A Man in Baby-land
José Rubén De León hasn't always found it easy to spread his knowledge of infant massage. He has to continually work to overcome stereotypes that people hold of males in this female-dominated field.

It was De León's mother, diagnosed with colon and liver cancer in 1996, who first sparked his interest in massage. "She enjoyed having her body massaged, especially her hands and her head," he says. "Touching my mother in this intimate way allowed for me to better understand her discomfort, her pain, and it helped me prepare for her death." After her death De León decided that he wanted to learn more about the art of massage, and enrolled in a local massage school.

De León opened his San Antonio, Texas, practice in 1997. Two years later he began working with parents and their infants. "I had three clients who were expecting babies," he says. "All three of [them] asked that I teach them infant massage. I started reading books and purchased a few videos on infant massage, but I discovered that there were many different approaches to the art."

After training with Kalena Babeshoff, founder of A Foundation for Healthy Family Living in Sonoma, California, De León received his certification in infant massage in 2000. Today, 20 percent of his massage work is devoted to volunteering his services as an infant-massage instructor outside of his private practice, Life Touch Therapeutic Massage.

But despite his expertise and enthusiasm, De León says that being a man has hindered him in reaching clients beyond his own practice.

"I had great difficulty getting into organizations that offered parenting services for mothers and their little ones," he explains. "For example, I offered my services to the director of caregivers at a local shelter for abused, neglected and abandoned babies, but it took a year before I was able to get my foot in the door to train the staff there." De León emphasizes that he only trains caregivers and does not actually need to touch the children. "I have plenty of dolls in a suitcase," he says of his training aids.

De León has taken his dolls to high schools and homes for at-risk teen-agers, as well as to the San Antonio County Jail and programs such as Project Mothers and Schools, an outreach program of the San Antonio Children's Shelter that supports teen-age mothers.

"If I am working with at-risk teen-agers, there is always a sense that a heavy burden has been lifted from them," he says. "The young mothers soon discover that they can calm a crying and irritable baby with nothing but love and a pair of caring, loving hands. It always amazes me to see the spark in the young parents' eyes when their self-esteem balloons."
- Paul Ruggiero