By Chiu Chih-jou and Liu Tzu-hsuan / Staff reporter, with staff writerThe Health Promotion Administration yesterday launched the “Paternal Medical Instruction Booklet on Pregnancy and Parenting,” which offers guidelines to expectant fathers.
The Health Promotion Administration yesterday launched the “Paternal Medical Instruction Booklet on Pregnancy and Parenting,” which offers guidelines to expectant fathers.
Mickey Huang (黃子佼), who recently became a father, hosted the news conference for the booklet’s launch.
“The booklet should have been made much earlier,” he said.
Although there are reminders for expectant fathers in the ministry’s “Maternal Medical Instruction Booklet” and “Maternal Health Booklet,” this is the first guideline dedicated to fathers.
The 63-page booklet is divided into nine themes, answering questions expectant fathers might have with simple explanations, tables and images.
The topics include methods to ease a partner’s discomfort during pregnancy, things
Today is Mother’s Day, and as matriarchs settle in for some much-needed rest and appreciation and hopefully a healthy dose of cake and flowers they will certainly hear no dearth of cheery platitudes, from parents-in-law to politicians. While the ritualized recognition is welcome, mothers deserve a little more for carrying society’s weight on their weary shoulders, starting from the beginning.
If the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s handbooks on pregnancy are to set the stage for a woman’s debut into motherhood, then it would seem the playwright wrote for her a tragedy. Long derided as containing contradictory and factually
‘PANIC MANUALS’: Ministry booklets perpetuate false stereotypes, cause mothers to blame themselves and are not science-based, a legislator and advocates saidBy Chen Yu-fu and Kayleigh Madjar / Staff reporter, with staff writer
Advocates yesterday called on the Ministry of Health and Welfare to revise its guidance for pregnant women, saying material it released reads like “modern versions of social taboos” disguised as scientific advice.
To mark Mother’s Day on Sunday, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Fan Yun (范雲), new mothers and other advocates held a news conference in Taipei criticizing the ministry’s “Maternal Medical Instruction Booklet” and “Maternal Health Booklet,” saying they contain dubious guidelines that cause unnecessary fear among expectant mothers.
They should provide “accurate information, not false stereotypes and stress,” Fan said.
She also called for more complete information about the stages before and