious delight of just being with their child shines through on every page of this book. The profound experience of their sons birth has inspired them to teach and encourage others on how to follow this low-tech, natural approach to childbirth and child rearing.

FOREWORD

Not Just Another Book on Parenting

THERE ARE MANY BOOKS on parenting; library shelves bulge with them and a substantial number of them have landed, sooner or later, on my desk. Yet, in view of the rapid increase in the crisis of children affecting our nation, these literary efforts have had small effect.

Jeffrey and Dalit Fines magnificent opus is differentindeed unique in all those crossing my path: and I have high hopes that this time, with his work, the vast bulwark of indifference such works have faced will be breached. I have rather lived with Jeffreys work since its inception, or conception, a number of years ago, and while his first drafts seemed to hold promise, I had no idea of the scope, breadth, and depth there would be in this, the final result.

This book is far more than just another book on parenting. It is an encyclopedia, a whole education in, and astonishing view of, the magnificent story of human conception, birth, and development. Nor am I just (or overly) prejudiced by his references to my own work. He has, at the very least, not just placed me in very good company, but thankfully has gone far beyond my own more cursory and tentative earlier surveys, updating them with the knowledge available today concerning the practices of birth-bonding and child-rearing; all of which knowledge is vast and magnificent and, within itself, the greatest story ever told or needing to be told.

Jeffreys research and references, vast and valid, center on his current and immediate experience. My books were written largely after the fact of the ghastly birthing, broken bonding, and haphazard rearing of the first four of my five offspring. Looking back on the travesties of ones own stumbling past is both painful and enlightening. On the other hand, however, Jeffreys insights are from his very current personal history concerning the comparatively recent conception and birth of his son. I stumbled into fatherhood and its ongoing series of exigencies and contingencies to be met as best one can. Jeffrey entered into the parent venture in an informed and intelligent manner, far more aware of what was at stake. His personal account of encounters with obstetricians and hospitals is both hilarious and soberinga clear description of ill-informed medical interference, too often crass indifferences, and even stupidity.

It is my personal hope and prayer that now, as a result of Jeffreys work and that of many others, far more people can be even more informed and prepared than either Jeffrey or myself. Our survival as a species may well depend on such revelation.