Without school and without diapers: the alternative motherhood of Ana Maria Braga’s daughter

13 years ago, when she became a mother, Mariana Maffeis, daughter of Ana Maria Braga, was researching the best type of diaper when she discovered, by chance, the so-called natural infant hygiene. The practice consists of identifying the signs that the baby needs to poop or pee and holding him in a potty or appropriate container, in a squatting position.

The technique can be applied from the first week of life and aims to eliminate or reduce the use of diapers. Called in English “elimination communication”, the habit has been growing among followers in Brazil. Mariana was one of the precursors and today disseminates this and other practices of what she calls “active and conscious motherhood” in courses on the internet.

Mother of four children, aged between 13 years and five months, Mariana claims to have never bought a pack of disposable diapers in her life. “I managed to overcome this almost obligatory nature of our era,” she says. “It’s uncomfortable for the baby, it takes up space on the planet and alienates the child from themselves.”

When she needs to go out on the street with her youngest daughter Hima, she uses cloth diapers “the old ones, foldable ones.” Inside the house and even when the babies sleep, she doesn’t wear anything. “Sometimes an accident or another happens, but it’s very minor and I don’t see it as a problem either,” she says. “Western pediatrics says that the baby does not have control of the sphincter, and this is a fallacy. The practice of natural hygiene shows that it does,” she argues.

‘LIVING CHILDREN’

In her “Salão Maternar e Paternar Ativos”, which takes place via zoom with registered students for the cost of R$ 28, Mariana teaches this and other techniques of what she considers a style of motherhood aimed at developing the child’s autonomy. Home education and parents physically present most of the time with their children are some of the fundamental pillars.

But she warns: it’s not for everyone. “Many families have chosen to be closer to their children. But a fundamental thing for this is to have the financial side guaranteed, so that later you don’t end up regretting: ‘I’m with the children, I can’t work'”, she warns.

“Families that can — and that go out of their way to achieve this — have found satisfaction. And living children! The children were becoming pasteurized in the schooling process”, he assesses.

It is at her home, in the Demétria neighborhood, in Botucatu (SP), that Mariana spends most of her time. It was also at the property that she gave birth to her last two children in a lotus birth, which involves leaving the baby attached to the placenta until the umbilical cord falls off on its own, around ten days of age.

Mariana and her husband, Badarik González, have a yoga studio and raise some cows to make cheese. At the moment, with a five-month-old baby and a two-year-old baby, she has dedicated her days to children. The older ones take cello, piano and horse riding lessons and are taught at home by Waldorf method tutors. To handle household chores, Mariana relies on professional help.

“I chose to raise my children nearby so I could provide the foundations for them to develop autonomy,” he says. “Autonomy is not about the child being alone, on the contrary, it is about having all the contact and support from their parents until the age that is necessary”, she explains. “It’s allowing children’s creative processes without rushing anything.”

“They don’t attend physical school, I believe that the schooling process restricts individual thinking”, he explains. “The school institution homogenized everything. I believe that we gain more from a non-homogenized education, on a personal level,” she says. “I feel like they maintain more of a desire to learn — more than when subjects are directed in a room with 30 kids, or are, in a certain way, imposed.”

Children’s socializing with other children is the responsibility of families in the neighborhood. “We live in a very active neighborhood, with more than two thousand residents, with common interests, cultural events. Many people come here interested in biodynamic planting and there is also a Waldorf teacher training center”, he describes.

‘FRUIT DOESN’T FALL FAR FROM THE TREE’

While Mariana teaches other mothers to abolish the use of disposable diapers, Ana Maria announced, last Friday (10), on Mais Você, the donation of a thousand diapers from a sponsor for the victims of the floods in Rio Grande do Sul, in a Mother’s Day action.

Watching their grandmother on the screen is also not a habit she cultivates in her children. Mariana limits access to screens and says she is “worried” by entertainment apps, such as Netflix, because they offer “a lot of stuff of dubious quality.”

Even the oldest, 13 years old, doesn’t have a cell phone and doesn’t even miss it. “We browsed my Instagram a little together,” she says. The teenager has access to a tablet, which she uses to tune her cello and listen to music on Spotify. The films are chosen as a family and watched on a DVD player. “Our favorite director is Hayao Miyazaki,” she says.

“They don’t miss screens because there are so many other activities. This is the great shame I feel when I see so many children and teenagers not experiencing the enjoyment that the world offers. We are depriving our children of the best, which is life itself . Being in the third dimension is much better than in the second”, he says.

Despite the differences with her mother in terms of lifestyle, Mariana assures that the similarities are even greater. “This story about a different lifestyle is nonsense. The fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree. We are very similar: she is very active in her world, I am in mine. She is a simple person, who likes to be at home, enjoy her home , her hobbies. She is not an extravagant woman as she could be. We are much closer than appearances might say”, she assesses.

Mariana also says that the decision to move to Botucatu took into account the proximity to her mother’s farm, in Bofete, also in the interior of São Paulo. Daughter of Ana Maria and economist Eduardo Carvalho, with whom she is also very close, Mariana fondly remembers her childhood spent in São Paulo alongside her parents and brother, Pedro.

“Our weekends were wonderful. She always cooked great dishes, she always had a lot of people at home. There were Christmas parties, New Year’s Eve parties, that abundance… It was very nice to grow up in an environment like that, with liberal parents and, at the same time, at the same time, so promoting our autonomy, never telling us what to do or how”, he says.

“We traveled a lot as a family, I had a wonderful childhood thanks to my mother and father. She was always authentic in her way, always fresh, Ana Maria. A wonderful woman, with an exemplary character”, Mariana melts, this time in daughter position.

HOMESCHOOL IS PROHIBITED IN BRAZIL, SAYS MEC

Wanted by F5, the Ministry of Education and Culture stated that all Brazilian children between the ages of 4 and 17 must be enrolled in schools and that the practice of “homeschool” goes against the Child and Adolescent Statute. See the ministry’s statement in full below:

“In Brazil, educational legislation establishes mandatory school education from the age of 4 to 17. Therefore, all children and adolescents, aged 4 to 17, must be enrolled in a school, whether public or private.

In Brazilian educational legislation, there is no provision or possibility of exclusively home care for this age group. Families that do not enroll children and adolescents in school may be held responsible for intellectual abandonment, in accordance with the Child and Adolescent Statute (ECA) and may be held responsible for creating obstacles to the exercise of their children’s right to education.

Situations that may occur in this format must be reported to the Guardianship Council and monitored by the city hall and justice bodies. The Federal Supreme Court (STF) also took a stance against practices called homeschooling for its negative effects on the development of children and adolescents.”