Rahima Baldwin Dancy

Midwifery, Homebirth, Waldorf Parenting and Education

Rahima Baldwin Dancy is director of Informed Family Life, which provides information for parents on choices in childbirth, parenting, and Waldorf education. She has been active in the childbirth reform movement since becoming a midwife and founding Informed Homebirth in the late 1970s. She went on to become a Certified Professional Midwife and was co-director of a free-standing birth center for nine years. Her emphasis has always been on getting women and couples the information they need to make choices about childbirth. These goals are reflected in her books Special Delivery and Pregnant Feelings.

Rahima is also an early childhood and parenting specialist and taught Waldorf kindergarten before writing You Are Your Child's First Teacher, which features the insights of Rudolf Steiner on child development from birth through age six. She currently produces several major conferences a year on Waldorf in the Home, bringing together home schooling families and parents who simply want to enrich their home life and find renewal for the mighty task of raising children in today's world. Information on these conferences and Rahima's books and videos, as well as other resources for parents, can be found at www.informedfamilylife.org.

Rahima and her husband, Agaf, have raised four children and now live in Boulder, Colorado, where she is writing a book on being at home with young children that features the LifeWays approach for nurturing young children and yourself as a mother or daycare home provider (see www.lifeways-center.org). While caring for her mother and mother-in-law over the past several years, Rahima also found time to complete a master's degree in Gerontology and Organizational Change. Ever the activist, she feels that eldercare and aging are in a similar place as birth was 30 years ago, and she has been excited to discover the growing movement to change the culture of aging and long-term care in this country (www.pioneernetwork.net). The Waldorf in the Home Online Store is now open and offering audio and video recordings of keynote addresses and selected workshops from past Waldorf in the Home conferences, as well as the dates and keynote speakers for upcoming fall conferences. waldorfinthehome.com/waldorf-store.html.

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