Gambling and Cheating in Basketball.

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: APRIL 20, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 042001np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Barney Polan's Game
Sect: News; Domestic
Time: 12:06

BARBARA BOGAEV, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Barbara Bogaev sitting in for Terry Gross.

Today's sports news features two big basketball stories: The Nets have made to the playoffs and a former player for Northwestern University is expected to plead guilty today in a point-shaving scheme during the Big Ten games back in 1995.

Charley Rosen says this story is nothing new; that gambling and cheating have always cast a shadow over basketball. Charley Rosen has been writing about basketball for more than 20 years. He's the author of nine books of fiction and non-fiction about hoops, including "The House of Moses All-Stars," "The Cockroach Basketball League," and a non-fiction book about the point-shaving scandals in college basketball back in 1951. It's called "The Scandals of '51: How the Gamblers Almost Killed College Basketball."

His knowledge of the game is grounded in personal experience. Rosen was a record-setting player in college in the '60s. He also coached a number of college teams, as well as minor league teams in the Continental Basketball Association. He worked there with Phil Jackson, now the coach of the Chicago Bulls.

In his new novel, "Barney Polan's Game," Rosen returns to the theme of gambling and the point-shaving episode among college players in the '50s. I asked him how the betting and the game-fixing started.

CHARLEY ROSEN, AUTHOR, "BARNEY POLAN'S GAME," AND "SCANDALS OF 51":
It was traditional in basketball. The barnstorming teams in the '20s and '30s, like the original Celtics -- the modus operandi was to go into a town on Friday night, play an exhibition against the locals, win by just a few points, hang around for -- or schedule games Sunday afternoon, and all the locals will say: "hey, we could've beaten you if this shot would have gone in or if the referee would have made this call" -- or stuff like that.

And a lot of money would be bet. And then Sunday afternoon, the barnstorming team -- the Celtics or whomever -- would just roll up the score, collect the money, and get out of town a step ahead of the sheriff. So, it was really part of the structure of basketball.

And as far as college basketball players dealing with gamblers, that -- that was going on since the late '30s, the early '30s -- certainly throughout the '40s. And it was at the point where seniors on the basketball team, who had developed the connections with the gamblers and what games were they going to work and how they were going to pick up their money, would invite sophomores, the young players once they prove that they were good enough, invite them into the coterie. And then when they graduated, kind of hand -- hand the baton to someone else.

BOGAEV: So did these kids just think: "hey, everybody's doing it. It's just like -- it's just like cheating on income tax."

ROSEN: Exactly. And for the most part, you did not have to lose a game. If your team was favored to win by five points, you just won by three points. So, it really didn't make any difference. It was a victimless crime. The only people who would lose out would be gamblers who didn't know what was going on. And as you said, everybody was doing it.

One of the problems happened, however -- there were several famous games at Madison Square Garden where both teams were shaving points. And it was pretty sloppy -- passes being thrown all over the place and guys tripping and balls bouncing off of heads. And fans in an uproar -- of course, they figured it out. And it was so blatant that there were even gamblers who ran down to the court and were standing under the basket waving $20 bills to remind the players of what...

LAUGHTER

... but sometimes it was pretty hard to figure out: "let's see -- we're supposed to win by four and a half or three and a half, and this team is" -- it was very difficult to figure out exactly what was going on in some games.

BOGAEV: It is easy, as a player, to shave points -- easy to fake playing badly?

ROSEN: It's very easy. It's very easy if you do it -- there's a certain talent involved. LIU, led by the great Sherman White (ph), who was the progenitor of -- it goes from Michael Jordan back to Julius Irving to Sherman White. He was the first modern player. And his LIU team -- sometimes they were favored by 2.5 points or 1.5 points, so that they had to -- in order to win the game, but still get paid by the gamblers, they had to win by one point or two points, which is a very delicate thing.

So they became very adept. Just -- you just miss a pass; you turn your head the wrong way; you start -- you cut a little early and the pass goes out of bounds. But mostly where it should have been done, where it was easier to get it done, was on defense. Just let the guy score or get yourself in foul trouble if you're one of the best players on the team and you wind up on the bench.

But what sometimes happened was at the end of the game where the situation got critical, you didn't have the space to be sophisticated. You just had to kick balls out of bound and do a lot of crude stuff.

BOGAEV: How did the story finally break?

ROSEN: It broke when a ballplayer named Junius Kellogg (ph) at Manhattan College was approached by two ex-players -- two Manhattan ex-players -- and asked to shave points. And he went to his coach and his coach went to the DA and these guys were entrapped -- Poppy (ph) and Burns (ph) were their names.

And they confessed -- they broke down and implicated the gambler who -- Salvator Salozzo (ph), who was the main focus of the gambling for the colleges in New York, and it just kind of spread and spread and spread up to a point, although some -- there was a lot of selective justice, let's say -- a lot of schools who were -- were implicated, who were doing business, who were "turning tricks," as the phrase went -- did not get caught for various reasons.

BOGAEV: What determined who were the fall guys and who got away?

ROSEN: Well, the -- the big determining factor -- and this is really the reason why I wrote the novel -- I had written "Scandals of '51" in -- back 20 years or so ago, which was a history of the period and of the gambling scandals. And I really couldn't get too much involved in the players who did get away and why they got away for libel reasons.

So 20 years later, I wrote a novel, Barney Polan's Game, which allowed me to get inside the situation a little more. And what really happened was that once the Manhattan kids were exposed -- Manhattan which was a Catholic school -- certain Catholic authorities, specifically Cardinal Spellman, got in touch with DA Hogan and told him to lay off the Catholic schools. And that's exactly what happened.

So most of the -- Manhattan was the only Catholic school that was exposed in '51. In '61, there were other scandals 10 years later -- St. John's -- St. John's was implicated. So really, the Jewish kids and black kids were the ones who got -- who got caught and then punished.

BOGAEV: So, it was race.

ROSEN: It was race, absolutely. And the black kids were the ones who went to jail. The white kids were given the opportunity to join the Army, instead of going to jail.

BOGAEV: You follow the stories of some of these men, and the book explores this. What happened to them? I understand some went on to the NBA.

ROSEN: No, none of them did. They were all barred from the NBA.

BOGAEV: Oh.

ROSEN: The guys who got away went on to the NBA. There were several members of the Basketball Hall of Fame who were -- who were point-shavers and dumpers; several very prominent, prominent people who are still active in the sports world.

Some became very bitter. Only one, Floyd Lane (ph), tried to stay in basketball. He eventually became the coach at City College, which is the school he attended and was shaving points -- shaving points there. The rest of them went on to various -- one became a dentist; one became a school psychologist.

But all of them lived kind of hidden lives -- kind of bitter lives. They really didn't want to talk about it. They -- it was the mark of Cain that they carried with them. And it just changed their lives, and it's kind of sad.

I played against a lot of these guys about seven or eight years after the whole thing broke. My -- the coach -- I went to Hunter College and the coach there was -- went to City College and knew Floyd Lane and Ed Roman (ph), and they used to -- would come up to Hunter College and scrimmage against us. And they were great, wonderful, talented players. But what struck me then was the joylessness of their game. They were just robots. They -- we were young and rambunctious and emotional, and they just -- they showed no joy in the game.

And that's really what got me so interested. Who are these guys? How could they be playing such a wonderful game -- such a pure game -- and -- with such a deadened spirit?

BOGAEV: My guest is basketball writer and former coach Charley Rosen. His new novel, Barney Polan's Game, is based on the gambling and game-fixing scandals in college basketball in the '50s. We'll talk more after this break.

This is FRESH AIR.

My guest is Charley Rosen. He's written nine books about basketball -- fiction and non-fiction. His new novel is Barney Polan's Game, about the point-shaving scandals among the college basketball leagues in the '50s.

There are a number of point-shaving incidents that have happened in the last decade, and just in the last year in college and pro basketball. Just this winter, kids at Columbia were arrested. They were involved with betting and organized crime. And also former players for Northwestern University were indicted a few weeks ago for fixing games a couple of years ago.

If this just the same old same old? I mean, do you see this -- this just repeating itself? It's the same thing that was going on in the '50s? Or are the stakes somehow different, or the questions of innocence and guilt also different?

ROSEN: I think the environment has changed a little bit. There's more money at stake in college basketball. Teams making the first round of the NCAA post-season tournament earn $100,000, $200,000 for their school. If they reach the finals, there are millions of dollars in question. Coaches are making millions of dollars in sneaker contracts. Kids are coming into the NBA with, you know, $100 million contracts.

So, the money is sky-high. But the -- I think what keeps it going, really, are a couple of things. The recruiting practices -- you have these high-powered Division I coaches whose jobs depend upon their team's success. And there are just so many blue-chip high school players available to be recruited.

So, there's a lot of underhanded ways of recruiting players. Coaches literally -- assistant coaches, usually -- literally going out on recruiting trips with suitcases full of money; grades being changed to get kids into school; other people taking SAT exams for -- for potential basketball players.

So kids come into school knowing all this is going on, and there's no real moral authority. In the athletic department, the coaches -- all these coaches jump from one contract to the next, you know, running after the buck -- the big buck. So, there's no moral ground there.

Plus, everybody talks about, yeah, kids do jump to the NBA and do make a lot of money, but you're talking about the best players in the country. There are 250 Division I schools. Maybe 50 of those -- 50 players will wind up in the NBA. And what about the other players? Guys who are really good -- the best player on their team or the second-best player on their team -- but know that they're never going to play in the NBA. They're never going to play in Europe.

They're going to play ball for three or four years. At the end of that time, they're -- most likely, they won't even have their degrees. Then what do they do? They just see all this wheeling and dealing going on around them, and they say: "hey, why not?"

BOGAEV: You've had some trouble controlling your own temper on the court...

LAUGHTER

... to say the least -- as a coach, perhaps as a player. So, as a coach, when you, for instance, fought hecklers in the stands or cursed out refs or you once landed in jail for taking a swing at a coach after a game, did you have trouble controlling your temper period? Or was this something that just comes out of behavior on the court -- a part of a macho -- macho sports mentality?

ROSEN: Yeah, this is certainly a macho sportsman attitude. But I think coaching is even worse, because when you're playing, you're out there running around. You can let it out. You can smack somebody. They smack you. You -- you can run and jump and just fly all over the place.

When you're coaching, you're wearing a tie and jacket, and all you can do is stand up, walk two steps, come back and sit down. So it's just very, very frustrating, especially in the CBA, which is a minor league where these kids are just interested into getting into the NBA; getting into the big money.

So they -- they're not interested in doing what you tell them to do. They're out for themselves. They don't care about team play. So, you're fighting the players. You're fighting the fans. You're fighting your owners sometimes, who don't -- who don't want to spend money.

I had an owner who rather than spend the money to fly in the player that they needed, bought new outfits for the cheerleaders, because he had some kind of interest in one of them, shall we say.

So, it's a crazy situation. Nobody wants to be in the CBA and it's very, very frustrating. And your job -- your livelihood depends on these players doing the right thing. They don't want to do the right thing. The -- even the referees are training for the NBA, so they have to show that they have complete control of the situation. And they're very arrogant in the way they conduct their business. You can't -- you can't talk to them.

And all of this pressure really kind of distorts your personality, or it puts -- it focuses on the weak spots in your personality. It's just like the weak spot in a tire. You know, that's the spot that's going to blow out -- the same thing in your personality.

And I, for various reasons, I was involved in the dissolution of a long, unhappy marriage, so I had a lot of anger -- some of it was repressed and some of it was not. So that was really my weak spot and that's where -- that's where it came out.

But I stuck up for my players and they appreciated that. And even when I took a swing at that coach -- who deserved it by the way -- my players -- my players supported me, and players on the other team supported me. Which is not, you know, that I condone what I did, but under the circumstances, I'm probably not ashamed of it 10 years later. Other coaches have done worse.

BOGAEV: You played at Hunter College in the '60s. How has the game -- the actual playing -- evolved since you were on the courts?

ROSEN: Well, when I was a kid, I do remember the old leather basketballs with the raised laced seams, which were not perfectly round and didn't always bounce straight up. If you bounced the ball and it hit a seam, it would come up crookedly. And if you tried to throw a pass, it would not go true. So it was almost like playing with a shot-put, sort of. It was very, very strange.

The game was slower in those days. It was much, much more physical. I think we were more basically sound because we didn't have the talent to just jump over somebody or outrun somebody or make all these outrageous moves. We -- are games were restricted. There were coaches -- Nat Holman (ph) at City College was famous for only allowing certain shots: the layup, the hook shot, and the set shot.

And there's a scene described in Barney Polan's Game which happened at City College during a practice, where a defensive player fell down, sprained his ankle, and the guy who he was guarding had the ball -- abandoned the offensive pattern and drove to the basketball and scored. And Holman was screaming and yelling: "you have to go through the pattern." That doesn't exist nowadays. It's not -- coaches don't have as much control over their players nowadays.

But these kids are so talented. There's more of a focus on playing basketball, so more kids are playing basketball at an earlier age, and they're more advanced than we were.

BOGAEV: Players didn't used to dunk then, although they could, right?

ROSEN: You were -- if you dunked the ball during a game, it was considered to be the ultimate insult. And if you were foolish enough to dunk during the game, you had to watch yourself because somebody was going to knock you down from behind or take your legs out. There was going to be a retaliation. So, you were a hot dog -- you were a show-off if you dunked.

BOGAEV: You teach a workshop at the Omega Institute, with Phil Jackson, called "Beyond Basketball." What's beyond basketball? What do you cover?

ROSEN: Mm-hmm. Well, I also teach one by myself, in the middle of the summer and then the one I do with Phil is -- is a benefit for Eddie Mast's (ph) family, who was an old buddy of ours -- was Phil's roommate with the Knicks.

Basically, the guiding light of this workshop is that basketball is a spiritual game. Anything you -- that a person with a spiritual consciousness undertakes to do has a tremendous spiritual content. Basketball, too -- basketball -- it's five players on one team adjusting to each other, losing their egos for the sake of the -- the community of the whole. It's really knowing what you can do; knowing what you can't do; making decisions on the run; getting in a flow where really you're beyond thinking and you're just reacting with each other.

And, it's a beautiful thing. And it's -- I know most people think of sports as, well, the good guys against the bad guys; the team I root for against the other guys. But it's -- it doesn't have to be that way. What we try to teach is that basketball is 10 players playing one game, and it can be a very fulfilling experience to play, and certainly to coach.

It's very rare when it happens, but you can cultivate the kind of attitude that -- that can bring that situation about.

BOGAEV: I want to thank you so much for talking today. It was a pleasure.

ROSEN: Well thank you, Barbara, for inviting me. It was a lot of fun.

BOGAEV: Charley Rosen's new novel is Barney Polan's Game.

I'm Barbara Bogaev and this is FRESH AIR.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

Dateline: Barbara Bogaev, Philadelphia
Guest: Charley Rosen
High: Charley Rosen is author of the new novel "Barney Polan's Game." The book is largely based on the real-life college basketball point-shaving scandal in 1950 and '51. Rosen also wrote a non-fiction account of this in "Scandals of '51: How the Gamblers Almost Killed College Basketball." The New York Times Book Review says "Rosen the novelist makes clear what Rosen the historian could only suggest: the fog of moral grayness that made the scandals possible." Rosen has also written: "The House of Moses All-Stars," "The Cockroach Basketball League," "Players and Pretenders," "God, Man and Basketball Jones," "A Mile Above the Rim," "Maverick," and "Have Jump Shot Will Travel." He lives in Woodstock, New York.
Spec: Sports; Basketball; Books; Authors; History; Gambling; Scandals; NCAA; Barney Polan's Game
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Barney Polan's Game
Show: FRESH AIR
Date: APRIL 20, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 042002np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Our Babies, Ourselves
Sect: News; Domestic
Time: 12:30

BARBARA BOGAEV, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Barbara Bogaev sitting in for Terry Gross.

The news is full of stories about what's best for babies. And it's easy for new parents to get the impression that there's only one right way to raise kids.

Anthropologist Meredith Small says that if you consider how many different kinds of parenting styles there are all over the world, you'll never fall into that trap. Meredith Small teaches anthropology at Cornell University.

Her new book, "Our Babies, Ourselves," examines a new science called "ethnopediatrics," which is the study of how parents of vastly different cultures care for their infants, and how their parenting affects the baby's health, for instance, when it comes to the obsession of most new parents: sleep. I asked Meredith Small whether all infants share the same sleep patterns.

MEREDITH F. SMALL, PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY, CORNELL UNIVERSITY, AUTHOR, "OUR BABIES, OURSELVES": Well, no they don't. And some of that may be physiological, but some of that is also culturally mandated. In North America and in Western Europe, what we'll call the "West" here, we expect babies to sleep long and hard. And whenever your infant begins to sleep through the night, everybody congratulates you on this wonderful developmental achievement.

But if we look at other cultures, babies are not expected to sleep through the night. And as a matter of fact, adults aren't even expected to sleep through the night. In hunger-gatherer societies, the night is punctuated by people getting up, going around the fire, talking, getting something to eat. The Yanamomee (ph) in the Amazon sleep in huge houses with several families together, and there's always somebody awake.

So, a baby is not expected to sleep long and hard. They're expected to sleep very lightly. And they're expected to wake up, go back to sleep, and they're also expected to sleep during the day very lightly.

BOGAEV: There is some research that -- that points to a lower rate of SIDS -- Sudden Infant Death Syndrome -- in cultures where babies do sleep with their parents. Are there various interpretations of this -- of this?

SMALL: Well, dealing with SIDS is pretty difficult because the ideology of the syndrome is unclear to everyone. But one thing we do know is that the United States, Western culture, has the highest rates of Sudden Infant Death in the world. Other cultures, it's non-existent or extremely low. It can't be a coincidence that in cultures where babies sleep with an adult, there's such a low rate of SIDS.

Physiological research has shown that if you wire up a mother and a baby, who don't normally co-sleep, but you put them together for a night in a sleep lab, the EKG and heart rate and breathing and all this will physiologically demonstrate that they do a nighttime tango. Mother goes through levels of sleep; baby follows through those levels of sleep -- or baby goes through level; mother follows.

And when the baby stops breathing -- which is called an apnea, and all babies do that -- mother's breathing tends to kick that baby back into breathing again.

Another thing that happens, also again on infrared tape, is researchers have shown that mother spends a lot of time even fast asleep patting the baby, moving the blankets around -- being very vigilant -- even though she's, you know, way in a deep level of sleep.

So the combination of that physiological tango and the vigilance surely must have some sort of positive effect to prevent SIDS.

But let me say that co-sleeping is not going to stop SIDS; just that for some babies -- and when sleeping conditions are really good for the mother and the infant and very healthy -- it probably has real physiological benefits for baby.

BOGAEV: It's just a huge decision, the parents make, whether or not to let their babies and their children sleep in their bed. And some take the route of the official family bed. They organize their lives around making it possible that you can all sleep in their bed.

And of course, others -- most of us train our children to sleep alone. And I believe the law of the land here, from the American Academy of Pediatrics, is that they advise parents not to have children sleep in the bed; that it doesn't promote good sleep hygiene.

SMALL: It's interesting that you say it's a huge decision. For Western culture, it's a huge decision. In 90 percent of cultures around the world, a baby always sleeps with an adult -- either in the same room and most often in the same bed. It's only for Americans that it's a huge decision. And that comes from a cultural history of thinking of the bed as a private place for mom and dad; that mom and dad have this relationship and it's separate from family and it's sacrosanct and baby shouldn't be in there. And also the sexualization of the bed. Baby shouldn't be in there.

But for other cultures, it's no big deal. Babies always sleep with their parents.

BOGAEV: All this really does put letting the baby cry it out in a different perspective.

SMALL: Oh, it certainly does. If -- comparing different cultures once again, on the issue of crying -- I mean, crying is a communication from the baby. People say "oh, the baby's trying to manipulate you." Well in fact, yes they are. The baby is demonstrating its internal state, and babies are really good at that. That's what they're supposed to do.

And parents are designed really to respond to that. In other cultures -- non-Western cultures, especially let me use for example the Kunsan (ph) of Botswana, often known as the "bushmen" -- in 90 percent of the time when babies cry, mothers respond within 10 seconds to that cry. Contrast that to America, wherein only 40 percent of the time, mothers respond within, say, 60 seconds, and often they don't respond at all.

And this again comes from a cultural history, that we want these babies to learn to self-comfort; to be independent and self-reliant. But it's a little strange to me that the baby is just signaling something so natural, and we're working against our natural tendency to go over and pick that baby up and comfort them.

BOGAEV: What does this tell us about this -- this issue of colic, and I believe the research points to the fact that colic is a phenomenon of developed nations; that maybe, first of all, it's more about what our expectations of infants are. We don't want them to cry ever. It's seen as a failure -- a parental failure -- instead of a natural communication.

SMALL: Well, that's part of it. That's part of the answer. The pediatric definition of colic is crying for more than three hours on three nights of a week for three weeks in a row. That's the medical definition.

Now, when parents bring their babies in because they're crying too much, and they say the baby must have colic, often the baby is just doing that normal crying curve. But the parents' expectations are quite different. They expect the baby to be more quiet.

Sometimes, when parents are questioned, their babies do cry that much, but they are more tolerant of the crying and their expectations are less. It's interesting that there is no evidence of any definition of colic in Asian populations -- the one group that has been studied.

So it's just plain interesting why -- why do we have colic in Western culture? Again, it may be this caretaking package: we're not responding to the babies. Babies are most often in Western culture horizontal, rather than vertical. And it looks like when babies are held in a sling, as some babies in America now are, their digestive process works better.

So physiologically, they -- being horizontal may not be so good for them as well.

BOGAEV: Let's talk about breastfeeding. I was really astonished to read in your book that the Kung (ph) bush women nurse their babies about every 13 minutes.

SMALL: Yes.

LAUGHTER

BOGAEV: Is that how...

SMALL: Makes you tired, doesn't it?

BOGAEV: I mean, that's pretty much constantly. Is that how babies were nourished for millions of years?

SMALL: Probably so. We don't know for sure because the Kunsan, of course, are a modern population. But because they're living in a subsistence pattern that was much like our ancestors, say, two or three million years ago, we can get some clues from them about how ancient human babies were probably cared for.

But keep in mind that that statistic of their nursing every few minutes is part of this whole package, where they're held in a sling and they are right next to mother's breast. So, it's not as if the mother is sitting down and taking out her breast in an arena where this is not acceptable. The baby is inside that sling, and the baby itself is scooching around and putting the nipple in the mouth.

These bouts are also reasonably long. Now, we tend to call that "on demand," but really, it's more continuous breast feeding.

BOGAEV: What implications does this hold, then, for us, where most women, if they do indeed breastfeed, probably nurse a baby maybe every two hours; sometimes even every four hours if they believe in some kind of feeding schedule?

SMALL: Sure. Even the women who are part of La Leche League, who are very devoted to a more continual style of breastfeeding, only breastfeed on average about once every hour. So there again, we even have a contrast between a more hunter and gather pattern and a more modern pattern.

Well what happens is, interestingly enough, is that the composition of breast milk actually changes over time. A human breast is not designed with a storage facility behind the nipple, so that as milk is manufactured higher up in the ducts and it comes down behind the nipple, if it sits there for a while, the fat content is resorbed (ph) back into the body. And what's left is a more watery milk.

So that when baby goes to nurse again, what it first gets is watery milk. And it takes a while before the fat content milk, which is being manufactured higher up, comes down and out the nipple.

So if you're going to breastfeed at long intervals, the baby's not going to be so happy for a while. And it has to breastfeed for a longer period to get sated. And again, if may be part of the answer of why Western babies cry so much.

BOGAEV: My guest is anthropologist Meredith Small. Her new book is Our Babies, Ourselves. We'll talk more after a moment.

This is FRESH AIR.

Back with anthropologist Meredith Small. Her new book is "Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent."

Another parental fixation is to what extent our parenting influences the development of our children's personality; how much we shape our kids.

What does a cross-cultural look at personality and parenting add to that debate over inborn traits versus conditioned ones; or nature versus nurture?

SMALL: That's a real tough question. The information on things like temperament and personality -- we know it's there. We know that babies are born with, or people are born with some kind of genetic component. We all have a certain kind of brain, a certain kind of temperament.

But from the day of birth, we're interacting with parents and other individuals. But each culture has a kind of ideology that is important to them. And it's so ingrained in who we are that we don't even think about what this ideology might be.

Again, for Americans it's the issue of independence. But looking cross-culturally, there are a vast array of what parents might want for their children. Let me give you a couple of examples. In Japan, which is a nice comparison, because this is an industrialized, modern society, but they have a very different cultural ideology in their parenting. They believe that babies are sort of a soul out there that needs to be brought into the family and society.

And to do that, they make sure baby sleeps between mom and dad -- children sleep with their parents until they're teenagers, in fact. They integrate the baby very quickly into family and society. It's a collective idea.

Contrast that, say, with the Goosee (ph), a population in western Kenya. These are small-plot horticulturists who live in family compounds. And there's a garden out back, and sometimes father is out working on someone else's farm or an industrial place and he comes back.

Well, their ideology is that a good baby is one who is obedient and quiet and stays within the family. And they practice this by -- although babies are carried at all times by mother or older sister -- someone like that -- they don't verbally stimulate their babies, which of course Americans find completely insane. When we -- I certainly do this with my daughter -- always talking to her, always showing things, thinking this is going to make her smart.

The Goosee believe if you do that, you bring up a selfish, self-centered child that will not be an obedient part of the family.

Now, Goosee babies -- it's not that they're not stimulated at all. They're constantly with the family. They're held all the time. They're seeing everything everybody sees. They're part of the conversation. But, they are not personally visually stimulated.

BOGAEV: One of -- another one of the big decisions that parents in America face today is just how are we going to take care of our kids if we can't afford to stay home with them -- or one parent can't afford to stay home with them? What's best? One person at home with just her children? Or a nanny at home with a couple of neighborhood kids? Or a large daycare center?

And I've read recent studies that say children in these large daycare centers have fewer behavioral problems than children raised in -- you know, at home or in a smaller venue. What does the research into infant biology and cross-cultural parenting styles say to this? What kind of an advice does it give parents in trying to navigate these choices?

SMALL: Well, I hate to give real advice, but, if we look cross-culturally, and again in deep time, with this idea that the nuclear family is historically very recent, and that kids were probably brought up in a multi-group setting, daycare doesn't come off as such a bad idea. It's great for kids, especially in a population where the birth rate is down so low; to have an only child at home for the first two years is probably biologically very different than what this baby is designed to do.

Good daycare with familiar partners -- certainly they would probably have been kin a million years ago -- but familiar partners to play with; familiar daycare workers -- probably not such a bad idea.

BOGAEV: This is getting a little bit away from babies, but there's been a lot made lately of a trend these days towards lessening unstructured time that children have just to play around outside away from their parents. There's, you know, more homework; there's such an academic emphasis, even in preschools. Some schools have done away with recess, and even their playgrounds. And parents just aren't around so much, so kids are in these scheduled activities -- either play dates and daycare.

And the kids are getting fatter. There are some theories about a rise in asthma and allergies because kids just don't play outside enough. It seems as if there is -- that our social structure really is working more and more at odds with a child's biology.

SMALL: Sounds so depressing, doesn't it?

LAUGHTER

But again, there's a little cultural ideology in there. In Western culture, we believe that childhood -- and again, we're getting away from babies -- but the childhood is a time of freedom and play. In other cultures, once kids are able to walk and be part of the household, they often have tasks and chores. If you go to Africa, you see these 5- and 6-year-old girls carrying around their baby brother, so they're contributing to the household.

In Western culture, we see children not as an asset, but as a burden, because in fact they really don't contribute to the household. But in other cultures, they are a working member of the household, either with domestic chores or out in the garden.

So maybe we should have them do some housework or something, rather than go off to music lessons.

BOGAEV: You're a parent of a daughter.

SMALL: Yes, I am. Yes.

BOGAEV: An infant?

SMALL: She's eight months old, yeah.

BOGAEV: How has all of the work that you do in this area changed or influenced how you deal with your baby?

SMALL: Well, it's interesting. I finished the book long before the baby came, and several of my friends said to me, once she was here, said: "oh, now how do you really feel about all those wacky anthropological ideas you had?" And I have to tell you that I feel more strongly than I did before I had a child. My daughter's been carried in a sling, except for now when she's crawling around. She sleeps with us and I'm glad she did, because I think I would have been up every 10 minutes to make sure she was OK.

And as a result, we look pretty good for parents with a new infant. We don't look like we need any sleep. And this is only, as we say in science, an "N" of one, but frequently, although people told me "put that baby down, put that baby down," we have a really happy baby. And people are always commenting on what a great girl she is and how happy she is. So, I guess it worked for me.

BOGAEV: You say you carried your child, your daughter all the time. Do you really mean all the time?

LAUGHTER

And how could you do that and keep up your career as an anthropologist?

LAUGHTER

SMALL: Yeah, it's a good trick. I do mean almost all the time. I mean, obviously I didn't carry her for every second of the day. But around the house, I have this sling -- you can buy these anywhere. It's a piece of cloth with a ring on it. I also have a long piece of cloth that I bought in Indonesia years ago that I sometimes tie around.

And she was stuck in the sling and pulled real tight. And she would sleep in the sling and in fact my hands were free. So it was very easy to sit down and type and do my e-mail and write magazine articles when she was sleeping. And when she's awake, she actually was very happy to be -- she was happiest as we went about our business with her in the sling.

And since I share the childcare with my husband, he wore the sling, too. And again, we just went about our business like people working out in the rice fields or digging up roots. And she seemed to be real happy with that.

BOGAEV: You know what makes it hard for me to read some of this -- some of this research: parenting styles differ so much even within one family. I mean, not only across cultures or across America, but you parent each child in a family even differently. There seems to be no real norm. Or that when we talk about how Americans do this or the Japanese do this, it is speaking in these vast generalities.

SMALL: Yeah, but the thing to really keep in mind is that with any parental strategy or any human behavior, for that matter, it's a trade-off. So, let's say you're a parent who decides to sleep with your kid -- have your kid in bed with you in the evening. That's great for the baby. You may sleep better. But, it is absolutely going to interfere with the intimacy between a husband and wife. That's the trade-off.

Let's say you're a Kunsan woman who carries your baby around all the time. This baby doesn't cry. It's very happy all the time. But you've got to carry this 20 pounds around with you everywhere you go. So for every decision we make, it's a trade-off. And what's important to know is that you have those choices; is that there are other ways to do things. There isn't just the American way or the Kunsan say. You really can borrow from other cultures.

Although it's often hard to go against what is culturally acceptable, such things as breastfeeding in public or carrying your kid in a sling all the time -- you do receive comments from people walking down the street or from your family. But, you have those options.

And that's what I wanted to write about in this book -- that there are different ways to parent and you can borrow some of those ideas if you want to.

BOGAEV: Meredith Small, it's been a lot of fun talking to you today. Thanks.

SMALL: Thanks a lot.

BOGAEV: Meredith Small's new book is Our Babies, Ourselves.

Coming up, we remember Linda McCartney.

This is FRESH AIR.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

Dateline: Barbara Bogaev, Philadelphia
Guest: Meredith F. Small
High: Meredith F. Small has written the new book "Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Are." Small explores the various cultural practices used in raising babies. She is also the author of "Female Choices: Sexual Behavior of Female Primates" and "What's Love Got to Do With It?" Small is a professor of anthropology at Cornell University in New York State.
Spec: Women; Reproduction; Sexuality; Books; Authors; Babies; Culture
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Our Babies, Ourselves
Show: FRESH AIR
Date: APRIL 20, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 042003np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Remembering Linda McCartney
Sect: News; International
Time: 12:55

BARBARA BOGAEV, HOST: Linda McCartney died Friday at the age of 56 of cancer. She was a photographer, backup singer, animal rights activist, and of course, the wife of Paul McCartney. FRESH AIR producer Amy Salat (ph) spoke to Linda McCartney in 1992, after the publication of a book of her photographs called "Linda McCartney's '60s: Portrait of an Era."

Amy asked her about one of her first gigs as a rock photographer -- a Rolling Stone's promotional event on a boat in 1966.

LINDA MCCARTNEY, PHOTOGRAPHER, KEYBOARDIST, BACKUP SINGER, ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVIST: Well, I was too nervous to think what I wanted to capture. I was just hoping the pictures would turn out.

No, I actually just wanted to capture the different personalities. And I must say, everyone seemed to enjoy being photographed by me, and they each had their own personality. Like Charlie Watts, I found very quiet and dignified, sitting at the back of the boat. You don't call it the back of the boat, but anyway. And Mick was more of a ham, and Brian Jones had his own personality.

But really I was just trying to get good pictures.

AMY SALAT, FRESH AIR PRODUCER: Why do you say you think they enjoyed being photographed by you?

MCCARTNEY: Probably I think a lot of musicians were used to being photographed by press photographers, who had flash and "OK, stand here and go there and" -- you know, that kind of thing -- impersonal. Whereas I didn't have flash and I was -- I suppose being a girl helped, too.

SALAT: You weren't really a trained photographer, and you'd never done that kind of thing before, right?

MCCARTNEY: Right. I'm still not a trained photographer.

SALAT: Well after that event, were you really bit by the bug? Like, did you feel like: "ah, this is what I'm going to do now"?

MCCARTNEY: Well, before that event, I loved photography. I mean, Walker Evans (ph) and Dorothea Lang (ph) and Cartier Bresson (ph) photographed, so beautifully, life -- that I thought, well, I'm going to be a photographer anyway. But I never thought I'd make a career of it; that it would pay my rent.

So after that event, a few of the journalists I'd sold the pictures to liked my photographs so much that they started ringing me up and saying: "well, look, we are writing about so and so and would you come and take the pictures?" So of course, it was great for me. However, I had a nine-to-five job at the same time. So, I had to quit my job and become a photographer.

SALAT: Did you figure out a way of working with the person that got the best picture?

MCCARTNEY: Well, I think it was a lot to do with chemistry. I mean, if I was taking, let's say, photographs of Tim Buckley (ph), who was -- a lot of people haven't heard of him, but he's a beautiful songwriter and guitar player -- I think just walking around Central Park, and almost -- we were pretending we were in the country -- and just talking and asking him about himself.

And that kind of thing brings out a relaxed personality in people. I think friendships help bring out the real person, rather than "this is my job; I need a picture; go stand over there." I think it was quite warm, to walk around and just talk about things.

SALAT: Do you snap a lot? Were you constantly -- did you take a lot of...

MCCARTNEY: No, actually. I'm not one of those people who takes a whole roll and then hopes for one good picture. I try to take to take less than -- you know, less is more. I try to take one or two or three pictures of each situation.

SALAT: Because Paul writes in an introduction to your book that you know just the moment to click.

MCCARTNEY: And how. No, I do actually. It's all to do with feel and looking. You know, most of us don't look at things. We're so busy being distracted. I actually like looking and therefore I can feel when to click.

SALAT: Can you describe one of the photos where you feel you really caught the character of the person?

MCCARTNEY: I think most of them I caught the character. Certainly, Jimi Hendrix. I did in Janis Joplin. I like them all, quite honestly. I like the one of the Beatles around the Sergeant Pepper time, 'cause I think it shows John and Paul in a really happy note and an exciting note together. And a humorous -- almost their tongue-in-cheek humor.

SALAT: Back when you first became Mrs. McCartney, do you think the fact that you were a photographer affected how you dealt with all these photographers who were after you? Were you nicer to them? Or did it help you figure out how to get rid of them or how to control the situation?

MCCARTNEY: Well not really, 'cause I'm the type of photographer who wouldn't take a picture of anybody who didn't want me to. In fact, I went up to Bob Dylan once after a show at a dinner we were at, and I said: "do you mind if I take a picture of you?" And he said: "I'd rather you didn't." So, I didn't. And I always felt very shy about ever taking a picture of him.

So, I think I'm a different type of photographer than the paparazzi or those kind of photographers. And I think you just tolerate them, really.

BOGAEV: Linda McCartney, in a 1992 interview with Amy Salat.

Let's hear a song from Paul McCartney's 1996 record "Flaming Pie." This is "Heaven on a Sunday." It features Linda McCartney on background vocals and their son James on guitar.

For Terry Gross, I'm Barbara Bogaev.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "HEAVEN ON A SUNDAY")

PAUL MCCARTNEY, SINGER-MUSICIAN, SINGING: Peaceful
Like heaven on a Sunday
Wishful
Not thinking what to do
We've been calling it love
But it's a dream
We're going through
And if I only had one love
Yours would be the one I choose
If I only had one love
Yours would be the one I choose

Restful
Like Devon on a Monday
Cooling
My fingers in the bay
We've been learning the song
But it's a long
And lonely blues
If I only had one love
Yours would be the one I choose
If I only had one love
Yours would be the one I choose
If I only had one love
Yours would be the one I choose

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia; Barbara Bogaev, Philadelphia
Guest: Linda McCartney
High: We remember Linda McCartney, with an excerpt of her September 23, 1992 interview with Terry Gross. McCartney died Friday of cancer.
Spec: Women; Music Industry; Paul McCartney and Wings; Deaths; Linda McCartney; The Beatles
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Remembering Linda McCartney
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.