Ziggy’s third solo album, Family Time, is his first kids’ CD, and  it’s got a mind-blowing array of guest performers. (Willie Nelson! Laurie Berkner! Paul Simon! Even Jamie Lee Curtis shows up – twice.) The album was also a family affair. His mother and sister perform, as does his four-year-old daughter, Judah. (Ziggy has four other kids, aged 20, 17, 14 and 2.)

Ziggy talked to Babble about his interest in education, his famous dad, and the expertise he’s gained from raising all those kids. — Jennifer V. Hughes

You have some major stars on your new album. What was it like bringing together such a wildly diverse group of artists?

It was a privilege for me, you know what I?m saying? It was very exciting to bring in guest artists.

Is there a thread musically or emotionally between all of them and your work?

I felt something for them, when I was going to put together a group of people who I would work with, I had to find people I have a good feeling for, it has to be a good vibe. It’s a cool vibe,  the spirit in their music. It’s hard to explain, but everything cannot always make sense — sometimes it’s just a feeling.

The proceeds from the sale of the CD will go toward the Chepstowe Basic School in Jamaica — tell me about that project.

The school is for the very young. I wanted to get into education for kids so I adopted a school and we started doing some development. Some of the money will help with more classrooms, more books, better pay for the teachers. I want it to be an example for the rest of Jamaica in terms of what we can do.

You know, I read that Ziggy is not your given name — it’s David. Where did Ziggy come from?

Ziggy came from my father ? it’s from how I used to kick the soccer ball.

Maybe this is a silly question, but what do you think it is about music and children — why are children so drawn to music?

I think that music, beats, melody, sound are a natural part of our DNA, our vibe. It’s just a part of the cycle of our lives, we’re born, we have eyes, we have music. It’s part of us from the beginning. We’re drawn to it because it?s a part of us.

Other than reggae, what other styles of music do you and your kids listen to?

My kids listen to my father’s music, which is reggae of course. They just listen to music that makes us feel good ? rock, jazz, anything. For me it changes depending on what I’m feeling. I’ve listened to Jack Johnson, Green Day, I listen to African music. I listen to a wide variety, I don?t think there is any constant. I go from one thing to the next.

Many of the songs on the album have messages — saving the earth, caring for your brother. What do you think little kids will take from those kind of songs?

I don’t know what they can take from it — I hope they take something. The songs have different layers to them, it wasn’t that it was important, it’s just how we did it. As the kids grow they can understand the deeper meanings of the songs. It will stay with you from birth to old age.

Your dad was such an influential artist, so renowned and beloved. What is that like for you, as a musician?

Well, I was just always trying to play music and create something. I’m very adventurous and so the aspect of being my father’s son never really struck me as any difficulty or a problem or whatever. I just wanted to make music. What he did was not a deciding factor for me.

What do you think you would have done if you were not a musician?

If I was not a musician, I’d still be a musician. Being a musician is just what I’m on earth for. I might not be talking to you, I might not be making records but I’d be making music.

Do you think any of your kids will follow in your musical footsteps?

I don’t know for sure ? it’s possible, but I don’t care at this point. I’m not thinking about that now. I just want them to get a good education and a good upbringing and be good human beings. I want them to be good people first.

Since you have five kids ? which automatically makes you a parenting expert in my book ?

Oh, yeah? Really?

? what?s the most important piece of advice you would give to another parent?

I don’t know — it can’t be one thing for every parent because every child is different. Patience is important, discipline is important, you have to learn balance. I guess that would be my general advice, keep it balanced — don’t lean one way or the other way too far.

You know, come to think of it ? the lyrics to “Three Little Birds” might just be good parenting advice…

(Laughs) Oh yeah, sure.

Ziggy Marley is on tour! Check out his tour dates here.

The book (based on his “Dad Again” Slate column) is elegantly written, frequently funny, and yet at times shockingly old-fashioned. Lewis talks about how much he resents having to do women’s work, what a dope he is when it comes to kid mysteries like the swim nappy, and how men have been conned by women into doing their part in this whole child rearing thing.

We were aghast. And so we called to talk to both him and his wife, the MTV reporter-turned fine art photographer Tabitha Soren, about how couples today balance the work of raising kids and making money. Hilarious bickering ensued. At the end of the interview, Lewis said, “Thanks for exploring our psyche. We don’t do therapy, but you’re the next best thing.”

It was our pleasure! — Ada Calhoun

I was taken aback by some of the things in the book, like, if I can read you one quote: “At some point in the last few decades the American male sat down at the dining room table with the American female, and let us be frank, got fleeced.” I was shocked by that, because when I look it our generation, it seems like men are happy to play their part.

Michael: Ah, well, you must know different men than me.

I think I do.

Michael: Bear in mind that most of the men I’m surrounded by are in Berkeley, California. So, the men I know are very much in the left end of the spectrum. Relatively highly involved dads. On the one hand, it is completely true that there are a lot of men who take great satisfaction in being involved in the minutiae and messiness of actually raising children. But, it is a much smaller universe of men who take any pleasure in the newborn stage. Men, I think, tend to engage once they start to be able to play with the thing and talk to it and have some kind of communication.

But, even so, there is just a wealth of bitching and moaning about the responsibility that I hear and it never really gets voiced. In the universe I’m talking about it’s men who are potentially breadwinners at the same time that they are having all these new caretaking responsibilities and they don’t have a real mental model to use. This is something that’s obviously been changing over the last few decades, and even a man in Berkeley who had his first child today might find himself in a different climate than I did, even ten years ago.

But I do think that there is just enormous friction about who is supposed to do what. I think, actually, that when men are made to do things they don’t want to do, like take care of a child, which they assumed the mother was going to take care of — I think they can get enormous rewards from it, but nevertheless it can be messy getting to that place.

Tabitha: Well, this should be put into some sort of context, both in terms of the book and in terms of the temperament of the hypothetical child. There are realities. Our first child was very far away from the Buddha baby, incredibly demanding — and still is, frankly. So that changes your approach to newborn life entirely. There are people who have easier children that it would probably be more fun to take care of. That was not our situation. In addition, in the book, there are certainly a lot of quotes in there that are not politically correct and aren’t going to make us a lot of friends in Berkeley. But I feel like the book is balanced out by other thoughts about how he’s very quick to feel sorry for himself. If it was just him talking about how men are getting fleeced, I think it would be a really hard thing for most people to stomach. But I think that you watch his emotional state change. It goes up and down and up and down throughout.

Michael: The broader point, to get back to the quote you pulled out, is that there’s sort of this deal that goes on between couples and it used to be — I mean we’re going back to what you would regard as the dark ages, thirty years ago — universal and understood. And the absence of a deal, a universal deal, has wreaked chaos in relationships. I mean, it is unbelievable to me how sensitive an issue it is amongst couples — how much parenting the dad does or the mum does. It may be that you know lots of couples where everybody’s doing half the work outside the house to generate income and exactly half the work raising children, but I don’t know a lot of couples like that. In every relationship I know, there are these imbalances and these imbalances lead to enormous friction, most of which is never spoken. You get it out with your friends when you meet with them for a drink, but basically, people hide it.

I wonder how much of it is the pressure of being the breadwinner. We just ran a story about a woman who really resented her stay-at-home husband because she was making the money and here she was having to toil away at this job she was increasingly dissatisfied with. And at the same time, she found herself cleaning up the house and scheduling the doctor’s appointments and she found herself really resenting him.

Tabitha: Most of the women I know who are the main breadwinners are also the people who are doing all the 1950s defined domestic chores as well, like the stuff you just listed. So that’s sort of just piling on. I don’t know dads who work all day and then complain that they’re also the ones who have to clean up the whole house, and make the doctor’s appointments. I don’t see men multi-tasking in that way. They have one job description and that’s fine and then they get to play and be fun with the kids.

Michael: So, what you’re saying is that when men become stay-at-home dads they completely screw it up?

No, certainly not. The writer was saying that her husband was doing a really good job with the kids. It was just that everything that she had to do that was extra to being a breadwinner, she resented.

Michael: That is not the way, probably, most men feel right now, but it would have been the way men felt thirty years ago. They would have expected this other part to be taken care of. So, if you’re a man now having children, your model is a father who thought that anything extra that he did was slightly a nuisance. Which gets to a larger point of how much of raising children is shit work. Some part of it is wonderful, right? There’s a really fun part of it. But I am dragged kicking and screaming into the shitty parts. Every time, basically. I think maybe in some ways I’m a horrible person, but I don’t think I’m that unusual. That’s my point.

I think it’s funny that there’s an assumption that women love the hard parts.

Michael: Well, that’s a really good point.

Tabitha: That’s baloney. Nobody loves it.

Michael: Nobody loves it. And also, it is really unseemly to complain about it, because you were the one who screwed up and had the children in the first place. So what right do you have to complain about those roles? I’ll tell you one thing I find very funny about parenthood is how deceitful it is. I found that if I didn’t write down exactly how I felt and exactly what had happened within twenty-four hours of what I felt and how it had happened, I was already lying about it. It has actually become one of the litmus tests in friendship for me: will they be honest about all this? When you lie about it, you go around saying, “Oh, everything about kids is just wonderful!”

Tabitha: “Such a blessing.”

Michael: And that makes it so much easier to dump all the shit work on Tabitha, because I’m saying it’s not shit work. You have to basically just face up to the fact that some large part of this is not pleasant and that’s not exactly something that gets told before you have them. Because everybody’s lying to you.

Since the book, have you had an epiphany about how you divide things up? Are you doing charts or something?

Tabitha: Oh God, no. We can’t even do star charts with the kids, let alone each other.

Michael: I would say there’s a lot less conflict. But I’m not sure why. I think basically we’ve just sort of grown used to doing it together. There’s still conflict but . . .

Tabitha: That’s a lie! The reason that we have less conflict is that we happen to have Mary Poppins.

Michael: Well, there you go. That’s true. We have a nanny.

Tabitha: He’s already lying to you. He’s been on the phone fifteen minutes. All-day childcare means I have fewer drudgerous tasks. In addition, I have a colleague and somebody who makes me feel like we’re in it together. That doesn’t happen to be Michael. But, that’s okay.

Michael: Who?

Tabitha: Amy! She struggles over some of the same things that I do. So it makes me feel like I’m maybe not crazy when my nine-year-old is driving me up the wall or I feel like my six-year-old is lying. I have somebody to either commiserate with or celebrate with. Michael is a really energetic parent and he’s engaged and gets involved in the things that he cares about, but I don’t feel alienated because we have this other person in our family who is very engaged in some of the drudgerous stuff. And, for that matter, she really appreciates all of the stuff I do in the way that one might want a husband to appreciate . . .

Michael: [Laughs.]

Tabitha: I mean, she wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him. So I have to be grateful to him too, which is kind of a 1950s point of view. There’s enough of my life that’s very 2009 that I’m comfortable with some of it being 1950s.

So the moral for people who are struggling with their marriages is—

Tabitha: Buy your way out of the problem. Don’t be afraid to throw money on the problem.

Michael: So let’s get down to basic responsibilities. I cook breakfast for them every morning.

Tabitha: Like, elaborate breakfasts.

Michael: I tend to put them to bed if I’m home, if I’m in town, read books, sometimes at great length. I drive them to school once a week, twice a week, whatever I can fit into the schedule. Right now, the two girls are in a softball league and one of them has ten hours of softball practice and games a week. I’m her head coach. And the other one has two hours and every Saturday and I’m her assistant coach. So, when you pile all of that up, it ends up being twenty to twenty-five hours a week of one-on-one stuff. It’s a lot of time. And it creates enormous pressure in my life. Because there’s no way my work life is suited to parenting. My work life is essentially obsessive. I have to write books and books are obsessive things. There’s a lot of stress and give-and-take in all of this. And suffering. I think that suffering is actually really good for the relationship with the kids. It’s just got to be controlled, and to control it we have this thing called the nanny.

So if you can’t afford Mary Poppins, the secret is to revel in the suffering? What’s your advice for the poor?

Tabitha: Everyone’s happier if they have choices, so you have to figure out a way to have some choice in your life for both partners.

Michael: I would say there was nothing as horrible as just having one infant home from the hospital, with just the two of us to take care of it. Those first three months of parenthood were absolutely traumatizing.

Are you worried about having the kids read the book?

Michael: I read parts in the making to them in their classrooms at school, and they got enormous pleasure out of it. Quinn picked it up and after about ninety seconds put it down and said, “I can’t read this daddy, there are too many bad words.” I think the truth is they will take no real interest in it until they’re old enough to be more amused by it. I’m actually not going to write about them — I seriously doubt — ever again. I’m so glad that they have this little artifact from a period of their lives that normally gets completely forgotten and washed away.

Tabitha: Undoubtedly our actions as parents over time will put them into therapy as adults, but I don’t think that this book will be the main reason.

Still, reaction to previews that have made their way around the Internet range from uncomfortable laughter (guilty!) to total disbelief to, surprisingly, rage. Isn’t a healthy baby enough? people ask. I abstained from sushi for nine months, did countless pelvic floor exercises, and shelled out big bucks for a hypno-birthing DVD… and now I’m expected to do this? (Well, no, not exactly.) Babble talked to three of the women who gave birth in the film about their surprisingly pleasurable experience. — Madeline Holler

Piper, 28, Georgia

What do you think of the title Orgasmic Birth?

I think it’s a great title. It’s attention-getting, which was definitely the purpose. Birth in general is an experience full of heightened sensitivities and emotions and sensations. And when it’s a positive experience it really can be orgasmic in that it’s really satisfying — the culmination of a high-impact physical experience. When you take it literally from the bio-chemical process, the birth experience very closely mirrors orgasm. But I also like the term ecstatic birth — it refers more to the spiritual and mental aspect.

Your first birth, the one in the film, was in a hospital. Was that an orgasmic birth?

Well, it was certainly an ecstatic experience the first time around, but having other people there was distracting, I guess.

Right, your father was in the room, your mum…

My cousin… my partner…

Well, how was that for you? So many people present?

We wanted to invite even more people to our son’s birth to be honest. But some people responded, “No way! Why would you want to have us at your birth?” Anyway, we had a great time, I wasn’t really aware of their presence, except for their support, and that was great for me.

But it’s true, I enjoyed having a more intimate experience with my partner here [for her second birth, at home, unassisted]. We had invited a lot of people to my daughter’s birth too, but it went so fast.

So you were closer to an ecstatic experience in your second birth?

My partner and I — since we had been through this once before — were more relaxed. There was less apprehension. I was labouring on my own in the bathroom and he came in. He saw me furrowing my brow and he just started kissing me, which was perfect. It was a nonverbal signal to just relax. When we came into the bedroom, he intuitively knew to massage my perineum. And then, [the baby] just came out. It was definitely closer to that orgasmic experience, because we were able to flow with the birth a little better.

What do you think about how the movie has been received?

I have seen some negative stuff about it, as if this has created a new expectation women are forced to achieve. I think people who feel that way are actually missing the point. I think that it’s really not out there to make women feel negative.

But it’s true, I find myself dumbing it down when I talk about my births. Even during the interview for the movie, after the birth, I look back on what I said and I feel like I took a very benign approach in describing it, because I didn’t want anybody else to feel bad.

I knew that there were other birth experiences and I didn’t want to create a negative expectation. But as it’s said in the film, it is realistic to expect birth to be wonderful. I think that we are doing women a disservice to downplay how amazing birth can be. The film is more about claiming responsibility for your experience and not just turning it over to a health professional who doesn’t necessarily (a) have the best information and (b) have your best interest in mind. I don’t think anybody in the film is trying to set the expectations for anyone else.

Since the movie, Piper left law school and New Jersey, trained as a doula and had a second baby. She is an aspiring midwife.

Tamra, 38, New Jersey

Tell me about your second birth, the one we see part of in the film.

Early labour was awesome and very sensuous and, yes, good and even wonderful. I was in the birth tub for a few hours… I was in transition and didn’t even know it, the birth tub just felt so, so good. At one point, my daughter descended, like, three times. I could feel her with my hands. I was so excited. I thought, Oh my God! This is it, I’m going to push you out here in the tub! But she slipped back up each time.

By the third time she slipped back up I thought, “Okay, I surrender!” I started thinking — and thinking is where you get in trouble when you’re in labour — and I thought, What am I not doing? What have I done wrong? I started questioning… I definitely had a moment where I was feeling pain. You know, people say, “Wow, orgasmic birth. You mean you didn’t feel pain?” No, it’s not about NOT feeling pain. It’s that pain is a small portion of the overall experience.

Anyway, I got out of the tub, and I ran to the bathroom. For me, that bathroom was an invisible line. I had been told so many times about women giving birth in the bathroom and I really didn’t want to. I went pee and then I got back in the tub. I asked about breaking my waters. We talked about the pros and the cons and that gave me some perspective. So I got out of the tub again. They told me to try going to the bathroom again — and our bathroom is the smallest, brightest, pinkest room in our house. But it’s also private. There was no one else in there. And so my husband and I went into the bathroom.

I remember saying, “Why isn’t the baby here yet?” and we kissed. And right then, the waters released, they broke. Immediately, she came down, the baby, and the force of her coming down was so powerful. And there was the ring of fire and I shouted, “Burning! Burning, burning, burning!” to the midwives in the other room. I remember also calming down and saying to myself, “Just let it burn, it’s okay to burn.” So I came off the toilet and got on my hands and knees on the floor.

By now, everyone’s crammed in your tiny pink bathroom?

Exactly. And as her head was being born, I would say I experienced what could be called a birth orgasm. The only thing that came out of my mouth was, “Oh, that feels good.”

Oh! We don’t see that in the movie. What was it like?

It was like being lit up from the inside, like a shudder — an earthquake from deep, deep within — shooting through every nerve pathway out the top of my head. It was very unexpected. As much as I believe in orgasmic birth, having heard lots of stories and accounts of orgasmic birth, I did not have orgasmic birth on my mind. All I wanted was for my baby to be there.

So her head was born… and that felt really good. It was overwhelming and wonderful.

Just to be clear: you’re saying that your birth orgasm happened from within. No external stimulation?

Some women feel the urge, without even knowing it… they feel the urge to have someone touch them. If they have a spouse, a partner, who they feel really safe with, they’ll even say, “Rub me! Rub me there!” I’ve heard stories going to all these screenings — a midwife told me she had a client who wanted the midwife to rub her pubic bone. And the woman kept saying, “Oh, lower! Lower!” So this midwife was pretty much rubbing back and forth on the clitoris. And the other midwife came in and asked, “What are you doing?” and the first midwife said, “I”m helping the mother!”

I would not judge someone for using it to get into labour or to ease the pain. I would suggest to anybody that if that’s something they’re open to and something they’re comfortable doing — if there was no rupture of membranes — then to just go for it.

We did stuff in early labour for the first few hours to get contractions more regular. We went for walks, we’d kiss, do nipple stim[ulation]. We’d rock and dance and lunge and different things, and really make out. If [the midwives] hadn’t come in, we might have gone for it, we might have kept moving on.

Still, readers — and, okay, I — want to know, technically speaking, during the orgasmic part of your birth, it was all just from inside?

There was no clitoral stimulation, just a pulsing, throbbing sensation. It is a more transcendent feeling of orgasm, because it is so much higher, I think, than orgasm. It’s internal, an internal type shudder — or, or a spasm. It was higher up inside the vaginal canal. I don’t know if I can say this? That my baby was hitting my G spot?

Right, Child Protective Services will come after you …

Exactly. [Laughs.] I certainly wasn’t going for her to hit my G spot. I’m sure there’s someone out there that can distort it to make it something perverted. But it’s really not. It’s really wholesome and joyous. So yes, it felt like it was deeper inside. Like a release. And I guess, chemically speaking, hormonally speaking, it was oxytocin. It’s like everything relaxed for a second! My belly, my insides, my gut, my core just relaxed and had this quaking floating feeling — good pleasure.

Is that what you were hoping for?

The point isn’t to necessarily have a pain-free birth and the point isn’t also to make the goal having an orgasm. The point is to empower yourself, believe in yourself, your own experience, all the work you’ve done to prepare yourself for birth and then just let it happen.

Tamra is a certified doula and birth advocate/activist.

Alex, 39, New York

Your labour was a really long.

Yes, thirty-six hours. It was basically a two-day journey. After the first day, my labour had basically stopped and my daughter turned posterior. I was in a lot of pain that first night.

How did you get through it?

The thought of pain medication or something to speed up or get labor going again — anything besides homeopathic remedies — the thought didn’t even cross my mind. I didn’t even once wish I would have put that in my birth plan. The following morning, we tried everything to get her turned around and to get labour going again — I was fully dilated. We broke my water. We went for walks. Then, my midwife decided to get the baby turned by reaching into me. Now, that… was… intense. I was on my knees, my shoulders down and my butt up in the air and [the midwife] kind of pushed in. That was the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced in my life. I was just biting into something. It was like jungle surgery without the brandy. After that I was really, really wiped out. People were spinning in front of me. But I still didn’t think of medication or anything like that.

So people are going to read that and say, “What’s she trying to prove?” Why didn’t you start thinking about the hospital and pain meds?

For me, it never occurred to me to go to the hospital in the first place. I’m not trying to prove anything to anybody. I just think that it’s part of it. I thought, This is my body. This is what it needs to do. My feeling was just to step back and not judge and not think, Oh, you poor thing, you’re in so much pain. It was more like, Okay, I’m going to support my body in this process.

When you look back on your birth story, what are some of the big moments that stand out?

Well, I would say the big moment was after [the midwife] tried to turn [the baby] around and they asked how I felt and I said, “I feel like shit.” And then I fell asleep for two hours. When I woke up, my midwife said she wasn’t sure I had the strength to go through another night and that we needed to consider going to the hospital. I nodded my head, kind of acknowledging what she said.

I got up and went to the bathroom. That’s when I had a major, major contraction. The baby was still posterior. But I came out of the bathroom and I asked, “Okay, how are we going to swing this baby around?” She said, “Get on your knees.” And then, labour just picked up. Boom, boom, boom. I was howling like a wolf. And it all just clicked and we started working together, my daughter and I. And that was incredible. Of course, finally starting to push. That totally didn’t hurt at all. The stretching of my vagina and everything, how that just kind of happens and the body opens, what my body was able to do.

Was it an orgasmic birth?

Well, I think orgasmic really means, like, ecstatic. Birth can be an orgasm in a different way. Like for me, I did not have an orgasm in my birth. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t have an ecstatic experience. For me, my birth was very challenging at times. But in that moment, when my child really pushed through, everything was so awake and so alive. A child coming through is a climax.

And satisfying.

You know, I was proud, but I don’t want to say I was proud of myself. I was just giving birth, like millions and billions of other women have done. When you think of it, it is a huge deal, birth. Yet, it’s not that unusual.

Alex is a eurythmist. She and her musician husband have recently gone into organic farming.

To learn more about the film Orgasmic Birth, visit the website.