Don’t know much. (Who does?) My guess is that any mother would be learning how to change a diaper within minutes of returning home from the hospital. Not sure two weeks in hospital was normal even then. More like three to five days? (And BTW in 1961, hardly anybody was breastfeeding. Bottle feeding was the norm.) Bottom line is that I am very suspicious of anyone saying that any mother was clueless about diaper changing three weeks after delivering.
I come from a family of 5 children born from 1950 to 1962, Mom stayed in the hospital for 7-10 days, 2 to 3 weeks for caesarian (sp), and when it changed to 2-3 days, Mom was aghast, they had not had sufficient time to heal before going straight into raising the child. When my oldest sister was born, her mother spent 2 weeks with her to teach her how to care for the baby, help her thru post partum depression, and help around the house. It was not until the late 1990’s that mothers were going home in 2-3 days. And even today, with complications mom will go home, but not baby, which is another ball of wax altogether. Your incorrect about breastfeeding in the 60’s as well, my mother and all her friends breastfed, and were members of the Le Leche League, it was the norm, not the exception. Working mothers would bottle feed, but would express milk in bottles in the evenings, as it was known that important minerals and antibodies are passed to the baby thru breast milk. It is still true today, which is why drug babies are rarely breast fed. I feel that Stanley Ann Dunham was right in line with being clueless about a new baby, and that was when Grandma became invaluable. It was also the time that most young women realized what wonderful people there mothers were, and rightly so. Time frames for arriving in Seattle were about right for a girl who wanted to be out of the clutches of a grandma who knew better, but was not going to tell her what to do. I am sure we all know that behaviour pattern, and also know that they grow up as women, and realize they messed up. Eventually, Stanley sent Obama back to Hawaii for him to attend special school, because like I said before, Off Islanders had a hard time integrating into Hawaiian society. It did not matter what color you were.