The unusual ways Western parents raise children | Hacker News Reader

The unusual ways Western parents raise children

bbc.com

336 pointselijahparker645 comments

One of the hardest thing about being a parent today is the constant shame and confusion about the “right” way to do it. We don’t live in a hunter gatherer society anymore, we just don’t. There’s lots of wisdom in that way of life, and sure we could learn from it — but there’s enough anxiety as it is, parents don’t need more of it.

We have three kids and we sleep trained them. (Not a pediatrician, standard disclaimer.) This article calls it an ‘extreme’ practice. For us, ‘extreme’ was the sleep deprivation we experienced with baby number one as we tried every ‘no cry’ method in the book. The baby cried and cried and cried. Once we started sleep training, there was a bit of crying and then - a sleeping baby! Through the night! Total amount of crying went from hours to zero. The kid became happier — they weren’t sleep-deprived anymore. And neither were we. I no longer felt like I was going to drop the ball due to extreme exhaustion.

Babies two and three had the benefit of our experience, and they barely cried at all. The third one would lay down eyes-open and fall asleep. “So it actually does happen! — I thought the books must be lying.”

By all objective measures our kids are happy, healthy, and well-adjusted. But that doesn’t mean we still don’t get the stink eye from people who think it’s a cruel practice.

Just raise your kids with love. Be compassionate, and patient. Find a doctor you trust. Don’t let people add to an already stressful endeavor.

I agree, my advice to any new parent would be to listen carefully to advice about how not to drown your child while bathing them, and how to make sure they're not suffocated by their bedding. Both real issues where some simple practices avoid the small risk of an absolutely catastrophic outcome.

Then take all other advice with a pinch of salt. Just follow your best instincts and do what seems right. Your child will be fine, plus you'll be more relaxed, you'll appreciate the time with them more. You'll have more time and emotional energy to understand and respond to how they are doing as well as how you and your partner are feeling, and your instincts will get better and better.

For myself, the risk SIDS didn't even enter my calculus. (I confess I am a little skeptical that it exists at all.)

Regardless, I perceived the emotional bonding with the mother & father to far outweigh anything else and so we shared our bed with our children until they were perhaps 1 year old or so. And even after, they moved into their own small bed just a foot from ours in the same bedroom for another year or so.

I guess that was my "instinct". Although we received a crib as a gift, it just sat in another room, empty.

I think SIDS is a real thing and there is clear evidence that not using pillows or excessive blankets in cribs has reduced deaths.

I think sleeping with or not with your kid, is a much more complicated question and probably one where your instinct is right. After all, with a baby in the bed you can't help but be aware of its comfort, needs and amount of movement.

In the UK the NHS have posters and leaflets about how parents should NOT sleep with their baby as deaths have occurred from parents "lying on and suffocating their new born". Of course this from drugged-up and/or drunk parents.

If you don't fall into the "bad parent" category you'll be fine.

Or if you take ambien or something like that it might not be a good idea.

The post you are responding to mentioned drugged-up right there in the conclusion.

I've woken up to nearly suffocating myself in blankets, completely sober. I wouldn't take that chance with myself in the bed.

We used sleep suits the first year to avoid the whole loose cloth issue

I very much believe SIDS is a real thing. I also think that many cases of SIDS are babies being smothered by soft cloth that bunches up and constricts their breathing and by accidentally smothered by their parents while they're deeply asleep. When kids are small I think co-sleeping is a great thing (where you have a small basinet or something similar next to your bed where you can reach out and touch your baby but they're safe from accidental crushing/smothering.

> accidentally smothered by their parents while they're deeply asleep

This seems unlikely. 10% of babies share a sleep surface with parents, up from 6.5% in 1993, yet SIDS deaths are down over the same period:

https://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20180212/baby-suffocation-de...

https://www.cdc.gov/sids/data.htm

Suffocation from co-sleeping is NOT SIDS.

https://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20180212/baby-suffocation-de....

Perhaps the parent comment is referring to a theory that parents reporting the situation around baby deaths as unexplained in order to deny blame or guilt for having placed the baby in the situation. There can't be much worse so it wouldn't surprise me if in the traumatic following days the recall isn't factual and unbiased.

Smothering is a much bigger problem if the parents in question drink alcohol before cosleeping.

This! My wife did a lot of reading in this when our kids were babies and her takeaway was that alcohol/drugs are responsible for most smothering events and that SIDS is actually reduced by co-sleeping - something about the mother’s breathing training the baby to breathe rhythmically. I believe she found a study on this point - I’ll try to dig it up and if I find it I’ll edit this comment with a source.

Please do, I’d enjoy reading that.

Ball & Russell (2014), SIDS and infant sleep ecology. Evolution, Medicine and Public Health 146. [0]

Not a study, but I believe this was the article that got her started down the rabbit hole of looking more deeply into this research. We were both surprised to learn that SIDS is significantly more prevalent in western societies that do not have cultures of co-sleeping, and that SIDS primarily occurs when babies are alone. I am struggling to find the article that discusses the breathing component directly, but this touches on it with reference to poor neurological development of human babies and associated weak physiological regulation.

This was the a ha! moment:

“SIDS-deaths are a phenomenon of infant sleep in Western post-industrialized cultures, normally occurring while infants are alone. … Immigrant groups who maintain their ‘traditional’ sleep ecology in ‘Western’ environments typically exhibit substantially lower SIDS rates than the host community.”

This UNICEF page compiled good research on co-sleeping too. [1]

[0] https://academic.oup.com/emph/article/2014/1/146/1846850

[1] https://www.unicef.org.uk/babyfriendly/news-and-research/bab...

Since the nineties they started advise parents that all infants should sleep on the back, which reduced SIDS a lot [0]. But it means that it is is very hard to draw any conclusions at all about other factors.

[0] https://safetosleep.nichd.nih.gov/research/science/backsleep...

Not in all countries. In my country we lay them on their side supported by a rolled towel. We make sure they equally lay on both sides. Sleeping on the back will give them a flat head.

> Sleeping on the back will give them a flat head.

I'm fairly certain this isn't true. I would expect there to be a lot more flat-headed babies and people around. I don't think I've ever seen one. Not telling you what to do, just pointing out I don't think that part is factual.

It’s certainly true. Our oldest kid had a quite flat head when he was an infant, so we had to get him a special pillow and was advised to try to let him sleep on the side. But it’s nothing that you think about except when you put your hand on the back of his head, and most of it will allegedly disappear when the scull grows.

And if you think my anecdote is enough, Google will provide you with plenty, e.g., [0].

[0] https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/plagiocephaly-brachycephaly/

If you look around you will start noticing it. A babies skull isn't even fused and has soft spots (fontanelle) so it makes perfect sense that it can be shaped and molded as it develops and grows.

I knew someone - a co-workers sibling - who lost a baby that got stuck between couch cushions while sleeping. And they told everyone it was SIDS. I don't know if the cause of death was actually recorded as SIDS, though.

If you know the cause it is not SIDS, by definition, right?

I remember listening to an NPR show where a doctor talked a lot about this, and how all of the shaming of co-sleeping might contribute. She claimed a non-obese, non intoxicated parent sleeping with the child on a bed isn't all that dangerous. That same situation on a couch is deadly. But the messaging is more abstinence than harm reduction, so all many people hear is "co-sleeping is dangerous"

Consequently, exhausted parents accidentally fall asleep on the couch holding their babies when they would have been better off just lying down and napping.

I completely agree. SIDS is just another safety thing like not letting it get strangled or stick a fork in the power point. But keeping them close and feeling secure is super important for them to develop independence and self-confidence later. Unfortunately, there's this perverse idea that rejecting your child will make them independent when it typically has the opposite effect.

Hey, wait, what is the advice to avoid drowning, other than not leaving them alone? Is there some subtle hazard I’m unaware of?

Not really, it's just the simple advice not to let go of them or leave them is correct, common sense and important in that case.

Never leave them for even a second in the bath (drowning) and never leave them alone with food (choking).

It sounds so obvious, until your dog gets his head stuck in the ficus tree planter and you can hear him running around, destroying your entire living room. You have to resist that initial urge to go help him until you've cleaned up the 16 blueberry puffs you've been coaxing your child to eat.

This is like saying "don't speed if you don't want a speeding ticket".

Yes, you can use absolute qualifiers like "never" and "always" to stupid proof general advice to a greater extent than you can with phrases like "common sense" and "where reasonable" but that doesn't automatically make the advice any more useful..

I'm perfectly fine with the size of the drowning risk that comes with spending ~1min removing something from the oven when the timer goes off and other reasonable allowances like that. Of course I'm not gonna stop and watch TV with an infant in the sink. And if traffic's going 85 I'm going 85 but I won't be the first person going 85.

It's not like that. Everyone knows the risk of a speeding ticket comes with speeding.

Not everyone knows that it takes 20 seconds for a baby to drown in a bathtub.

> I'm perfectly fine with the size of the drowning risk that comes with spending ~1min removing something from the oven when the timer goes off

Completely making up numbers here, say you do this for every 20-minute bath, your child bathes 1x/day, and they fall over in such a way that they might drown were you not there once every 10000 baths. Doing the math... 5% chance of being absent at the critical moment * 1/10000 baths * 365 baths/year = 0.18% chance of death in first year of life.

You may be willing to take that risk, but given the 4 million infants born each year in the US, that would be 7,300 infant deaths from drowning in the bathtub annually -- so as a societal rule, saving 7,300 infants a year seems worth the use of the word "never".

The actual number of deaths attributed to bathtub drowning each year is much lower; I'm glad the vast majority of parents appear to take "never" to heart.

You forgot to multiply by the likelihood that the timer (or some other "too small to take the baby out" distraction) goes off mid bath.

When you say "the vast majority of parents appear to take 'never' to heart" I can't help but suspect that missing factor is doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

I assumed that it happened once per bath, but this is very context- and parent-dependent too.

If you don't perceive of a 1-minute absence as a problem, presumably you are much more likely to step out of the bathroom.

Not leaving them alone is enough, but to make people actually follow the rule, it is useful to tell them that kids are easily able to drown even in unbelievably small amounts of water, and also in situations where drowning seems almost impossible.

I learned something today, and ours is about to turn 4 months. None of this was communicated to us, probably because it's expected that you pick up most of this tribal knowledge via, pre-covid, other parents in your socio-age group.

We attended an infant cpr class via zoom, learned nothing. We at least got the message about SIDS, but the lack of tribal knowledge in the first six weeks was pretty brutal as first-time parents.

My first two kids (and especially the first one) we left hospital with a feeling of "why on Earth would they just let us walk out with a baby? That seems crazy, we have no training at all in this!" The feeling was incredibly surreal with my first one.

For my third, they made us watch a series of videos on a range of topics over about 2 hours, which made me think "Yes, of course, this should be the absolute minimum required for a new parent".

The process for getting authorized to care for helpless adults (nursing assistant) requires months of study and a thorough exam. I think children will have better quality of life when all parental guardians pass a thorough parenting skills exam before they are allowed to care for children.

Never ever leave them on the bed alone even if they are sleeping and you have cushions around them. They will still find a way to roll and fall off the bed (happened to us). 9 times out of 10 it will be fine but I've read horror stories online so be careful.

There should be some... parenting Wikipedia... or something like that. But then I imagine how various people would write there all that contradictory advice. :(

We had great parenting lessons, and more importantly, got a phone number "if you have any question or problem, call us".

My wife had a problem breastfeeding: it hurt her, a lot. She asked the nurse what to do, and the nurse was like "dunno, happens to many mothers, use a formula if the problem persists". We used that phone number instead, a lady came to us "show me how you feed the baby... ah, I see, the baby is under a wrong angle, here is how you should do it instead". Problem solved. Lucky us, but less lucky all the mothers who asked the same nurse, received the same answer, and didn't have a friend on the phone. (It also makes me wonder about the utter lack of curiosity with some people. Like, the nurse probably keeps getting the same question regularly for years, and she can't even, dunno, use google, or ask a colleague?)

I recommend trying a child carrier with a little baby. Not the giant type where you wear a huge metallic construction with the seat for the baby, but the ones made from cloth, where your child is on your body, vertically, facing you. -- You can walk around your house, carrying your child with you, and both of your hands are free. You can walk outside in winter, and don't have to worry whether your child is sufficiently dressed. You feel your child's heatbeat and breath, so you don't worry about SIDS. When the child doesn't want to sleep, you can take a walk outside, and maybe read a book. (Then the tricky part is removing the child from the carrier without waking it up. I learned to lay down on my back, unfasten and open the carrier, roll over and leave the child on the bed; still only about 50% success rate.)

Also, when kids (and especially babies) are drowning, it's usually not obvious. In adults when carbon dioxide levels increase past a threshold a lot of physically obvious manifestations begin, such as thrashing, driven by the autonomic system. And before then there'll often be coughing and other signs of distress, autonomic or otherwise. In small children this doesn't happen. Countless parents have literally watched their child drown before their very own eyes. A coworker almost lost a kid this way--the instant the kid accidentally inhaled water while playing in a hot tub, they immediately went lights out. Fortunately their other, older child was also playing in the hot tub and attentive. The parents had both briefly gone inside, proving the warning that it only takes seconds for tragedy to unfold.

I'm synthesizing here, but AFAICT a catatonic-like state is typical of small children in severe distress. (Anybody remember the Moth Radio Hour story about the man whose kid immediately went catatonic when they were surprised by burglars? IIRC, he was told this response was common of young children.) So if a baby suddenly inhales a large amount of water, they may immediately go from normal to non-responsive (possibly retaining muscle tone?), even though they're not yet physiologically drowning, and even though with lesser amounts of water they would normally cough and cry. This [lack of] behavior may be related, if indirectly, to the phenomenon of SIDS. An infant's physiology hasn't developed the various mechanisms to jump start respiration when something goes awry. (One unproven hypothesis behind SIDS is that an infant's breathing is partly moderated and even induced by their caretaker's breathing, such that if they can't hear, feel, or otherwise sense--some theories implicate carbon dioxide levels--another's breathing their own rhythm may be disrupted, or if disrupted less likely to resume. Thus co-sleeping may be better for infants, reducing SIDS risk, ceteris paribus--i.e. absent counter-indications, such as a parent who smokes or drinks.)

So with babies not only do you have to watch them to make sure they aren't presently, visibly drowning, you have to make sure (to some reasonable, mentally healthy degree) they couldn't possibly be drowning--i.e. they didn't or couldn't have inhaled water; that they're active, attentive, etc.

If you don't know just how little water it takes to drown in, then the risk isn't obvious. A newborn that can't easily move and roll over can drown face down in an inch of water if they manage to get into that position, which even gentle sliding around in a baby tub can facilitate.

Have some advice from this experienced dad with 12 kids: the baby tub is a poor way to clean a baby. The water instantly gets disgusting from poo or whatever it is you are trying to remove, and then that gets all over the baby. Plus the baby tub costs money and takes up space. It's more clutter to trip over in the dark.

Babies can be washed in sinks, with the drain open and the water running. (don't let them kick the water temperature control though) Babies can be washed in a normal shower, held in the arms of a parent.

We did the sink when they were really little, then switched to the big tubs that sit on top of the sink because the kids loved it, the warm water, splashing, or just vegging out as we poured warm water through their hair. But yeah, plenty of times it was a double bath: The 1st one, and then the second one where we got them clean after draining pee water.

Father here. I agree.

So much of the parenting advice I see dips into micromanaging and min/maxing to an almost paranoid degree. Just learn about what could kill them in the first year and avoid that. Really, six months and under is the true window for SIDS with freak occurrences. Definitely be on the lookout for any poisonous cleaning products While you’re at it and put them high off the ground.

The pro parents who did it all before you are super annoying. I’ve had to politely listen to questionable advice many times. I much prefer people like you who get it. You got to trust your instincts about your own kids. There is broad advice which applies to everyone but everyone’s kid is a little different from the norm as well and as a parent we know our kids better than anyone else.

Trusting your instincts is how intergenerational cycles of abuse and neglect happen. If you were raised well, then yes, otherwise you have to work consciously to reject your harmful instincts.

Well, sure but I’m advocating to trust your instincts in terms of their general health and well-being. Abuse or gross neglect are entirely different matters. Abusive parents are probably not going to be online doing heavy research on what is the optimum thing to do as a parent. They probably just feel tired and bitter about their children, or worse.

A lot of modern, new wave parenting to me feels an awful lot like meddling in natural child development. Like too much of a good thing, helicopter parenting.

I'm talking about hardly visible emotional abuse and neglect, not some extreme criminal activity that only really bad people do. For example, not loving your child and going through the motions of looking after it without really caring. Or inconsistently responding to it with dismissal sometimes and kindness other times so it can't really trust you and feel secure. That can lead to harmful attachment styles as an adult.

This is a broader issue, one where it is so extremely unlikely that you will make progress you have to take a step back and think about what the realistic goals for you actually are.

That came out way more depressing than I expected and I'm not sure what conclusion I was going to arrive at.

Yes. I am a victim of intergenerational abuse. My grandmother consistently beat my father to force obedience. Then he and my mother consistently beat me and my siblings to force obedience. I even believed that it was the best way to raise children. Many years later, I realized it is abuse and a source of emotional problems.

Sorry to hear that. There were a lot of best practices just a couple of generations ago that we see as harmful today and I sometimes wonder how humans could have existed for 100,000 years and only in our lifetimes finally realized how to not abuse kids.

Perhaps they really were the best ways to get some kind of outcome like an aggressive man for fighting wars or protecting himself from violence or a hard worker able to tolerate tedium and not be too aspirational despite the personal emotional cost. Or perhaps even the emotional problems wouldn't exist if the rest of society was compatible with those ways?

I think most of our ancestors were miserable. That didn't stop them from having children.

Generally agree, except I’m not sure there is a bright line between the obviously-worthwhile precautions you mention and the paranoid overprecautions that might themselves carry harm.

Seatbelts... yes. Choking first aid... yes.

Healthy eating, talking to them frequently... probably?

Lots of sunlight and fresh air... maybe?

To be honest, the baby’s most important resource is the parents themselves. Sunlight and fresh air is good for that at least. Similarly, let somebody else take care of your baby every now and then so you can connect with your partner!

About to be a parent and the main conclusion I've come to is that being consistently reliable, caring and responsive to any distress the baby has in the first 6-9 months is number one more important thing to keep in mind. Those physical health things are either obvious or hardly matter but making a kid who grows up to experience a lifetime of emotional suffering due to poor attachment styles or mental health problems is extremely common and bad. The world is filled with these walking wounded who can't function well, can't form stable relationships, commit suicide, become drug abusers, etc. Far more common than SIDS or choking to death.

I'm curious, does your conclusion preclude sleep training, which frequently involves some amount of "crying it out"?

Yes, it precludes it in that early age range. I was taught this in parenting class and read it in a library book. I've never heard anyone advocating for leaving your baby alone to cry when it's that young except as a "least bad" choice if the parent is losing control of themselves and might shake the baby in frustration/anger. It's probably different when they're older but I'm not up to that yet.

There’s also a right and a wrong way to install a car seat. Some local fire departments will check your installation for you.

3 children, we only slept them in their rooms, starting day 10. Naps, day sleep, everything, they slept in their room and in their crib. The room was light controlled, meaning there was no light at all. They quickly associated any sleep with their room and their crib.

We used a baby motion sleep mat for peace of mind for SIDS, the thing was so sensitive it could detect the breathing, but if the baby moved off the mat even a little bit it sounded an alarm.

Unless a baby has colic, and we used baby dophilus for all our children to avoid any stomach or intestine issues, new babies aren't very fussy sleepers. The fussy sleeping usually happens when they get older, but by then they were accustomed to sleeping in their crib.

We never once had a crying fit, we also never forced them to sleep, sometimes, just like adults they aren't ready for sleep, those moments were few and far between and we just surfed through those times.

By 6 months all 3 children were sleeping through the nigh.

Every soon to be new parent we coached on this method had the same success, probably 40+ babies.

If you don't mind, which motion-detecting sleep mat did you wind up going with?

Not OP, but we used a competing product, which is

https://owletcare.com/

It is a foot attachment that basically watches heart rate and oxygen level all night, and freaks out if something is wrong.

Only a very few accidental freakouts (like kicked off foot), but gave a lot of peace of mind. Not cheap but seems pretty solid engineering wise.

That begs the question: How did you feed the little ones? Having a baby in its own room from day 10 implies a very high effort feeding schedule, no?

Did you make up you own process or did you follow a certain technique? Could you share a few details?

>Just raise your kids with love. Be compassionate, and patient.

Right and i would add, give them as many time with you as possible. Some of my greatest memory's was strolling around my dad workplace, when he had work todo. Children's don't need parent's as entertainment, but as adventure preparers.

As I've grown older I've found it necessary and desirable to tell my own father about these moments, to assure him that he's done a great job for what he's done even if it was sometimes hard. Thanks for putting this in this perspective. I hope to remember it when I'm a father.

> give them as many time with you as possible.

Children in the West today already spend more time with parents than at any point in the past:

https://news.uci.edu/2016/09/28/todays-parents-spend-more-ti...

Quality time with parents is important, of course, but we have become so focused on parental time that children are sacrificing solo time where they learn independence and initiative, and peer time where they learn to create their own identity and cooperate. Also, this places an unsustainable burden on parents who are expected to work full time as well as be parent, teacher, playmate, and cruise director for their kids.

> Children in the West today already spend more time with parents than at any point in the past

That's not what the article says. It compares to just 50 years ago, which is well into the industrialized world of two working parents in the office away from home.

Just a bit farther back, like with my grandparents era, kids grew up on the family farm, with their parents 24x7, learning by example from them.

How much of that "24x7" time was actually time spent together? When I was growing up kids and adults barely interacted with each other, most of the time kid(s) would be in one area of the house (or outside) doing their own thing and adult(s) would be somewhere else doing their own thing. This wasn't just my house either, it was normal.

Nowadays it's totally the opposite (and it's completely insane)

That's exactly what i meant with Adventure preparers, and not the Kids Entertainers :)

What method of sleep training did you use?

This article lists 6! https://www.todaysparent.com/baby/baby-sleep/most-popular-sl...

I've been wondering the same, the BBC article explains:

> the most extreme version of which involves leaving a baby on their own to "cry it out", in an effort to encourage their babies to sleep for longer stretches so their parents can get some much-needed rest.

I'm not a parent but that sounds pretty sensible to me. Odd of the BBC to call it "extreme".

We sleep-trained our first starting at about 6 months old, and we're about to do the same with our second. The strategy we used was some kind of incremental back-off. Put them down, light out, leave. Wait 5 mins. Go on, give them a little hug or back pat, leave. Wait 10. Then 15. Then 20. Then 30. Then stay at 30 until they fall asleep.

Next night, 10, 15, 20, 30, 30, 30...

next night, 15, 20, 30, 30, 30....

At some point it went up to like 30 mins for first check, then an hour for subsequent checks. I think if we'd gotten to that point we'd consider trying something else cause that's a lot of crying.

But in practice we never had to really adhere to most of the structure because iirc it was like:

Night 1: 5, 10, 15, asleep. Night 2: 10, 15, asleep. Night 3: asleep. Night 4: 15, asleep.

Then he was sleep trained and has slept like a rock with 0-30 seconds of fussing (usually 0) (and ~never crying) since.

This is called the Ferber method and it worked very well for us as well. Note to others considering using it, the method is just as much about the ritual leading up to sleep (bath, reading a book, etc)

Ah I can see that, we've always had a pretty rigorously-respected bedtime routine.

“Solve your child’s sleep problems” by Richard Ferber, M.D. is the book which includes this. It also includes a lot more, including an overview of sleep physiology including phases, as well as lots more like details about night terrors and other “partial arousals”.

The big thing he says for going to sleep is to set up the desired sleep associations (eg, alone in the crib in a dark quiet room if that’s what you choose) and then ensure the child falls asleep in that situation and it doesn’t change while they sleep. So for instance, don’t let them fall asleep on your lap then move them to the crib, because when the next normal sleep cycle ends and they partially wake up, they will discover something is different and get upset.

The baby is crying because they want attachment to the parent. Give them the love they want. Don't deprive them of love by letting them cry it out. Comfort them!

You're not wrong. But at the same time... it's a very effective method with some babies. One thing often missing from these discussions is the practicality. Yes, responding to your child like that would be ideal. But it just can't be done if they literally just cry constantly when put to bed. And some babies do that! Sleep-deprived parents who come to actively resent their child's crying is a very real thing. And probably far worse for development and attachment.

An informal application of #1, the Ferber method. On 4 kids. Worked great. Or seemed to, anyway. You can't know if anything actually works or if the baby just decided to start sleeping on his or her own.

> You want to continue to check on your baby at preset intervals but never feed or rock them to sleep

Sounds like childrearing done by a robot.

While you aimed for a flippant remark, robots helping with child rearing is absolutely going to happen. It’s already happening to the extent that it’s possible. What’s so bad about it?

We are in an orthodoctic era. Lots of tensions about what principle is the best to follow, less patience and acceptance.

Would you please define that word? I can't find a definition online and I try to look up unfamiliar words to widen my vocabulary.

Hm I improvised an adjective for orthodoxy. Maybe it's orthodoxic .. I hope you get the meaning now.

The adjective form of orthodoxy is orthodox. Think of something like the "Orthodox" church. And it's antonym is "unorthodox", for example: "the unorthodox church" ;)

And what's the term for adding redundant adjective suffix to an adjective ? :)

I'm not the OP, but my attempt through breaking down word etymologies would be something like:

ortho: rigid, straight, correct

doct: teachings, learnings

ic: of, or pertaining to

So orthodoctic seems to have the meaning of "pertaining to rigid or correct teachings".

I’ve heard of the word “orthorexia”

I'm positive of two things in regards to being a parent (and a human):

1. I have no idea what I'm doing

2. Neither does anyone else.

and,

3. billions of parents have gotten through this before you, you will too.

I'll add, the people saying something works and the people saying it doesn't are both right.

Definitely, every baby is different and what works for one baby may not work for another.

When our second was 15 minutes, we knew "This one is different." 22 years later, still true.

Most of the hunter-gatherer parenting practices that get pushed on certain parenting blogs are pseudo-scientific and shouldn't be adopted. And some of claims that a baby crying is dumping enough cortisol into their bodies it will permanently damage their brains is NOT supported by science.

What does have a strong scientific basis: the importance of sleep hygiene.

Children don't need perfection or goofy hunter-gatherer hacks from their parents. They need love, support, and a measure of reasonable consistency[1] from them.

[1] This is why having alcoholic parents can be so disruptive... children get a different experience sober vs intoxicated.

"And some of claims that a baby crying is dumping enough cortisol into their bodies it will permanently damage their brains is NOT supported by science."

This is misleading. You're correct that there is not conclusive scientific evidence either way, but there are decent studies that support the cortisol theory. Not necessarily that it will "damage their brains", but that cortisol levels spike during sleep training and remain elevated even after the baby learns to stop crying at night. We know that, in general, elevated cortisol levels are bad for humans.

The studies that claim to support sleep training are all terrible, unless there are new ones I haven't seen. The most-cited ones use self-reports from the parents themselves to measure "wellbeing" of the infant, which is plainly ridiculous.

I get the impression you're equating sleep training with the old fashioned "cry it out" method. We loosely followed the Karp method and had very little crying and a very happy baby.

In my experience, "sleep training" is just a more palatable euphemism for "cry it out". My view is that however you slice it, you are conditioning the baby that no one will respond to its distress.

I'm glad you feel it worked out well for you. I honestly hope it doesn't cause problems, because it's very widespread. Based on our reading of the available evidence, we weren't willing to take the risk. Our lives certainly would be easier if we reached the opposite conclusion.

This sort of implies that all crying is the same. The data you can get as a parent is a lot richer than that. There is a difference between “stirring”, “moaning”, “calling”, and “crying”. There is also a question of whether you know in advance that your child has a high temperature, runny nose, ear pulling, diaper rash, etc.

Combining those factors allows for a much more nuanced approach than a simple, “crying == trauma” boolean.

Everything is trade-offs. Less consistent sleep (for both the baby and the parents) is also clearly problematic.

In my experience, babies will get enough sleep one way or another, with or without "sleep training", though it may not be on a consistent or convenient schedule.

Parents can easily get enough sleep as well. It's called "sleeping when the baby sleeps". Infants sleep like 15 hours per day, so it isn't hard. You just can't conform to any kind of a schedule--that's the tradeoff, not getting enough sleep.

> Parents can easily get enough sleep as well. It's called "sleeping when the baby sleeps".

I did this with a puppy (when they're little they'll wake you every 90m at night) instead of putting her into a cage and once you figure it out it's really not that much worse than sleeping through the night. Perhaps doing that for a few months is measurably different from doing it for a year or so, but I seriously doubt it as chronic sleep deprivation (which I would have had if I had not adapted to the schedule) starts being very harmful very obviously quite a bit before "a few months".

I think you're wrong about the first part. It's probably right for newborns but not even older infants and it is definitely possible (even extremely common) for toddlers to get too little sleep if left to their own devices.

"Sleep when the baby sleeps" sounds good but is not really how sleep works; sleep quality is very sensitive to cycles and time of day (it's also a very personal thing, with big differences between individuals). It also doesn't work at all for working parents. And even in households where one parent doesn't work, the other one does, and it is important for both parents to be rested.

Of course you can pull this off, I'm not saying anybody is going to die or anything, I'm saying there are very real advantages to more predictable and consistent sleep. For us, we were very hesitant (or maybe just lazy) about sleep training, but our ~15 month old was noticeably happier after being able to sleep through the night.

> In my experience, "sleep training" is just a more palatable euphemism for "cry it out". My view is that however you slice it, you are conditioning the baby that no one will respond to its distress.

You claim to be doing a lot of "research" in other posts but also drawing on your "experience" -- "sleep training" is not "cry it out", and in fact modern sleep training is explicitly about telling your child that you ARE going to respond to distress (and in fact, you do, at time intervals) but that being alone in a room at night time when it's time to sleep need not be cause for distress.

Whether it works that way is a separate question, but it is not a "euphemism".

Even assuming it is the case that cortisol spikes are long-term harmful (though it's unclear that sleep training causes a disproportionate amount of this), the balance of harm from sleep deprived parents to cortisol spikes from sleep training is also not obviously in favor of one over the other.

If we structured our society so that parents had more support when their kids are very young, we would not have to make these tradeoffs in quite the same way, which is the ultimate point of this piece.

> [Quoting another of your posts] > Like anything else in life, you can do a good job or a bad job at being a parent. If you're prioritizing your own convenience or ego or career over the wellbeing of your child, then you're a bad parent.

Sure, some people are like this, but few, and fewer still make a conscious choice here. Your consistent shaming in this thread of straw man parents who are prioritizing work over some critical aspect of their children's wellbeing, without recognizing the hardcore tradeoffs involved in "Western" society child raising, is unlikely to change anyone's mind.

Parenting in American society is damn hard. It's damn hard even without zealots who are so sure that they know the right way to do certain things -- that's why you're being downvoted, not because people disagree that you should "step up" and do what you can for your kids, but because they agree, and you're shaming them for it.

You have kids. You step up. Yes it's hard, but it's your absolute unshakeable duty to do your best by them. Putting them down to sleep away from you and then expecting them to suck it up and deal with it when they get distressed is one of the most idiotic things that I hear otherwise intelligent people say. To a child, separation from their parents is the most stressful experience possible because in the wild separation means death. What is the most dangerous time of day? The night time. So you compounding the most stressful thing you can do to your child by doing it at the most dangerous time. The idiocy of people beggars belief.

> Putting them down to sleep away from you and then expecting them to suck it up and deal with it when they get distressed is one of the most idiotic things that I hear otherwise intelligent people say

This is exactly the kind of "common sense reasoning" put-down that makes parenting so challenging.

Do you actually know -- I mean, have actual evidence of harm? Obviously it "sounds idiotic". But bloodletting to reduce headaches also makes "common sense" -- or at least did pre-modern medicine.

The critical part here is that sleep training does not happen in the absence of other effects. If the alternative is heavily sleep-deprived parents, is a few nights of distressed sleeping worse than 3 extra months of extremely exhausted parents? To me this is much less obvious.

Fine, don't use common sense. My parents and my parents in law were against breast feeding. I mean literally against breast feeding. Why? Because psychologically it was impossible for them to even think that they might not have done the very best for their kids. You are probably caught in the same trap. And as the evidence comes in for sleep training or separating from your child at night, as it did for artificial milk, you will probably adopt the same psychological defence. But at the end of the day, these things are not going to hurt the average child. But we should have guidelines that improve the average outcome for the average child. And anything that deviates from what we have adapted to over millions of years is likely to be a bad idea.

> And anything that deviates from what we have adapted to over millions of years is likely to be a bad idea

That would include agriculture, urbanism, clothing, and living outside of Africa. Are you fighting those too?

Times change, the world changes, our physiological processes are not in sync with our current lives. We have tons of hangovers from our biological past that we suppress for modern society to function. Whether that's good or not is an open question, but unless you plan to raise your kids in a small-group tribal culture on the savannah, you will be deviating from what we have adapted to.

Oh, and: > And as the evidence comes in for sleep training or separating from your child at night, as it did for artificial milk, you will probably adopt the same psychological defence

The evidence for artificial milk is quite mixed, actually, but the harm of making mothers who can't breastfeed feel absolutely ashamed and guilty is very real.

It's not about "common sense" -- it's about making tradeoffs, and everybody has to. For some, that's sleep training, for others, formula, for others, giving up a career to care for children, etc.

It's one thing to believe people are making a mistake in how they raise their children. It's another thing entirely to shame them, or assume ill-intent, incompetence, or cognitive dissonance as the reason they make different choices than you.

There's way too much lack of empathy in this thread, from people who are sure they know better -- and the harm from that is very, very real.

> I mean, have actual evidence

If you go to a psychologist with a pretty broad spectrum of issues it turns out a lot of the problems are created when you are very little. An unsafe bond is hard to quantify and by stubbornly demanding that it is quantified I think it is more clear that you don't want to entertain the idea than that you are actually skeptical.

You already know you value the parents more than the child, and you more or less know what cannot be provided by the other party. So that's what you demand, and then when things turn out as you know they will you point at it and say "See? You're being unreasonable". That's bad-faith arguing.

I am happy to entertain evidence on all sides of the sleep training debate, and I would love to know whether it is long-term harmful or beneficial. And to be clear, I’m actually not making a claim either way about harms around sleep training, only pointing out that there are tradeoffs in every decision, that it’s hard to really know whether sleep training is harmful in any particular circumstance, and that strangers shaming parents for choosing something they think is harmful without considering context is one of the most obnoxious parts of parenting.

That said, I’m aware of work showing that a poor attachment is harmful, you are making the leap from sleep training to poor attachment, and then claiming that, because I’m requesting evidence that is hard to provide, that I’m arguing in bad faith and not interested in the truth.

Your attitude in this post, as has been repeated ad nauseam elsewhere by many others in this thread, implies that if one doesn’t accept “common sense” explanations of harm and question what others consider obvious, that one must have already made up my mind. I have not, and I don’t consider common sense arguments very strong.

In your post, you are making assumptions about my beliefs, questioning my motives, implying that I’m requesting evidence merely as a dissembling technique, and putting words in my mouth. That is bad-faith arguing.

You can't be serious.

People use your exact, extreme language to justify every other superstition they have about raising their kids.

A 'euphemism', according to Merriam-Webster, is "the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant."

"Sleep training", in all its forms, means ignoring your crying infant for significant periods of time until they get used to the idea that no one is coming and stop crying. Whether it's done in one night or dragged out over a longer period of time, the result is the same, and the method is more-or-less the same. But we don't call it "ignoring a crying baby training" do we? No, we made a nice and harmless-sounding name for it. There are even consultants you can pay who will tell you it's perfectly fine so you don't have to feel an ounce of guilt.

Fyi, I got plenty of upvotes too.

I know what a euphemism is, I am telling you that the two are not equivalent -- "sleep training" in the form of, e.g., Karp, is not the same as "cry it out", does not involve what you say, and this is not a euphemism.

That said, given that you merely restated what you previously claimed without addressing anything I said except for the word "euphemism" -- and to be clear, I address the "ignoring" part in my post, which you ignore -- I really don't understand what you think you are contributing to this conversation.

Your opinion on sleep training is clear. Many people agree with you. And...what? Therefore, sleep training is bad and people who try it should be ashamed? Frankly that just doesn't follow.

> I am telling you that the two are not equivalent

Well, that's where I disagree. I think they are functionally equivalent.

> I address the "ignoring" part in my post

You address it by claiming that sleep training doesn't mean ignoring a crying baby. If there are sleep training methods that don't involve this, I doubt they would work with most kids. Realistically, if you are committed to sleep training, you're going to have to ignore some crying unless you have a really mellow baby.

> sleep training is bad and people who try it should be ashamed

Well, yeah. I get why people do it, but I think it's very likely to be damaging to our kids and our society. So I'd rather that people stop doing it. I know that plenty of folks have already drunk the kool-aid and are unlikely to be convinced (doing so would likely mean confronting some uncomfortable feelings). But there are sure to be brand new parents or soon-to-be parents reading this thread, and I'm hoping to convince some of them that there's a better way.

> You address it by claiming that sleep training doesn't mean ignoring a crying baby, which is clearly false and not worth responding to.

Crying is pretty much the only consistent part of infancy, and if "crying for hours until they fall asleep" and "crying for 10 minutes at a time with parental reassurance" are both equivalent in the "ignoring a crying baby" category, then I'm not sure how one would ever handle a tantrum or meltdown.

When a toddler wants a cookie and is crying for it, what to do? The only way to stop the crying is a cookie, but clearly giving the toddler all the cookies is not what's best for them.

A child might cry and not get what they want, but still be having the better long-term outcome.

> But there are sure to be brand new parents or soon-to-be parents reading this thread, and I'm hoping to convince some of them that there's a better way.

Yes, I absolutely hope there are new or soon-to-be parents reading this, but in my experience offering shame without offering an alternative, compassion, or evidence supporting the belief doesn't cause behavioral change, but does cause stress.

May I suggest that you lead with compassion, sources for research, and alternatives, if what you desire is behavioral change? In my experience, parent shaming often comes from people who believe that they have a duty to convince others of their personal beliefs but don't offer evidence to support its broad application beyond "common sense" (not you, others in this thread) or unsourced claims to "research" -- and who try to convince others instead by implying that parents who do anything differently have bad motives, or don't care about their kids, or haven't done enough research, are uninformed, or have some other character flaw that is the reason they're doing it "wrong".

To parents reading this thread: please recognize that there may be shockingly many people in your lives -- including some total strangers! -- who will try to shame you into parenting a particular way, and, as hard as it is to do this because you're already exhausted and doubting yourself, PLEASE ignore these people. Their crusade sheds more light on their personalities than on your parenting. Listen instead to the people you trust, who are willing to listen to you and engage in dialog, and who have your own interest at heart.

You seem to think only the process of sleep training is bad, but the result is good, so you are focused on one process compared to another. But as bad as the process is, I think the result is much worse--the resignation and acceptance and yes, increased cortisol levels, that will now probably have an impact on that child for the rest of their life. And the result of every method is the same. I mean, it's the whole point. So that's why I see them as all being the same.

Tantrums, meltdowns, or a kid crying because they want something are completely different, or they should be. The best response, based on the reading I've done and my own experience, is neither to ignore them nor to give in, but to empathize with them and comfort them, then (if they can understand you yet) calmly explain what the rules are, why they can't have a cookie now, etc.

The issue isn't the crying itself. They might cry for 10 minutes about the cookie, but you'll be holding them and engaging with them, not ignoring them or leaving them alone.

My purpose isn't to shame anyone. I just gave my opinion on some practices and attitudes I believe are harmful. I think you and others are reading that in because if I'm right, then maybe you'd feel some shame for doing things the way you did. It's a touchy subject that can provoke strong emotions. I don't personally hold it against anyone or think less of them though. It's not easy and everyone makes mistakes. I've made tons.

The research is easy to google. There's really not that much of it. Anyone can be up to speed on it in a few hours, probably. You're taking issue with my characterization of it, but you don't cite anything yourself, so /shrug. I've made some fairly specific claims, so feel free to prove me wrong if you can.

I more or less agree with your last paragraph. If you don't do sleep training, lots of people, likely including your pediatrician if you live in the US, will try to push you into doing so, so that cuts both ways. But I would argue that you shouldn't uncritically listen to any other people, even people you trust. People can be lovely and trustworthy but have terribly misinformed ideas about parenting. Instead, take the time to educate yourself. Keep an open mind and form your own conclusions. It's worth spending some time on.

It's not exactly rocket science to figure out that people crying are unhappy about something and need comforting. Later, babies learn to fake crying, but when they're really small it is a really good idea to check on them.

Some babies learn to fake choking. They know what gets attention fast.

I think this anxiety exists in traditional society as well but instead of getting advice from books and news articles in traditional societies you get an avalanche of advice from relatives

I'll probably get downvoted, but I strongly disagree with this mindset. Raising kids is not a fun hobby or a side project that will fit into a neat little drawer in your life. You have an obligation to do the best that you can. Yeah, it's hard. Yeah, it's stressful. Like it or not, that's what you signed up for. So step up.

Like anything else in life, you can do a good job or a bad job at being a parent. If you're prioritizing your own convenience or ego or career over the wellbeing of your child, then you're a bad parent. Don't rationalize it with clichés like "love is all that matters" or search for online echo chambers of fellow shitty parents who will soothe your cognitive dissonance while your kid suffers. Make whatever sacrifices you need to, put the time in, and do better.

> You have an obligation to do the best that you can

This reads like an expectation mindset that with high probability will end up hurting you, your kid and your relationship. Somewhere here belongs the put-oxygen-mask-on-yourself-first metaphor

As someone with older children, I can attest. Also the attitude can lead to a lot of tension with your co-parent.

> Don't rationalize it with clichés like "love is all that matters"

Counter data point. My wife is Argentinian.

I'd say the values you see in her family primarily is "love does come first" and strict boundaries on kids. E.g. the adults are talking, go away.

When I compare that to my own nieces and nephews, they have little boundaries, are quite lethargic and can be quite arrogant. Yet their parents would all describe themselves by your standards.

We also tend to put our elderly in homes, an idea that is abhorrant to my wife.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is ideals are nice. But it's purely theory, mostly to serve your own sensibilities.

I'm not trying to say there's one right way to do things. But there are a lot of plainly wrong ways.

If your parenting philosophy is not based on any research or learning about what's best for your child, but instead on what's easiest and most convenient for you, then you're probably doing it wrong. That doesn't mean you can't set boundaries for kids who are old enough to understand them.

I think the way we discard our elderly is closely tied to our self-absorbed approach to parenting. If you don't put in the time and are unwilling to make sacrifices for your kids, you shouldn't expect them to be there for you when you need it.

So much of the "research" is not research at all. It's no surprise to see anti-vaccine sentiment run strong among Grace Manning-Devlin types.

It's true. Yet another hard thing about being a parent is that there is a lot of crappy "research" and advice to wade through (including most of the research claiming to support your view, btw). But there's some solid stuff out there too--pretending there isn't because you might reach conclusions that conflict with a self-serving parenting philosophy is just another excuse.

Your advice in this thread falls into that category. You take some sort of puritanical ideal of hard work and sacrifice, then apply it to build a... distorted idea of what parenting is and to abstractly shame people who don't fit it, then ignore all requests for references to any research at all done on this, then repeat this over and over with everyone who's trying to figure out what you mean. From what I know, your ideas have no basis in reality. You're only adding noise for parents-to-be to sift through and worry about.

Just raise your kids with love and patience, don't listen to armchair child psychiatrists.

It's always fun to be criticized for not citing research by people who don't cite anything themselves.

You're the one advocating for an approach that is unnatural, brand new in human (and primate) history, and that causes both babies and parents visceral emotional distress. If I'm wrong about the research, why can't you prove it?

Keep in mind that the research around this is very poor. It's in the realm of things where flipping a coin might be better.

Most of it is, but not all of it. My own conclusion (which is not the one I wanted to reach, believe me) was that when you throw out all the bad research, the evidence, while not conclusive, does clearly point more in one direction than the other.

Could you show such a research? Because you have been saying it all around the thread, some proof would be handy.

The major studies that have been done are fairly easy to find with some google investigation. I looked at them all over a year ago and formed my conclusions. I unfortunately didn't keep around a list of links to post in debates on internet forums.

This post mentions a few of the main ones (I'm not vouching for the post's content): https://www.laleche.org.uk/letting-babies-cry-facts-behind-s...

Argentina is pretty messed up, low trust culture, outside of the family.

It's possible you're coming from a very different background than me... I can understand your point of view if your context is being raised under real impoverished conditions; I agree a parent should do anything they can to meet a necessary level of stability for the child.

But this comment makes me think of what is more likely familiar to members of this forum, where parents use their children to serve their own ego, trying to do everything to yield the best "Success" for their child where success is defined by the parent. For so many of us (professionals in the tech industry), the "wellbeing of your child" is not really a question--we know we'll be able to provide food, shelter, etc. People will say they do other things for the "wellbeing" but what they really mean is living out their own failed life goals by putting that baggage on their kid.

So yeah, you got downvoted. It's possible you meant to make a more sympathetic point, but my first impression is that the comment espouses an actively harmful idea about the relation between parent and a child.

> the "wellbeing of your child" is not really a question

Mental health, substance abuse, and suicide statistics, including among the middle and upper classes, would seem to strongly indicate otherwise.

> It's possible you meant to make a more sympathetic point, but my first impression is that the comment espouses an actively harmful idea about the relation between parent and a child.

So "try hard, make sacrifices, and do your best" is now considered problematic? The relativism in this mindset is absurd. Nobody here would claim that there's no right or wrong way to design a distributed system, or that there are no right or wrong ideas about religion, but we have to pretend it's the case with parenting so we don't hurt anyone's feelings?

Children are not clay to be molded, and they are not computer systems to be planned and carried out. They are individuals. And there are no clear solutions to mental health, substance abuse, or suicide--but there are clear non-solutions like helicopter parenting.

EDIT: And best-efforts at laying out everything for your kid are more than potentially-wasted energy. It's smothering, controlling behavior of someone who should have the right to live and make their own choices and mistakes.

"Helicopter parenting" and "smothering" are not the only alternatives to self-serving, self-absorbed neglect.

Throwing your hands up because something is hard and there are no obvious answers is not a recipe for doing a good job at... anything.

I guess I see fewer under-concerned parents than I do over-concerned parents. Of course there are both.

I most often see that kind of thing from parents who are trying to compensate for failing to be present in more fundamental ways.

Some of the most troubled people I've known had very involved parents.

> Like anything else in life, you can do a good job or a bad job at being a parent. If you're prioritizing your own convenience or ego or career over the wellbeing of your child, then you're a bad parent.

Sounds like you have no clue. Try looking after 3 babies then come back an talk to us.

> You have an obligation to do the best that you can. Yeah, it's hard. Yeah, it's stressful. Like it or not, that's what you signed up for. So step up.

I'm not downvoting you but I strongly disagree. You have an obligation to do an adequate job of this. I think it's also important not to become a slave to the idea that you must always do more because it's "supposed to be hard." Doing a great job of raising kids doesn't have to be a grueling slog, and I suspect that people who think it does aren't doing as good a job as they think they are.

Who said it has to be a grueling slog? I said do your best, not wear a crown of thorns.

I don't think it necessarily has to be hard, but people often make it harder than it needs to be because they're unwilling to make personal sacrifices.

I just don't think we should give people participation trophies. If you're not doing a good job and you know it, you should face reality and fix it, not be told "there's no right or wrong way".

> Who said it has to be a grueling slog? I said do your best, not wear a crown of thorns.

> I don't think it necessarily has to be hard

That's not necessarily coming through in your message, for what it's worth.

I just think that if it is hard, it's up to the parents to deal with, one way or another. They should either suck it up and slog through or change something in their lives so they can handle things better and it's not so hard anymore. I just hope they won't do something that they know is worse for the kid because it's easier for them.

In my opinion, sleep training generally falls in this category. People do it because they're exasperated and neither parent is willing to do something hard--like live with sleep deprivation or put a career on hold. They generally don't do it because they genuinely believe it's best for the baby, though they will try to come up with rationalizations to that effect after the fact.

> They generally don't do it because they genuinely believe it's best for the baby, though they will try to come up with rationalizations to that effect after the fact.

I think this is where you're going wrong. You're putting motivations into other people's heads based on having prejudged them. I certainly did sleep training with my kids because getting them on a regular sleep schedule is good for EVERYONE, not just me. Ever since, we have been extremely consistent about bedtimes, and now we have kids that have no problem going to bed at the appropriate time so they're not exhausted when they have to get up for school in the morning. Yes, it made/makes life easier for me as well, but the root reason to do it is a firm belief that establishing good sleep habits is good for them.

I inferred that you thought that gdubs was not doing their best. You used the phrase "strongly disagree". I'm not sure which part you strongly disagree with. Nor can I tell why you think gdubs is not doing their best.

For what it's worth, I definitely agree with gdubs point of view. I'm less clear on what you're saying though. When you say "unwilling to make personal sacrifices", does that mean unwilling to ever make any sacrifice? Or does it mean unwilling to make some under certain circumstances?

In my experience, my kids' sleep seemed to actually improve when engaging in the "extreme" practice of sleep training. That seems consistent with gdubs. How then, am I not "doing my best"?

I didn't mean to shame the OP, though I can see how it might have come across that way. What I take issue with is the implication of relativism. That as long as you love your kids, it's fine if you just do whatever is convenient or easy or comes naturally to you, and there are no better or worse ways to parent. I think that's a copout and that our kids deserve better.

I understand why people do sleep training. We were on the verge of it ourselves until we learned more and were confronted by how hideously wrong it felt on an emotional level. Everyone in the US pushes you toward it, particularly pediatricians. But I think that most parents know deep down that it's wrong, and that they are doing it for themselves, not the baby.

I don't think we should pretend it's all the same. These things matter.

> But I think that most parents know deep down that it's wrong, and that they are doing it for themselves, not the baby.

I'm definitely not in that group. I have no such deep knowledge of it being wrong. I really believe it's actually better for some kids. Like mine for instance. It's not a compromise for me.

I believe OP is saying not to worry about what other people are telling you about how to parent. I didn't infer any relativism from the post.

What I'm reading from you is that sleep training is bad for kids. And that its practitioners just aren't trying hard enough. But I really believe that for some (like my family) it's actually better.

So by the same token, just because you're suffering more doesn't mean you're doing a better job.

I certainly have more respect for someone who does sleep training because they think it's best for the child, rather than for themselves. Of course, everyone will say that's why they're doing it, but you seem sincere.

I still think you have to be misinformed or deliberately ignorant of the evidence that's out there to hold this position though. I also think the reason people don't dig deeper is that they, perhaps unconsciously, would rather not discover something that is uncomfortable and inconvenient for them.

Maybe. It would have to be subconscious on my part. I did read a book about it.

Yes, I downvoted your comment. I don't doubt your intentions are admirable, but please don't shame strangers.

GP is trying to survive in the world in which they find themselves. Will sniping some guilt at them summon up some hidden parenting strength?

> You have an obligation to do the best that you can

The problem I have with this attitude is the pronoun. If you have some standards, great but please try to keep them to yourself. There's a lot of toxic "you should do this, you should be like that" type of talk in parenting circles, a lot of which is frankly condescending and non-actionable and add a lot of unnecessary stress, especially for insecure people.

People like to armchair-coach about what a parent ought to be doing, while completely ignoring that the parent's emotional well-being is a pretty big component in a healthy relationship w/ their kids.

This is exactly why others are saying to ignore unsolicited advice: because a lot of it isn't actually advice.

Feel free to change every "you should" to "one should" in your head.

I understand that this is a sensitive subject, but there are people reading this thread who are about to become parents, and they need to know the truth.

> one should

No offense, but that's still kinda condescending. I have 2 kids myself but I don't go around preaching. Stuff like post partum depression, pre-existing chronic conditions, overbearing grandparents, domestic abuse, etc are all real things and you and I are neither psychologists, pediatricians, nor social workers so best to leave the advice giving to licensed professionals.

Your point seems to be that parenting is hard so we can never publicly criticize any common parenting practices because it might hurt some parents' feeling. I disagree. If I'm doing something harmful to my child, I want to know about it.

The "licensed professionals" I've talked with about this, like my kid's pediatrician, gave me terrible advice and were either ignorant of the research that's been done, or grossly distorted it to fit their bias.

> Your point seems to be that parenting is hard so we can never publicly criticize any common parenting practices because it might hurt some parents' feeling.

I mean, parenting being hard is neither here or there. You said it is "hard" yourself. There are parents that think parenting is wonderful and can't see themselves do anything but raising kids.

> If I'm doing something harmful to my child, I want to know about it.

That's great, and it's exactly what I meant when I said I took issue w/ the "you" pronoun: wanting better for oneself is very very different than telling others what ought to be what.

Medical professionals are known to make recommendations based on probabilistic heuristics (i.e. 95% of cases with certain circumstances fall into the same bucket so they usually assume said bucket) and this is why celebrity doctors like Dr Mike say that it's important to build rapport and have an open dialogue with the physician, armed with all the knowledge you are able/willing to muster yourself.

The thing w/ online advice is that people seeking help on the internet are often already very apprehensive and vulnerable and having a flood of strangers on high horses passing judgment doesn't necessarily help. The irony is that if we're in "I did my research and know better than professionals" territory, then the problem is that everyone and their mothers also claim to have done "research" too and "how dare they question my self-acclaimed expert authority", and that type of thread derails real fast.

Many of these parents are well-meaning but are in fact woefully underprepared to effectively provide help that is clear cut among medical professionals (e.g. dealing w/ a fever), and they often are eager to offer quick takes on topics where the research is mixed, non-existent, poorly done and/or where it doesn't really really matter (stuff like optimization advice for parents worrying about late blooming in development milestones like potty training). And then there's topics like spanking, where it's pitchforks galore, and the signal-to-noise ratio is basically zero.

To be clear, I’m not asking anyone to accept my “authority”, which as you rightly point out, is nonexistent as a random anonymous person on the internet. I’m not claiming to be an expert on child psychology, but I do have some knowledge of statistics and research methods, so I can read the abstract of a study and know, at minimum, if its methodology renders it worthless BS, scientifically speaking.

But, ultimately, the experts are divided on this issue, and the research is available for anyone to look into on their own. I gave my interpretation. Anyone else is free to give theirs. People can make up their own minds.

My experience is that it’s usually the sleep training people who handwave away the research, relying instead on appeals to convention (in the US) or emotional lectures about “shaming” the poor, helpless parents. But again, people can decide for themselves.

Also, for the record, I’m in the group that loves being a parent. It’s my favorite thing in the world and brings me joy every single day. It has been hard at times, but that never reduced my enjoyment.

> Just raise your kids with love. Be compassionate, and patient. Find a doctor you trust. Don’t let people add to an already stressful endeavor.

This, right here is the most important lesson we learned from our experience. There is no right or wrong way and others judging/criticising you for your parenting style have no clue what crazy cocktail of genetics+environment+hidden factors are affecting your family.

> We don’t live in a hunter gatherer society anymore, we just don’t.

What you describe isn't a "hunter gatherer society" issue. It's an innate human/pre-human/primate issue. Throughout human existence and our pre-human ancestor's existence, the infant/baby is with the mother 24/7 for the first few months/years of its life. This is something that stretches back millions of years. We really don't know what effects separating the baby from the mother at such an early age does for its emotional, psychological, etc development. Not to mention the mother's emotional, psychological, etc well being and of course the mother-child bonding.

> The baby cried and cried and cried.

It would be shocking if it started to lecture you on the pros and cons of the modern geopolitical world order. That a baby cried is par for the course.

> Just raise your kids with love. Be compassionate, and patient.

Unless you need a good night's sleep? This is comes off as new age nonsense we just love in the US. It's trite and meaningless. Of course you raise it with love, it's your kid. Rather than the obvious, we should raise kids so that they are well prepared to compete and fend for themselves in the real world.

> The baby cried and cried and cried.

What did you expect having a child to be like?

To me, it’s very simple: I work and my wife works. After some maternity/paternity leave, we both need to get to work again to earn money to provide our kids with food, shelter, a future etc.

To be able to work, we need to sleep. For us to sleep, our kids and the baby needs to sleep.

So we put the baby in his own room on day three. Always had him sleep in his bed in his room. Didn’t let him sleep anywhere else (or when he fell asleep, put him in his bed). When in his room, he was there to sleep, not to play. So in short: sleep = bed = sleep = bed.

He slept on his own through the night after seven weeks, with only two half awake feedings lasting maybe 15 minutes.

Maybe in 1950 the wife was raised to not expect a career and could be up all night taking care of a crying baby, and the man could sleep and then on his own earn a living wage for the family during the day?

Maybe in 10.000 b.C. parents could be up all night taking care of a crying baby and “the village” could then take care of the baby during the day while the parents slept?

Maybe maybe maybe, but in 2021 there is almost no viable alternative apart from making sure your baby sleeps through the night sooner rather than later.

I also see an alternative in 2021, even with both parents working. Just as a baby might be trained to sleep through the night, an adult can be trained to not sleep in one big chunk of 6-8 hours, but sleep in several chunks of a few hours. A little nap here and there, and some getting used to using your brain (=working) when tired is a viable alternative for me at least. While sleep is very important for ones health, having a child got me to realize that I can function with less sleep as well. This would be more in the spirit of „parents adapt to their new life as a young family“ in contrast to „the baby adapts to the parents pre-family lifestyle“. I am ready to sacrifice sleep for going out and working late, and so am I to comfort a crying brand-new descendant of mine. (Maybe I‘ll change my mind once the second baby is here ;) )

It is sad if in 2021 a wife (or a husband) cannot take even a year or half-year break from the career.

(To avoid possible confusion, I am shaming the society, not you.)

Agreed. Fortunately my wife's University employer provides 14 weeks full pay, then 38 weeks 60% paid maternity leave.

I would still argue that society needs to figure a way to balance this out for both the male and female partnership(IE figure out a way for men to participate in equal fashion for that year) but that hasn't happened. As it is, we're grateful for this much compared to what many have.

Many countries other than the US have figured it out, maybe something to aspire.

Well the universities in Australia are as per described. Most of the rest of society is minimum legal standards of "not really enough".

In many societies, organizations, families, the parents can. I'm so glad where we live we have access to governmental maternal and parental leave options and we're able to make it work financially.

I personalny blame american culture (and protestant work ethic hidden behind it). Add some capitalistic rat race to that and You will get richest society on earth in which almost no one can stop for a moment to take a breath and maybe even do some parenting. Meanwhile here in Poland my wife was able to take year long parent leave (two times - one for each child). Some may say this is sociallism - and I would say that it does not mean it is a bad idea. It makes socially acceptable for parents to take a break.

I am not American, but I heard there was an era when the American family could survive on one salary. Not sure if that applied to all social classes.

That situation is choice, pure and simple. You appear to be some sort of web or database developer, or possibly a system administrator. You can afford to support a family.

The problem is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_up_with_the_Joneses

You forgo a lot to keep up with the Joneses. Family time gets cut.

If that's the choice you really wish to make, OK. If not, cut costs until you can live a different sort of life. Hints: entertainment, restaurants, high rent, excessive travel, single-use items, services, the expenses due to that extra job, etc.

> That situation is choice, pure and simple. You appear to be some sort of web or database developer, or possibly a system administrator. You can afford to support a family.

I think characterizing mothers (or perhaps all parents?) who choose to work rather than stay home to care for children (and taking the consequential career hit) as "Keeping up with the Joneses" is a pretty blinkered view of human motivations, quite reductive, and frankly insulting.

It's often a choice for parents to both work. But many parents choose to stay in the workforce because they derive meaning from work and a career, not so that they can enjoy entertainment, restaurants, single-use items, and excessive travel. In fact, some parents are forced to leave the workforce because childcare can cost more than their after-tax income (think an infant and two kids in daycare / with a nanny).

I know an engineer who is a stay at home dad married to a professor wife. They have over 10 kids. Logistically it made more sense for him to decide to focus his problem-solving skills on the children for a decade or so.

It sounds like you had an easy time. Good for you. Many, many parents suffer hell with babies not sleeping and being upset. It seems a bit dismissive to just say “oh just do X and it’s all good”.

I didn’t mean to imply that.

My point was basically, if both parents have daytime obligations necessary to support the family, it’s very logical that they try to get the baby to sleep in the night ASAP

In that regard, having babies sleep in your bed, or having babies that cry though the night and accepting that as natural is a luxury (or problem) some families cannot afford.

If you can't both give up time to care for the baby 50% of the time (as opposed to one giving up all the time for 100% of the care, which definitely is backwards) then you have to realistically consider whether or not you should argue online that this is peak parenting. If you don't have time for your children, don't have them.

There's the extinction method which is the most hardcore and there's also the Ferber method which has the parent periodically check in with the baby.

Extinction is extreme, as one is basically abandoning the child to cry. They're scared, they don't know what's happening and they're alone.

Sure, they're (probably?) not gonna suffer long-term damage, but it's just an asshole thing to do. In the book recommending this method all parents had their instincts screaming that they're doing something wrong and they were feeling guilty even if it worked.

It’s not suitable for new babies, that’s for sure. But if you’re closer to the 1yr mark then they’re not crying because they’re scared, they’re crying because they know exactly what’s happening and they want to party and not go through the effort of figuring out how to go to sleep, again.

Some kids are just nuts. Ours both were. We went from an hour-long party of rolling, chanting, screaming, head-butting the wall, pulling the hair of any nearby parent, multiple times a night, to... asleep in 10mins. It felt bad at first until we saw how much his mood improved in the daytime because he wasn’t exhausted.

Is the article saying anything is 'right' or 'wrong'?

I much prefer a “hot tip” over advice. Here’s my latest for example: Sometimes instead of telling my kid to do something, if I can just give the task a good “dad stare” then give him the same look, he’s less likely to try and argue against me. Just tapping into that part of his brain that already knows what I want from him without vocalizing it gives him less room to wiggle out.

My wife and I went through the usual western slepo traibit cry out etc, I read an article about sleep cycles before electricity wher people had two sleeps per night, first one after dinner for 4-5 hours then and hour or two away where people had a snack or talked etc then went back to sleep for another few hours, I would liked to have tried that schedule with our kids even as a experiment, the sleep deprivation is horrible, I wonder if we aligned our schedule with our kids would it be better for everyone especially when they are babies

Yeah we waiting a pretty long time to sleep train our first. Just doesn't sound like something that can actually work. And seems really hard to do, psychologically. But we were kind of amazed how well and how quickly it worked. And yep, there are huge benefits to having a better rested baby and better rested parents. We'll probably do it earlier next time.

We have three kids and we sleep trained them. (Not a pediatrician, standard disclaimer.) This article calls it an ‘extreme’ practice.

Sleep training appears to be standard for all the parents I know, in the U.S. and otherwise. I think it's more likely that the author of the article has extreme views on parenting that they're tying to impose on others.

Not necessarily standard in Germany. Some literature explicitly calls it out as cruel, parenting books coming from the US recommend it

Mileage varies, know of one couple who did sleep training and had success with it.

Other couples shared a bed with their kid until it was about two and when they moved to a different apartment they took the opportunity to explain: hey you have your own room now.

> For us, ‘extreme’ was the sleep deprivation we experienced with baby number one as we tried every ‘no cry’ method in the book.

I was more generous in how I interpreted the article: the need for sleep-training is a consequence of the child having a whole different room to themselves. Parents in other cultures who share the room (or the bed) do not get the same level of extreme sleep deprivation and, as a consequence, will not need to sleep-train.

To me, the article is not questioning how good the parenting in the west is - it's contrasting it with parenting elsewhere (and tracing the roots of the parenting practices)

> Parents in other cultures who share the room (or the bed) do not get the same level of extreme sleep deprivation

That was my direct experience as a kid growing up in a non-Western society (I'm 40 now, am from Eastern Europe). When I first read about the Western tabu of parents not being allowed to sleep in the same bed with their children anymore I was a little surprised at first, and then saddened for those kids: "do you mean 3-year or 5-year old me should have slept all alone in his bed at night with no parent close to me? That is pure madness!"

More than that, one of my most vivid memories as a kid was sleeping with my brother and my two grand-parents in the same 3x4 meter room (give or take), my brother with my grandma and 6-year old me with my grandpa (there were two beds, a stove, a TV set and a small table in that room). I can still remember my grandpa peeling apples or pears and sharing them with my brother and me, just before we all went to sleep while we were watching some TV, very, very nice memories (in fact my nickname is taken from a Soviet TV series we were watching then [1]). Afaik neither me, nor my brother (who is 2 years older than me) were making any unwanted sounds while we were asleep at night.

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088635/

My wife has joked about writing (yet another) book on parenting but "chill, just go with it and do whatever works" isn't much material for an entire book.

The constant stream of "you should be doing X" is only shameful or confusing if you think the people imparting it on you have any credibility or their opinions have any validity.

This whole thread is chaos, but I just wanted to share my experience in case its useful for anybody. Once our kids were out of the bassinet and into a larger cot, rolling and crawling around a lot, it was really clear they just wanted to be with us, and in the end we just found it best for everybody if they just slept between us or even lying on my chest.

The struggle we’re having is the baby scratches himself nonstop. No matter how much we trim his nails, if we leave him alone at night he’ll be bleeding everywhere. Other than that he sleeps relatively well.

Have you tried baby mittens? It looks like a pouch, there are no individual fingers on the mittens. We put those on our baby to avoid the scratching problem. Here is an example: https://www.amazon.com/RATIVE-Newborn-Scratch-Mittens-9-pair...

Yeah. He eventually figured out how to take them off. We switched to using socks because they stayed on tighter. Then when teething started he would suck on them and rub his face giving him some bad rashes.

I’ve sleep trained 3 kids by myself (my wife wants no part in it) in the last 4 years or so. It takes a couple of days and then everyone involved is happier going forward (mother, father, and child).

Can you share more about how you sleep trained them? Thanks.

Of all the "weird" things we do as parents in euro/anglo nations, sleeping arrangements seems nowhere near the top.

IMO, the top "offender" is over-scheduling kid's activities. So many kids in my area have their days booked solid with sports, academic tutoring, music lessons. Approaching zero free time to enjoy being a kid.

Edit - and this isn't really a western thing, "Tiger Mom" and similar probably pre-dates this behavior in the US.

I volunteer with a U.S. Scout troop. I see boys that don't know whether or not they can go on an activity/campout because they have to ask their parents if they're free that day/weekend. I try to tell them their old enough (most are teenagers) that they should start deciding for themselves what activities they participate in. Most all of them just seem apathetic.

I'm sure their parents are trying to do what is best for their children, but it doesn't seem to be working.

I don’t know what it means for kids to be free nowadays. Free to visit a friend’s home seems like the only thing, because everything else is a home that’s an anonymous unit or a commercial establishment that’s gated by money.

It’s not like you’re releasing your child to be raised by the experiences of the village.

With that in mind, many parents are probably struggling to not have their kids consumed by the web during free time, esp during COVID lockdowns.

We raised my son in the DC suburbs (Herndon, VA). There is still a "town center" of sorts, with several parks nearby. So, free for him meant a combo of going to friends (mostly in the same large subdivision), getting to school on his own (bike, board, foot, bus), and running around after school (parks, downtown, whatever - I know a few of his common haunts, but didn't track his every waking moment).

Skateboarding? Climbing trees? Taking apart a toy? Messing around with a computer and a programming language? Inventing a game?

There are plenty of areas open to the public that are accessible to children: playgrounds, libraries, schoolyards, skateparks, large underused parking lots, malls, public pools. Some places have great nature nearby: beaches, creeks, rivers, hills, and mountains. Some of those are more dangerous than others, but they are all accessible if the parent allows it.

In the US, if the children in question are under 12 and going to any of those places unsupervised, they're likely to get the police and/or CPS called on them.

Sadly true. And part of the problem. There's now an expectation (at least in upper middle class areas) that kids be in formal, supervised activities 24/7.

I still remember growing up, playing around the neighborhood, and a parent would call out the front door "Danny, dinner time!" and all the kids would scatter to get home for dinner.

#getoffmylawn #wheresmycane

It depends on where. A few years ago, I lived in a falling-down house in a family neighborhood of mainly immigrants. There was a school a few blocks away, and kids used to come hang out in our trees (I’m pretty sure they thought the place was abandoned) and occasionally set off fireworks by the creek we lived next to.

I wouldn’t have called the cops on them since they weren’t causing any real trouble, but if my neighbors did, no one ever came. There are bigger problems in that town (like the feral fucking dogs) that the cops refused to do anything about.

But honestly, most of the neighbors were familiar with each other and let their kids roam pretty free. It was nice to see that places like that still exist.

That's one cool thing about living in Utah: https://www.npr.org/2018/04/01/598630200/utah-passes-free-ra...

The other cool thing is all the natural parks and outdoor activities (skiing, biking, climbing.)

The downsides are the utter lack of nightlife (not really my jam anyway, but whatever) and all the damn Mormons (I am one.)

This upsets me a lot. I'm in my 30's and I was still allowed to ride bikes around the neighborhood, go to the store for snacks, etc. with my brother. I don't understand how kids can develop a sense of exploration without these opportunities. Hopefully it's still possible to develop it during the teen years.

It's all so strange to me.

My son (now 26) always had summers free at minimum. While he was younger, he did go to a YMCA outdoor "adventure" day camp at a nearby lake park. Once he was in middle school, he stayed home. Sports 2-3 seasons, but he got to pick which one he played and never the crazy travel league stuff. In high school, he was free to do what he wanted (football for 2 years, guitar all 4, and a mix of rec league basketball and volleyball when he felt like it). Always plenty of time to ride his bike, play at the park, run around with friends. Starting in middle school, he'd often disappear across town on bike of skateboard for hours at a time. School was 2.5 miles away and he often opted to ride his skateboard instead of the bus.

I see kids today where every free moment is booked with stuff. All in some sisyphean effort to get into Harvard or something. I mean, sure, I get a desire to go to a top name uni, but the changes of little Johnnie getting in, regardless of extra-curricular, is so small that all the effort seems mostly wasted to me. I "only" went to UVA and turned out fine, IMO, so maybe I'm biased. I dunno.

I don't disagree with your premise, I'm strongly against parents trying to game college admissions for their 13 year old. But getting into UVA is not easy at all. Especially out of state, the admit rate is like 15% - so while not as crazy as Harvard it's in line with a few of the Ivies.

IMO a lot of the admissions-centered thinking has propagated down the rankings further and further in recent years too. Anecdotally I've seen people over-scheduling their children for target schools in a tier below UVA. This attitude of course creates a terrible feedback cycle, as admissions gets more and more competitive. At some point I'd like to think the admit offices are sick of seeing so many prototypical candidates, but still you need to do something to stand out. Ideally the parent should advise the kid on this meta-info, without literally telling them what to pursue.

> Most all of them just seem apathetic.

Which seems the other side of helicopter parenting; kids don't get much of a say in deciding what they fill their free time with, so they don't develop an opinion in things like that.

Plus (and I'm going to sound old here, give me my cane so I can shake it), there's a lot more casual entertainment lying around the house nowadays to fill the voids in people's time. "doing nothing" is not much of a thing anymore, because people will casually browse their phone or turn on the TV or something. (I'm guilty of that as well).

In the previous generation, there would be a TV but not everything on there would catch the interest of everyone.

I wonder if browsing your phone is really much different from channel surfing. I suppose by sheer volume you never run out of "channels" on the internet.

It gets beaten out of you and the easiest response is to just give up and wait it out.

“You don’t want to do this anymore? You need this for college, you shouldn’t quit everything you do, I wish I could have done this” etc.

Eventually it’s just easier to passively suffer whatever activity you dislike and just recognize the starting cost to trying new things is extreme.

> “ I try to tell them their old enough (most are teenagers) that they should start deciding for themselves what activities they participate in.”

I’d start with asking them about what their parents are like.

I know what they're parents are like during meetings and campouts. I have to manage them as much as I manage the boys. Some of them try to helicopter during meetings. There was one Scout that I've only seen smile when his dad wasn't around.

They don't seem to like the idea that Scouts is supposed to be youth-run/led and that it's okay to fail as long as they learn from it and improve. The parents just don't want them to fail or be uncomfortable at all (it's not always dry and warm outside).

Cool - sounds like you have the context.

I just remember adults yelling at me as a kid for things like this. “You should take responsibility.” Etc.

At the time I didn’t know what to do.

I wish I had just said, “I have no control over my life”.

I think other adults can sometimes be clueless about what a kid’s family life is like.

it can be sort of futile. as a kid, you can argue, resist, or break the rules, but until you can support yourself financially, your parents get the final say on most important matters.

reminds me of my first meeting with my advisor at college to pick courses for freshman year. I came in with a few ideas for courses/majors that my dad thought were practical. my advisor picked up on this almost immediately and asked "okay, but what are you interested in?". we had a nice talk, but at the end I went back to picking from the list my dad approved of. my advisor was disappointed and insisted that I needed to chart my own path through college. my response: "yeah, but I need my dad to write the check".

Yeah, I think some people are clueless to this context.

Even in more direct ways.

I remember getting yelled at in middle school because I would show up late to early morning jazz band practices I had to be driven to. I was ready to go 40min before we had to be there. I can't make my mom get me there on time.

I think adults forget kids are not independent.

There is truth to both. The problem with charting your own course as a kid is you often don't really know what is worth doing. "Underwater basket weaving" might be interesting, but it won't prepare you for any future. There are a lot of good choices though, you don't have to be a doctor just because your dad wants you to. And your dad might still be under the illusion that lawyer is a great paying job, when for the most part it isn't anymore (or maybe I'm wrong and it will go back to that? your guess is as good as mine).

I think there's a difference between a parent saying, "You should consider the economic ROI of what you choose to study, the risk of success/failure, and what life it could lead to" vs. "be a lawyer". If your kid really wants to act then they can go to LA and learn what the best way to do that is.

I think parents bias to being risk-adverse in advice for their kids because they only experience the downside risk and little of the upside from potentially riskier paths. I think a good parent would communicate some of this, but that's not a skill everyone has.

A lot parents just don't know that much and are over confident (like most people) even if their intentions for their kid are good. Others leverage their power over their kids to force them into certain paths which isn't great either.

Downside risk being having to support adult children who can't support themselves?

These days, there aren't many kids who only do Scouting...it's an over-scheduling comorbidity. For kids who resist over-scheduling, scouting seems to be one of the first things to go...because den and pack meetings are by and for adults, they never make it to a troop.

Or to put it another way, teenage apathy prevalence is probably pre-teen survivor bias.

I wonder what the rate of dropping out during Cub Scouts is vs Scouts BSA, vs how many don't cross over from Cubs to Scouts. The crossover happens around age 11, so I would imagine most of the dropouts happen later.

Anecdotal observation from my child's experience is nearly everyone who dropped out dropped out as a cub scout. That was a very large fraction. Those who crossed over are typically Eagle Scouts. But for one of those kids, they were all highly scheduled. But for a different one, they were each complying with parental wishes.

My child was over Cub Scouts by Bears.

But more than a decade later, my grown-ass child hangs out with several of the Eagles. They are close friends.

The scouting, at least here, is very time consuming. It seems to want to be your whole lifestyle.

Most actives do. Commitment is the way to win championships, so any one moment you are not practicing your sport is a chance to lose the award. That things can/should be fun is lost. Scouting is a bit better than sports, but they still want your life.

They don't. You can go to piano teacher once a week. You then train at home as a side hobby. You go to art lesson once or twice a week. You go to sport training 2-3 times a week and that can be it. There are plenty of clubs like that. They even have competitions one in a while - you won't be champion but you will compete against kids like you.

There are also super competitive clubs, but huge amount of them is not like that. My own kids go to clubs like that, my friends kid go to clubs like that. The teacher typically acts seriously and attempts to teach you what is possible during that time.

But scouting is whole another level, occupying afternooms, weekends and plus giving "homework" projects. The kids were either fully into it or left.

That was not my experience with Scouting as a youth. My troop was around 30 kids. It was one 90 minute meeting a week, one weekend campout a month, an annual food drive, and an every-other-month selling consessions at the church bingo game as a fundraiser for about 2 hours.

Pretty much everything else can be done at summer camp (1 week a summer) or maybe a merit badge fair on a Saturday once a year.

Sure, you might have to keep a log for a month of your chores, or do a home improvement project for the Family Life merit badge, but it never felt like a time sink as a kid, and didn't occupy all my afternoons. I essentially never had "homework" from Scouts.

Maybe some troops are really gung-ho, but there are plenty of troops that aren't. Troops are not allowed to set requirements that aren't in the Scout Handbook, if they are, there's the district, the council, and ultimately the national office that can put a stop to it or revoke the unit's charter.

How so? When my son was in scouts, it was a weekly meeting, usually after dinner (to avoid sports). Plus one optional weekend activity (camping, etc) per month (and these usually slowed between Nov-Mar because fewer people want to camp when it's freezing and wet).

That seems normal to me? I'm well-past the teenage years, and I wouldn't commit to a weekend activity without double-checking with the rest of my family first.

I think it's "normal" only in the sense that most everyone behaves this way today, but I don't think it should be that way.

By the time I was older in Scouts, my siblings were in college and my parent could drive me to wherever, or at least to the meeting place where I could carpool. The times when my parent wasn't available, I took the city bus.

I imagine if one of my siblings was was the same age and our parent could only drive one of us, the other would take the bus.

The first time I took the bus, my parent went with me to show me how, and then let me do it myself going forward.

I dont think the person you responded to was thinking about driving vs busses.

Basically, you are 16 and want to spend whole weekend out of house including during the night. Not doing it without parental permission seems normal to me.

Nor it seems new. My gradma or grandpa definitely could not just spend whole night and weekend away just by own decision. They would expect my parents to ask them for permission. I was expected the same.

Mine was default allow, his was default block. I had to inform, he had to get permission. Perhaps same result, but one feels more autonomous than the other.

From another one of my comments:

> I always just told my parent that I was doing something just so they knew where I was - not necessarily asking for permission, but that gave them the chance to veto it (which they only did one time as punishment when I got in trouble at school).

> I think that parents need to teach their kids how to be responsible and autonomous, and treat them like they are their own person

I dont think it necessary implies default block. It just implies you have to ask before comitting to activity. Whether the parents are more likely to say yes or no is orthogonal.

Also, we are talking here about overnight camping. It is not the same out for few hours. 16 years old being expected to sleep at home by default does not strike me as overly controlling.

I don't think attitudes to infant care translate in any way to how older kids or teenagers are treated in different cultures. I'm not a parent, but I was a child and teenager at some point, so I can say from personal experience that parents who are extremely present at a young age can actually give you more leeway later in life.

On a more general note, I can recommend Jared Diamond's 'The World Until Yesterday' - it covers similar topics to the bbc article and more.

There is nothing new in that? When I was pre teen and teen, I definitely had to get parents permission for weekend campout. It seems to me normal that parent have a say in whether the non-adult child sleep at home. Plus there were weekend activities woth familly I was expected to participate in - trips, familly visits, grandpa birthsday, etc.

So I would ask. I mean, idea that 16-17 years old goes for campout without asking parents strikes me as wtf.

I don't know, my parents always asked me if I wanted to go to my Grandmother's house or other trips (I did).

I always just told my parent that I was doing something just so they knew where I was - not necessarily asking for permission, but that gave them the chance to veto it (which they only did one time as punishment when I got in trouble at school).

I think that parents need to teach their kids how to be responsible and autonomous, and treat them like they are their own person, because they need to be to have any chance at being successful.

> and this isn't really a western thing

For real, I've heard some horror stories about e.g. Chinese parents pulling their kids through the grinder.

"So many kids in my area have their days booked solid"

Sounds like a wealthy thing, not a Western thing.

Queue the Doctor / Lawyer married couple with 2.5 kids who vacation twice a year, lease German cars, and have positive net worth crying about 'only being middle class'.

Technically, aren't they right? Middle class typically means you still have to work, strictly speaking.

I'm going off of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_class#Three-level_econo...

Depends who you ask, or the context. Anecdotally, software developers, being more math-minded than average, tend to think of middle-class literally - the middle third or middle quintile of income distribution.

That has never been the meaning of the term historically and doesn’t capture the magnitudes-difference between the middle and upper classes.

I agree. I was just pointing out that there is a portion of the HN readership that tends to use the strictly economic definition (rightly or wrongly). Also, the meaning has shifted over time.

As used in the early 1900s - I realize the term was coined even earlier than that - it referred to what today we'd likely call upper-middle-class (or if you're a fan of Engles, the bourgeoisie). White-collar, professional, well-educated, but not rich/powerful/nobility. It excluded almost the entirety of the working-class (even those who, by income, were well above poverty).

More recently, usage in the US has trended towards anybody above poverty but not quite rich (and choose your own definition of rich to suit your point). Which itself includes a massive span of incomes and lifestyles.

The usage hasn't really changed in the UK.

depends how you slice it. "have to work" is kind of a vague way to define class membership. someone with a $500k net worth doesn't "have to work" if they're content with living on $20k/year or so. of course, if you insist on sending your children to private school and taking them to europe every year, this is going to be unworkable.

most people tend to think what they have isn't quite enough, twice as much would be just right, and anything more than that is excessive.

If they were upper class they wouldn't have to queue ?

Odds are good the couple you mention are in fact negative net worth, or close to it. They don't own the car. Every time their house goes up in value they refinance and take the cash out to pay for the vacation.

Generally those with a significant net worth live more modest lives - older cars (they might buy new, but that is because they know if they do the maintenance it will last for 15-20 years). The house might be nice for the neighborhood, but it won't be in the rich part of town. They might vacation twice a year, but they will be cheap vacations. The difference goes into funding their retirement plan, and some other savings.

In the US, a doctor/lawyer dual income couple should be earning at least $300k, if not $500k+ per year.

Source:

https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2020-compensation-overvie...

Even with $600k to $800k ($4k to $6k per month loan payments) of student loans, they should be able to pull off a decent lifestyle and be positive net worth by their mid 40s.

Income doesn't equate to wealth. You have to look at the other side of the equation, outgo, to determine what someone's net worth is.

In addition to student loans, there's the house payment. People tend to buy a house based on what they can be approved for, not based off of a budget number they developed before talking to a bank. A 300k salary will get you pre-approved for a a lot of house in the US. Docs and Lawyers also fall into the trap of buying practices, so that's another factor.

The biggest factor you're missing in your assumption, though, is that personal finance problems are largely behavioral. There's a parallel with personal health. The difference is that people know more about how to lose weight and be healthy - and still don't do it - then people who actually know how to make good financial decisions. Even those who know they shouldn't buy things they can't afford, routinely do so for whatever reason they have been told or have invented.

For what it's worth, the study by Ramsey Solutions says that the top 5 careers for becoming a millionaire are engineers, teachers, CPAs, attorneys, and management. While some of those are vague and capture a large range of professions, Docs are conspicuously missing.

This doesn't jive with any data or personal experience I have. The Ramsey Solutions study also seems like garbage, especially because it seems like their definition of millionaire is someone with $1M in a 401k.

But if you line up 100 teachers or CPAs and 100 doctors in the USA, you can sure as hell bet the doctors will be far wealthier than the teachers or CPAs.

It's a fact that US doctors, across the whole population of doctors, earn $200k+ per year, and outside of software engineers, I don't think any of the Ramsey careers earn anywhere near as much as a population (unless management includes high level execs in F500 companies?). Docs are conspicuously missing because Ramsey is trying to sell something to people with lower to moderate incomes/high debt, such as teachers/CPA/attorneys, etc and they're not targeting doctors. Doctors would never need the Ramsey website.

See the difference in advice on a website like whitecoatinvestor.com vs Ramsey.

As for assumptions about personal finance behaviors, I'm sure some doctors are bad at it, just like every other profession. But I would need some pretty firm evidence that doctors who are by any measure, very highly motivated and intelligent individuals, are somehow so poor at managing their finances that they squander $100k+ per year.

Well, their definition of a millionaire is someone with a net worth of greater than a million dollars. That's also my working definition of a millionaire, and I thought was the definition of a millionaire.

Can you provide your definition so that I can frame your comments with it?

Sorry, I should have said the metric of a millionaire as defined buy $1M in a 401k is not saying much.

Having $1M after decades of working at or near retirement age is the bare minimum one needs for a “decent” retirement if they want to continue their lifestyle. I know 90% of Americans don’t come close to it, but if you want security of quality of life and not worry about medical expenses, $1M will not go far in many of the places in the US that are popular.

On the other hand, when I’m putting together a real estate deal and I need a few hundred thousand dollars, I have many doctors I can call who might be able to pony up, but no teacher is going to be able to come up with that kind of investment. I know a couple of outlier engineers and CPAs who can come up with that that, but nowhere near the amount of doctors, especially as a percentage of all engineers and CPAs.

It’s just crazy to me to hear of the profession where all members are higher earners that are at $200k on the low end be put in the same bucket as teachers whose median might be $60k to $80k, in high cost of living areas.

Some doctors can get the several hundred thousand dollars, but many of them fall for scam investments and lose it all in them. Teachers are more likely be investing in safer things than a real estate deal. An index fund (or similar) will give you more diversity for the same investment and so is a lot safer, it won't grow as fast in the best case, but it won't drop nearly as far in the worst case. (I recommend target date retirement funds these days for even better diversity).

Not that real estate is a bad investment, but a single high value deal has no diversity and so it a bad investment. If you are putting several hundred thousand into a single investment your net worth really should be closer to ten million than one.

Note that I said some doctors above. If only 1% of doctors are good with money/investments, that is a lot of doctors, and they will in general have more money than any teacher.

Docs are conspicuously missing.

Student loans are the reason for this. Physicians have to pay a great deal for school in USA.

At the amount doctors make they can pay that off in a few years. Student loans are [can be] big for doctors, but they are only a couple years after tax income even at the most expensive schools.

That link needs an account. Maybe a screenshot or something

Weird, I just searched medscape 2020 doctor pay in duckduckgo and it works for me.

Here’s an alternate search result with similar findings:

https://c8y.doxcdn.com/image/upload/Press%20Blog/Research%20...

Interesting, thanks.

I thought a large number of lawyers end up not earning much?

And straight out of university, you really can’t look at the average, because the income distribution of lawyers is extremely bimodal in the US: https://www.biglawinvestor.com/bimodal-salary-distribution-c...

But not for doctors. The lower end of the household income range I listed is achievable by doctors alone. I would also presume doctors are more often than not marrying lawyers on the higher end of the income scale.

Bottom line, based on numerous personal experiences and pay data, I do not expect lawyer/doctor families to have the quality of life the person I was responding to claim they have, on average.

You are confusing quality of life with money saved for a rainy day. So long as the income holds out they are not much different, but when bad times come one is in trouble

Who is not much different? Surely having six figures of extra free cash flow makes a different in quality of life compared to 80% of the population.

How is flying first class to your cruise ship where you have to most expensive cabin (complete with a full size grand piano) a higher quality of life than a week camping in a nearby state park? The first vacation will set you back at least $20,000, the second $300.

If you are asking about the difference between $10k and $20k that is a big difference. If you are asking about $60k vs $600k, the difference is not nearly as big even though the first is double, with the second is 10x.

Nit: It's "cue" as in "stage cue".

In the west your children's days can be roughly just as busy but you if you're wealthy you can make it easier, basically.

The only thing I'm really jealous of from spending time around people who've grown up with more money is that, assuming your family are basically nice, it's much easier to brush over any cracks or for the children to mentally seperate themselves e.g. The house I grew up is fairly miniscule, the first thing I noticed visiting a large house was not only that they had (say) a music room [so separation] but also that the children could hide within the house outside of earshot of their parents.

Best decision my parents made for me when I was kid: no extra activities after school, no summer camps, no music lessons, etc, no soccer teams, etc.

I did have "unofficial summer camps", I did play some music instruments (without teachers), I did play a lot of soccer (without teams, just in the street)... I (and the kids in my neighbourhood) did all of these without adults.

Yeah me too! I had the occasional swimming lesson once per week or something but other than that, if the weather was good, you'd find me and all the neighborhood kids running around playing tag or riding our bikes everywhere. I grew up at a co-op so all of the houses were close together and there were a lot of families and other kids my age.

I think the number one thing you can do for your kid is to live in a neighborhood with lots of other kids.

I went to art class once a week because I liked it, but stopped at a young age when I didn't se any classes in the course catalog that I was interested in. The only summer camp I did was one week a summer with Scouts.

I'm guessing "summer camp" for most other kids is of a longer duration?

Did you not have any desire to do these things? This strikes me as an odd "rule" to have since a lot of people genuinely enjoy these activities. Playing football in high school was one of my favorite parts of the time period, and going to a summer camp legitimately changed my life path. I think these things can be extremely good if the child wants to participate.

I couldnt imagine not letting my own child not do these things if they wanted to.

Not everyone grows up in a neighborhood with kids their age.

Not so sure this is necessarily a western thing. When I was a kid in Germany in the 90ies, school started at 7:30, and ended at 13:00. Once a week you had afternoon school from 14:30 to 16:00, and my parents wanted me to have piano lessons once a week. But after 13:00, and on weekends, I was generally free to do whatever I wanted. I played computer games excessively and watched a lot of movies, of course, but I also explored the nearby forest, build tree houses, taught myself how to build a computer, BASIC, Delphi, HTML, CSS and JS, and drew a comic series with a friend (of course we were the only readers). Except for math, everything that helped my through university and my professional life so far I learned in this free time, just by playing.

Isn't Germany western?

Yes, thus their point.

Are we talking about west Germany?

"IMO, the top "offender" is over-scheduling kid's activities. So many kids in my area have their days booked solid with sports, academic tutoring, music lessons. Approaching zero free time to enjoy being a kid."

It's a weird and tricky balance that one has to strike, in the US, in 2021 ...

On the one hand, I feel strongly that kids should have free time and energy to explore and experiment and I am reinforced daily in my instinct that a "bored" kid is just another 10 minutes away from doing something interesting and magical.

On the other hand, as my oldest children reach pre-teen age, and I pay more attention to their pre-teen peers, I find myself agreeing with the "idle hands are the devils playground" heuristic. I want my teenage children busy doing constructive and healthy things.

But it gets complicated ... you can't just plug your kid onto a age 12 or age 13 baseball or hockey team. Those kids have been playing the sport (and playing the sport together) since they were 4 or 5. Your kid will not make the team or will be conspicuously out of place. So if you've been free-ranging it for their first ten years you're going to need to get more creative as you transition to the teenage years...

I have seen things like mountain biking and BJJ be good options...

Exactly. I tried joining sports for the first time when I was 14 (around 15 years ago). And it was honestly a humiliating experience. I was so far behind the other kids in skill level it was just sad. And I was the ONLY one on the team that couldn't keep up. Everyone else had been practicing for 5-10 years.

You're a good parent to notice and think about these things.

Yeah, totally agree on sports. But, that's part of the problem - kids specializing in a single sport before high school? That's bonkers to m.

When I was in school, very few kids specialized, even through high school. The top football players were also the best wrestlers or basketball players, and most also played baseball or track or lacrosse. Few of them did school basketball and then AAU the remainder of the year.

My son stuck to club/rec basketball (instead of the school team) and volleyball (school team, but mens volleyball prior to high school isn't really a thing in DC).

And, like you said, there's always cycling, martial arms, or track/field (typically takes all interested).

I also agree with keeping kids active/engaged. But, to me, that means supporting them as they pick their own activities, not scheduling every second of their non-school time.

Edit - many of the kids specializing before high school are pretty obviously NOT destined for scholarship athletics. There's really no point to it, IMO. I coached football and basketball for much of my son's youth. Of all the kids I coached, 1 went on to NCAA D1 sports (and that was to W&M, where he still had to meet stringent academic standards).

I would suggest approaching this in two structured phases - "breadth" and "depth".

In the breadth phase, you instruct the kid to study the topic of interest at a distance, collect information, attend events casually and give some reports explaining what they like. Make the thing of "pursuing an interest" just a little bit academic and intentional on their part. With a lot of topics they'll have their fill and loosen their grip pretty quickly, and when that happens, allow them to go on to the next thing.

If they can't shut up about it, that's when you go towards the depth phase and push them towards a more intensive effort, to take the class, read the book, join the club. Set modest goals that still take a committment, and indicate that it's very likely that some kids will be ahead or pick up the material faster. They should still report how things go and get your feedback so that you can spot issues, or teach them how to seek out good feedback where you lack competence. But there's a definite thing here of getting them to see the struggle itself as something rewarding, not the outcome like "being the best" or "making a career". Because if they get a feel for that, they will reach adulthood with some sense of balance and intention to what they pursue and why and a sense of their strengths and weaknesses.

My coworker did this with her son. She was spread thin with afterschool programs, sports, projects and so on. Well, the kid got into Caltech. Where he'll probably meet amazing people and receive an excellent education. So maybe it worked? How many YC founders had this overbooked childhood? I'd guess over 70%.

And there's plenty of students at Caltech who were not overbooked in their free time.

I think your guess would be wrong, but I also don't think overbooking is a problem.

As a child who had lots of free time due to living in a place with a lack of structured activities for kids, I really envy kids who can take advantage of such resources enough to have a packed daily schedule.

It's not so much that kids shouldn't have structured activities; it's that these activities shouldn't be thrust upon them by parents.

Yeah, the smaller the kid, the more direction they're going to need. But a 5th grader should be able to pick their activities within reason.

I mentioned it in another thread, but when I was coaching youth sports, I saw two huge (IMO) problems... first, kids specializing at a young age - 5th and 6th graders playing a single sport 9+ months of the year (vs mixing it up). Related to that was a disturbing frequency of overuse injuries in younger athletes. Baseball players coming back from summer with stress fractures in their spines from too much pitching practice and things like that.

And also a whole lot of straight-A students being forced to attend extra-curricular tutoring. I'm sure in some regions, it might be necessary to learn advanced subjects, but Fairfax County schools have robust GT/AP/honors programs and allow dual enrollment at the local community college - very few kids are running out of available maths classes, etc.

And with a robust state college system (UVA, W&M, VT, GMU, JMU, and on and on), the "penalty" for not getting into Stanford isn't much (for the majority of subjects).

Anyways, all anecdotal, but of my son's peers, the kids with the overbooked schedules didn't really go to colleges any more prestigious than anybody else. Most just ended up at one of the several excellent state colleges.

Hey notsureaboutpg just so you know, you're hellbanned and all of your comments are grayed out. Replies to you are disabled.

FYI (and not sure if this requires a karma threshold) if you click the timestamp on a comment you'll get a "vouch" option that you can use to resurrect non-problematic comments from banned people.

But did the overbooked childhood enable that, or was the kid destined for a top-notch uni regardless?

The students gaining admissions to top unis are largely self-motivated, extremely smart, and would have chosen high-quality activities on their own.

Looking back at my own childhood, I chose my sports, music, and other activities. My parents enabled them, but never forced me into them. Would forcing me to play an additional sport, or forcing me to attend after-school tutoring made the difference between UVA and Harvard? I doubt it. And what did attending UVA instead of Harvard cost me? Hard to say for sure, but I'm inclined to say "not much" as I'm happily upper-middle-class as it is.

And considering my high school peers who did attend Ivies and similar, most of them either smarter or harder working than me.

I have the same experience; I think what school you get to attend is just the happy byproduct arising from your internal combination of intelligence, self-motivation, and emotional resilience (mostly! I am speaking in generalities).

I remember reading a study about this exact topic and it turns out name brand has little to do with career success in meritocratic career paths - i.e., upper-middle white collar professionals such as engineers, doctors, lawyers, etc.

I guess my conclusion is to be aware of your child's personality. If they aspire to be an engineer, they could probably go anywhere, even gasp Virginia Tech and do fine. However if they aspire to be a politician, then they'd probably be best served to attend the highest grade institution they can so they can be socialized into that in-group.

Now you're just being silly. Nothing good ever came from that backwater university. ;)

Flashes back to massive football losses... "It's alright, it's ok, we're gonna be your boss someday!" College students can be such insecure jerks.

(but, yeah, totally agree - the vast majority of students will do just fine with a degree from Big State U)

Well, I believe that some minimal pushing is necessary. Like you can’t be motivated in a topic you don’t even know exists, so if nothing else, giving a broad view of the “palette” is the task of a parent. And of course as you write, enabling said activites.

Also, I do find it bad when parents push their child from an overly young age into some specific thing, but at the same time the reality is, that both physical and mental development improvements in such a young age have a really profound effect. So looking at a 5 years old play the violin is sad in one way, but at the same time at his/her teenage years he/she can choose (at least hopefully) to continue the efforts and with an inner motivation he/she can have a bright future, much more than only starting it at 10+ years old.

As someone who went to Caltech I assure you Caltech faculty care very little about the name on the undergrad programs of their grad students. I.E. the value proposition of a Caltech undergrad education barring a few IMO cases (which Harvard tends to grab) is doubtful

I'd argue that romanticizing children's free time is more weird and more western than anything else. My free time as a kid usually just involved being bored and lonely while watching TV or playing video games.

Speaking as a parent of 5. Parental mental health has a much bigger effect on the child than choice of methodologies. You really need to look after yourself before you can look after them - so if you are suffering from sleep deprivation, doing what you have to do is the right thing to do.

Put your own oxygen mask on first.

Exactly this. Being able to stay sane, levelheaded, and get necessary things done is probably far more impactful than sleep methodologies, baby wearing, breast versus formula fed, or any of the thousand of analysis paralysis inducing choices that parents have to make.

As a parent myself I have only one piece of child rearing advice.

First: Read a bunch of books (which will contradict each other)

Then: a) do what you think is right and b) when someone tells you to do X (especially, but not only your mother or mother in law), if you disagree just say "Funny you should say that because I just read the exact opposite" and hand them a random baby rearing book.

This sounds like a joke but the biggest problem in child rearing is well meaning busybodies and we figured out this effective way to shut it down. (Busybodies who were strangers we just smiled at and ignored).

But the books are also well-meaning busybodies.

Worse: The books that most resonate with you may well be the ones you need to ignore.

Take strict vs permissive parenting, for example. Say you're by nature a more permissive parenting. The books that say you should be permissive will resonate more with you than the books that say that you should be strict. But it's the ones that say to be strict that you need to hear, because they're the ones that are against your natural bent. (Nobody needed to tell you to be permissive, you were going to do that anyway.)

(My position here is that either strict or permissive, taken too far, will be problematic. So you can swap strict and permissive in the previous paragraph, and everything is still true.)

So don't just read parenting books and listen to the ones that strike a chord with you. It's the other ones that you need to carefully consider what they say.

Funny you should say that, I just read a comment on HN claiming the opposite. Let me search for it and then edit this comment with the link...

That’s the thing about the internet. If you posit P to be true then a vehement Not P believer will attack your comment with “fire and fury” and any form of attack that could work but still be false. And some of the times they’re correct of course and Not P is indeed true While P is not.

We’re all complicated humans.

What’s amazing about the child rearing is that each of us has such a small n. Yet we (me included) think we know the secrets.

When my kid has a kid I hope I will be smart enough to keep my trap shut until asked.

I'm confused... Why would I want to ignore something which resonates with me? Isn't that the whole point of "resonance" and "feelings", to use them to guide our reason?

I would read the books on permissive parenting not to convince myself that it's right, but to find techniques and strategies which work.

In Zion National Park, there's a trail called Angels Landing. It goes up a ridge with a 500 foot dropoff on one side, and a 1000 foot dropoff on the other. The ridge between them is only a couple feet wide in places.

I think of parenting that way - there's a cliff on one side (too much strictness, say), but don't back too far away from it, because there's also a cliff on the other side (too permissive). So when you see the cliff, don't back too far away from the cliff you see, because there's a cliff in the other direction too.

So if you lean toward permissiveness, say, you don't need a book that warns you not to be too strict. You're already not going to be too strict. You need a book that warns you not to be too permissive.

> Isn't that the whole point of "resonance" and "feelings", to use them to guide our reason?

That only works if your feelings are more correct than your reason is. That happens, sometimes, but... I don't think it should be the default mode of operation. Reason alone can also lead you to absurd results. You need both, your feelings to know when you have reasoned yourself into a position that just doesn't fit, and your reason to know when your feelings are liars.

I think that's a pretty extreme view...

But when navigating a narrow ridge like that, books can wait and I'm definitely following my gut.

Sure. But on the actual trail, you can see the edges. In parenting, you can't, and it takes you years to realize that you fell off it.

I certainly see what you're saying, and it's great to expose yourself to both side of the argument, but I don't agree that you should go against your gut feeling.

Otherwise you put yourself at high risk doing stupid shit just because it is majority consensus du jour.

Also own parents might have outdated info from 30 years ago which they attempt to use now.

My parents clearly don't like the way I raise my children. I made it clear that what my wife and I do is for us the correct way and while we will listen to reason they should accept it as the right way.

As I reach the age where some of my friends are starting to have kids in a Western country, one thing I've noticed is that they all seem to have different ideas about raising kids, between diets, sleeping habits, baby bjorns, what language(s) to read to them in, how to get them to walk/talk, etc. I wouldn't call any of them weird (although I honestly don't have much of a baseline understanding), but I have a hard time figuring out how exactly you can generalize a Western way of raising kids.

What your doctor / nationalised health care system is recommending sounds like a good approach

Honestly doctors can spread a lot of disinformation on things not biologically related. For example, our pediatrician recommended we wait until 3 to potty train our son... who at the time was already potty trained.

Potty training is also something that differs widely between developed nations and rest of world.

I think that has to do with the fact that not all children are able to learn/sense it at a young age. Telling parents their kids should be potty trained before the age of 3 could have the parent put pressure on the kid resulting in worse behaviour or aversion to using the toilet, lengthening the process even further. It's just easier to advice to "start at 3". Especially since nowadays more parents both work fulltime and will have less time to properly observe and guide the process at earlier age.

> Potty training is also something that differs widely between developed nations and rest of world.

And between kids. My daughter just up and decided at around 18 months or so that she was done with diapers and would use the big girl potty. Not one accident. My son was more apathetic about the whole thing, and it was sometime past his third birthday before he finally started using the toilet to poop in.

The piece of advice that stuck with me ... don't bother trying, they'll do it themselves when they're ready, and you probably can't accelerate it.

What you're saying goes to the heart of the article: Why are things so different in western nations compared to developing nations w.r.t. child raising? Potty training is one of the many places where we diverge wildly.

Take for example Vietnam, where kids are out of diapers at around 9 months[1]. Even in the US the age at which children are potty trained has crept up slowly from 1 year to 19 months to 27 months today:

> In the U.S., until the 1950s, most children were using the potty in the first few months of life and completely trained by age 1. In the 1970s, 18 months was an average age to start. Now, it's around 24 to 30 months.[2]

As the article asks, what are the phenomena causing these changes and what explains the huge discrepancies between countries and cultures? Clearly the biology of children does NOT explain the difference.

1. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130130082726.h...

2. https://www.salon.com/2010/07/09/extreme_potty_training

I think it is less kids running around naked outside. Honestly.

Diapers are cheaper, and disposable diapers more widely available. That could potentially shift the scales for what is more difficult (hand washing diapers vs training at a young age whereas now: disposable diapers and wait until training is easier)

Some medical professionals also spread incorrect information regarding medical information. For example, an RN gave us incorrect info regarding something she claimed was necessary and was CDC-recommended. We asked for more information, and lo and behold, the CDC specifically said it was not necessary (and there were no other sources recommending it).

Doctors and their staff have an incentive to perform more procedures/tests because they get paid to do so. Because the patient often does not bear the full cost of procedures/testing, patients often do not do much diligence to see whether these are actually appropriate. While I don't think that the RN we were talking with was being malicious (surely her individual comp would not have been affected), I do think this is a symptom of a system with a principal-agent problem.

Of course, doctors can be an incredible source of information. But with all things, consider any potential conflicts of interest when taking advice.

One thing that I find weird about the Western (perhaps just American) way of raising kids is that the retired population is surprisingly uninvolved in the raising of their grandchildren. It seems like an economic inefficiency when parents are spending so much money on childcare while old people are feeling increasingly lonely.

There are a lot of grand parents involved in the young, then the kids grow up and teens just don't need as much time and so the grand parents are lonely. There are a lot of lonely great-grand parents that someone fit into this. There are a lot of people who don't live close to the grand parents (but may have a sibling who does).

Good point. I am an Indian, raised in India, came to US at 19.

I notice the same thing here. We have neighbors who are white and have their grandkids over every day. It is very refreshing to see.

However, it is a rare thing to see at the same time. I have never seen other native born Americans talk about their grandkids or heard of them being involved in their upbringing.

I am cautious of the stereotypes such as when they retire, they just want to be left alone, travel and not be bothered. But the stories where they end up in old age homes while their children are fully grown adults and successful, are far too often. This doesn't make sense to me because on one hand they would look forward to their children and grandchildren visiting them in their old age homes, on the other hand they don't want to live together.

Sure, I am fine with the idea "if it works for them, then good for them", but it doesn't seem to work for them.

So to summarize, I think the American culture is still trying to figure itself out. Perhaps things would fall into place in a generation or two after learning from other cultures (and of course, other cultures learning some good things from American culture).

Assuming people have a good relationship with their parents, they would want them to be involved in their children's lives.

The bigger issue, in my social circles at least, is that Americans don't live near the grandparents. The economic opportunities exist in a certain few areas, and either the parents aren't willing to take the economic/quality of life hit to leave near their grandparents, or the grandparents can't afford to come live near the grandkids. Especially in the "good school" district areas.

The best situation I've seen is from Everybody Loves Raymond, grandparents nearby, but still in a separate house. But few grandparents will be located in the same neighborhood as the kids. Typically, similar size/price houses are located near each other, and the more expensive homes in with access to better schools come with higher property taxes/maintenance, which older people might not want to pay.

I think this varies a lot by social/educational group. College educated folks often end up moving to different cities for college and then work so grandparents aren’t in the same place any longer (and with multiple kids in different cities could not be for all of them.)

I am from the U.S. My mother has my kids at least two days a week. It saves me money, gives her an excuse to come over, and the kids love it. After I finish working we will typically make dinner together. I did not have this sort of experience growing up and I'm really glad things have worked out this way for my kids.

If only I could get her to stop cleaning everything while she's at my house and filling my fridge with vegan alternatives.

Does your mother prefer to live on her own? Seems like you both like having her around the house!

I'm asking because in my culture parents living separately from their adult kids is rare.

I'm not sure what her preference is, and it isn't something that has been discussed. For context, my mother is in her early sixties and still works part-time.

The American family is notoriously unrooted and migratory. People scatter after college and while looking for work. For those that live near their grandchildren, they are as involved as anywhere else I would imagine.

Outside of neglect and abuse, is there really a WRONG way of raising a child?

You see multiple different styles in different cultures. Some cultures where bed-sharing and baby-carrying is common also beat their kids and use other forms of punishment for disobedience. Wouldn't that be much "weirder"? It seems in Europe breastfeeding rates are really low and people use prams, but they might not beat the child as much (or at all). Is that the wrong way?

It seems to me people who are loved and cared for as children are raised and generally become well-adjusted and happy individuals. I fear parents are being constantly judged now for not doing the latest thing that some research found, the latest fad that may or may not have a tiny effect on the child's life itself. It probably gives people a lot of anxiety that they might be doing something terribly wrong for the child for not having the right crib height, or not sleeping in the same bed, or not playing Mozart at the right time or whatever.

I love this take and believe in it whole-heartedly. It's very similar to how every shits on each others diets. Some people only eat rice, some potatoes, some meat, and some exclusively ocean. Humans are very versatile and durable and really can make due with most things. The same probably applies to raising children too.

I suspect that pram vs carrying thing has a lot more to do with practicalities then anything else. Quality of sidewalks, availability of good changing places, how far you need to go and how much stuff you carry.

I agree and I really dislike the undercurrent of fear that's present in a lot of parenting advice. The message (implicitly or explicitly) tends to be "do it this way or you'll damage your kids." But the truth is we're never going to be perfect parents, we have no guarantees over how our kids turn out, and there are a wide range of approaches that will lead to good outcomes.

I like to do research to discover options I might not have come up with on my own, but I always try to pay attention to those subtle messages of fear so they don't influence my decisions too much.

There is damage and there is damage. Some can really change kids trajectory. Some become a funny anecdote for the future. I am a newly minted parent and we had a visitation from a parent, who now has a 4 year old. She already introduced him to Starbucks and McDonalds. Now I have to ensure that she stays way way down on the list of people we would consider babysitting.

There may not be wrong way to parent exactly and each parent is entitled to damage their kids ( within reasons prescribed by the society ). My line clearly starts with food and I can already see I people won't like me in school, PTA and like meetings. Joy.

> She already introduced him to Starbucks and McDonalds. Now I have to ensure that she stays way way down on the list of people we would consider babysitting.

Relax. I occasionally ate fast food when I was 4, and I was definitely aware of the existence of McDonalds. I never had a weight problem in my life, and today I eat fast food maybe once every 3 months or so.

I feel like we're probably not the only kids who ate Happy Meals.

Starbucks might be a different type of menu to navigate, but they do have child-appropriate items.

https://www.starbucks.com/menu/product/2121691/single

That's a condescending and unfounded response. Some people can take heroin and not have issues, but that doesn't make heroin safe by any means. You're in a small minority of Americans and not representative of the average person.

> The organization estimates that 3/4 of the American population will likely be overweight or obese by 2020.[13] According to research done by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, it is estimated that around 40% of Americans are considered obese, and 18% are considered severely obese as of 2019. Severe obesity is defined as a BMI over 35 in the study. Their projections say that about half of the US population (48.9%) will be considered obese and nearly 1 in 4 (24.2%) will be considered severely obese by the year 2030.[14][15]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States

Americans aren't fat because of Starbucks and McDonalds. Those things are just food. Americans are fat because they eat too many calories and don't get enough exercise: https://www.businessinsider.com/daily-calories-americans-eat...

At age 2-3, my parents fed me traditional Bangladeshi meals of chicken or beef curry stewed in heavy amounts of canola oil. My 2 year old, meanwhile, lives on McDonald's chicken nuggets. There's no way the former is better for you than the latter.

That traditional bangladeshi meal doesn't sound like it's loaded with sugar like a lot of starbucks and mcdonalds, which is one distinct difference. another major difference is that the traditional bangladeshi meal sounds full of fiber and nutrients, which is also very different from a lot of starbucks and mcdonalds food.

If you're a robot with 100% dietary discipline, yes you can maintain the same weight whether you're eating purely lettuce, potato chips, or curry. But the average human will have a harder time sticking to their proper calories if they subsist on high-sugar, low-fiber, low-nutrient fast food compared to bangladeshi curry. I'm not talking about theory, I'm talking about real-life humans, and as evidence for my statement you can read the wikipedia page I linked containing data about the prevalence of overweightness and obesity in the US.

Where did the food that your parents gave you come from?

There is no simple reason for WHY people in the US overeat and underexercise. But one facet involves the disruption of rituals and tradition around food. It's still progress by some means that a mother doesn't need to spend as many hours preparing meals for a household, and can instead e.g. work. But I believe we should generally dial back a bit how convenient and neutral it has become to eat. We're quite disconnected from our food.

Speaking of rituals and tradition around food, the portion control at a place like McDonalds is probably way better than meals served in many American homes. When I was growing up, it didn't matter if I was full, I wasn't leaving the dinner table until I 'cleaned my plate'. It took a while to unlearn that.

So much of American attitudes toward food are a result of our last great famine -- the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Back then, parents made their children "clean their plate" because tomorrow there may be no food at all.

This also extends to our fondness for processed food. Processed food may be bad for you, but it's easier to store and ship, keeps for longer, and tastes better when it reaches your plate. It provided greater food security at a time when massive crop loss still loomed in recent memory.

> Americans aren't fat because of Starbucks and McDonalds. Those things are just food. Americans are fat because they eat too many calories

Food is made out of calories, though...?

I agree that there is an obesity problem (although I am not an American), but I am not so sure that demonizing french fries, Chicken McNuggets and hot chocolate from age 4 will have the desired effect.

E, to answer the question below: because my personal experience from being a child and caring for a child is that anything that is demonized by the parents becomes extremely attractive.

Why do you think that?

My anecdotal experience is the same as well. Stingy parents have led to a lot of spending from kid as they become young adults with moeny for the first time.

Anecdote: My son had a close friend growing up whose parents didn't allow candy in the house. Every time a friend's birthday party came around, he would eat himself sick on sweets.

Eventually he learned some restraint but there was a solid 5-6 years there where my son's friend could not be around sweets without ruining his day. Better education combined with a bit of modeling moderation by his parents, might have saved him a lot of miserable evenings.

Demonizing those foods (demonize sounds intense) helps build healthy eating habits instead defaulting to fast food.

In response to your edit, there's a lot of gray space between demonizing and letting kids have at it. I was raised on homemade, simple foods and despite loving junk food, I have no problem eating healthy stuff because that's how I was raised. If anything, certain junk food was encouraged, but because the focus was always on a traditional understanding of healthy foods, it was easy to adapt as my personal understanding of "healthy" changed. So we shouldn't demonize anything, but we should definitely teach kids that there's not really any benefit to junk food; if you really have to eat it, make it a treat once in a while but learn to appreciate healthy options.

@rayiner: what a weird thing to say. Are you saying that all foods are equal, that the way you eat doesn't affect your health, thinking and environment in any substantial way?

I accept I may be over-reacting a little, but in that particular case occasionally means a weekly happy meal. The kid in question is already yelling "Happy Meal day" on Friday.

Is that supposed to be egregious? I liked McDonalds as a kid too. You get a toy, after all.

This is hardly going to harm a child:

https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/meal/4-piece-chicken-mcnu...

I am genuinely surprised that this part of the equation is not more troubling to more parents. Yes, the toy is is part of the draw. The question is whether this is a good thing and/or a good habit. I think it is not.

I think that depends more on the parent than it does the restaurant. It is possible to fit fast food in to a healthy diet, just like it's also possible to eat fruits and vegetables in an unhealthy way[0]. A weekly treat sounds squarely within the realm of moderation to me... that's what, 5% of a weekly diet?

0: https://www.news-press.com/story/news/crime/2019/11/12/malno...

It is a reasonable argument assuming it is true for the rest of the diet. Thank you for that. I am still not entirely convinced, but I all of a sudden I feel a little less adamant in my position.

I particularly despise happy meal toys for their environmental waste. I don't think their existence negatively affects my child's psyche though. She loves books, sand, pretending to do chores like mom and dad, jumping in muddy puddles, and her stuffed rabbit named Bun-Bun. Nutritionally, a crappy "quarter pound" hamburger occasionally isn't going to affect my toddler's health, and has protein that is otherwise difficult to get her to eat.

I feel like in some way, it's actually better to let your child hang out with this kid in order for them to learn how not to do things. your child may learn to dislike that other child for one reason or another and they'll associate that need for McDonald's with the negative qualities of that kid.

What's wrong with Starbucks and McDonalds? Kids drink glasses of milk. An iced latte is literally just a glass of milk with espresso in it. As to McDonalds--I'm not convinced it's any worse than the stuff I ate at that age in Bangladesh (curries heavy with oil, lots of carbs).

Starbucks latte is okay, calories wise. Frappuccino, not so much, with its quadruple calories bill.

Are you saying that there is no substantial difference between mcdonald's and curries?

Same kind of fat? Same kind of carbs? Same amount of fibers? Same amount of minerals and vitamins?

Sounds a bit like you are trying to provoke a discussion about this.

I personally do not subscribe to the idea that giving a child ( in this case -- a 4 year old ) espresso is acceptable.

To answer your argument about Bangladesh food. Assuming McD is not worse ( I have no real data to say either way ),I am not sure it is a good argument either. You, typically, want your kids to do better so if McD is that upgrade, then I really cannot fault you for this. We all approach this with resources at our disposal.

Are you suggesting that whatever weird food your kids eat is an "upgrade" compared to the normal diet of Bangladeshis?

No. As previously mentioned, I don't know enough about traditional foods there to make a judgment one way on the other. I am actually arguing that what my kids eat is an "upgrade" over McD and I assumed that if you think McD is no worse than diet of Bangladeshis then it is either the same or better since, possibly wrongly, I assume that parents universally want to improve their kids life.

Just to make more interesting. In the old country, the diet is heavy in fats of all kinds ( partially due to history of the location and, well, cold weather ). Despite its flaws, I would argue its still better than McD on most days.

I'm curious to know where your line will have moved to once your baby is a toddler and you've been sleep deprived for an extended period of time. Please follow up in two years!

Recently, a bunch of coworkers with young children ended up together in a social video call, and most of the conversation was about how blurry that line becomes over time. One guy with elementary school aged daughters was calling from his back porch, in the cold and dark, with the lights off, just to have some peace.

Thank you for your comment. I feel the same way about food and I'm rather shocked at the response you get.

And I didn't eat fast food as a kid myself, and that didn't make it attractive to me. Although we went to McDonalds every wednesday after going to the library to get a fresh orange juice.

> It seems to me people who are loved and cared for as children are raised and generally become well-adjusted and happy individuals.

Is there evidence that people who are tolerated and fed/clothed but not super-loved or super cared-for as children have worse outcomes as adults (adjusting for socio-economic class)?

Yes.

Could you please link to it?

Here’s one from about 3 seconds of Googling:

The importance of touch in development (2010)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2865952/

It’s not human exclusive, and it’s woven into our chemical makeup.

“In rats, the amount of maternal licking received as a pup has a profound impact on the behaviour and physiology of the adult.”

Feel free to continue the search to answer your own question.

Can't agree more. BBC just tends to play the "self-critical Western" role a bit too much.

Who would you prefer to be critical of Western culture, rather than a Western news organization? Or do you feel that criticism isn't warranted?

You sound very red-pilled

I'm in the U.S.

I personally know a non-trivial number of women who have gone through absolutely intense (real, diagnosed) anxiety and depression because of having to feed formula to their child instead of breast milk. If you ever get to peek into these "mommy groups" on social media or in person, you can see how much shaming goes on in there. And the breast milk one is one of the biggest issues people get shamed for. Sometimes it's passive aggressive and indirect, and sometimes it's quite direct. They trot out headlines from questionable studies from totally different living environments in the world that indicate some 3 IQ point increase in kids that were breastfed and then they act like it's proof that formula feeding is child abuse.

The guilt and shame people feel over these things is very harmful.

I have some advice I'd like to spread and share. It applies to myself as well and I've been trying very hard to practice it. It is this:

If you are not a scientist who has actually conducted one of these studies; if you are not intimately familiar with the methodologies and the math techniques used in the analysis; if you've only ever read the headline and maybe an abstract of a study- then please don't give advice to anyone on the topic. Please don't spread "information" that X is better than Y.

Forcing formula is not abuse but neglect, unless done due to medical conditions. Don't fight evolution, formula is harder to digest. Why are you peddling pseudo science over here.

This is exactly the attitude the above poster is complaining against. Breast feeding is probably better than formula in a few small ways, but treating formula use as “neglect” creates a harmful burden on new - and already stressed - mothers.

If breast feeding is difficult, feed your child formula. They will turn out just fine.

Facts are not attitude. I am not talking to mothers, as not my business. However peddling pseudo science should be opposed.

I agree. The claim the formula feeding is neglect is not supported by the science. So please don’t spread that pseudoscience opinion.

Formula feeding is associated with adverse health outcomes for both mothers and infants, ranging from infectious morbidity to chronic disease. Given the compelling evidence for differences in health outcomes, breastfeeding should be acknowledged as the biologic norm for infant feeding. Physician counseling, office, and hospital practices should be aligned to ensure that the breastfeeding mother-infant dyad has the best chance for a long, successful breastfeeding experience.

Source - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2812877/

Well good advice in general, even though the way you phrase your comment makes it look like you think breast feeding is no better than the formulas.

I am a medical student and we have been told at uni from professors (paediatricians) that breast feeding _is_ better than formulas I think with regards to asthma or some other allergic stuff. There are reasons that mothers should not or cannot breastfeed and it's not the end of the world, but in general I believe they should.

And really the weight of proof rests on the baby formulas to prove that they're OK. Even common sense suggests breast feeding is better, it's been the way people have been growing up for millenia all around the world.

“It’s been the way people have been growing up for millennia all around the world.”

I don’t think this is a very convincing argument. There are many, many things that have been around for millennia that just aren’t that great. We’ve been living without vaccines, antibiotics, antiseptics, antihelminthics, poor nutrition, extremely high rates of childhood mortality, and high rates of death by childbirth for millennia. That doesn’t mean that state of being or way of doing things is inherently good

No, but the onus is on the new thing to prove to it is undeniably better. Before we had antibiotics there was a mountain of dubious products that could cure all manner of illnesses that did nothing.

Secondly, I’m also dubious of the claims of formula feeding as it hasn’t been conclusively shown to be better, but yet Nestle has spent millions in marketing getting much of third world hooked on formula to their own detriment.

I think they're saying that if you don't breast feed (and it's not always a choice, some women's milk doesn't come in, some babies have a really hard time latching, sometimes they take so long to latch that even if milk would have been there it no longer is...etc) - if you don't breast feed that mother's should not feel guilt or feel like failed parents.

I do not claim that breast feeding is no better than formula. However, I am currently convinced that there is not yet sufficient evidence that breast feeding a child will likely lead to significantly better long-term outcomes than feeding formula.

I'm a scientist. Not a medical scientist, but a hard science non-the-less. MDs are not (usually) scientists. They go off of what they believe the scientists are saying. But it's a game of telephone and you're now the fourth in the game (data -> researcher -> MD that is your teacher -> you).

The studies I've seen (and I'm NOT an expert in the field or in the techniques used for these kinds of longitudinal, observational, social studies), mostly show very minor differences in long term outcomes. Honestly, the long term difference is probably much smaller than many other lifestyle choices you could make.

Some sibling studies apparently have shown no significant difference in outcomes. Some try to control for socioeconomic status (how many people ever ask how they control for these things?) or various other factors, but these controls are not perfect. Perhaps most women want to breast feed, but some subset have underlying health conditions tied to not producing milk. Maybe that same underlying condition is present in their children, which causes worse outcomes and NOT the lack of breast milk per se. None of these studies can even account for stuff like that because most of them are self-reports and because underlying health conditions may never even be detected.

It's very hard to do good science on humans.

> And really the weight of proof rests on the baby formulas to prove that they're OK.

I agree with that. I do think the proof is there, though. We've had at least of couple of generations of people who have grown up on formula and the studies that compare outcomes never show that formula fed babies grow into significantly worse-off adults.

> Even common sense suggests breast feeding is better, it's been the way people have been growing up for millenia all around the world.

One should never ever appeal to common sense when discussing something about science. Surely you remember that in Aristotle's time, even he considered it to be basically common sense that heavier objects would fall to Earth faster than light objects, right? Human brains are stupid. Common sense means nothing. It might mean less than nothing.

And the sentiment of your statement is also debunked by a single contradictory example. There are many cases in which science/technology has done better for us than nature. Our own immune systems fall flat when presented with many illnesses until we introduce vaccines and medicine. It's entirely conceivable for use to create something that is even better for our bodies than nature has to offer. Nature, after all, is guided only by the selective pressure for us to barely make it to be old enough to procreate. That's all nature has optimized us for, at the end of the day.

Sure, I think we can all acknowledge that medically speaking, breastfeeding is ideal. But if it’s not feasible, mothers shouldn’t feel guilty about it. There are all sorts of ways you can provide for your child.

> If you are not a scientist who has actually conducted one of these studies; if you are not intimately familiar with the methodologies and the math techniques used in the analysis; if you've only ever read the headline and maybe an abstract of a study- then please don't give advice to anyone on the topic. Please don't spread "information" that X is better than Y.

I'd say this advice doesn't really go far enough. I'm not a scientist but I have read a number of these studies and the biggest takeaway is that in many cases effect sizes are really low and it's hard to say whether these effects are real or the result of some hidden uncontrolled variable. This applies, at a minimum, to breastfeeding v. formula, and also to alcohol consumption during pregnancy. Back to sleep has real and significant effects. Screen time's harm is severely overhyped given the quality of the evidence we have available, but too much sugar is definitely bad for you.

My advice to new parents is basically that in most cases we don't have good evidence for one thing being much better than another. As far as food, baby should have formula or breast milk, but which one doesn't matter all that much. As far as sleeping, the sleep area should be firm and free of blankets, but as far as I'm concerned the evidence about where baby should sleep is minimal. I'm not aware of any strong evidence that sleep training has an effect other than teaching the baby to sleep.

One other commonality I see in a lot of this stuff is there is zero consideration for the costs that the various treatments impose on parents, and particularly on the mother. If breastfeeding gives junior a 0.5% increase in IQ, is that worth a year of suffering and untold hours spent feeding? That's a value judgment, for sure, but it seems to be left out of the equation entirely when people are giving advice to mothers.

> is that worth a year of suffering and untold hours spent feeding

Suffering? Sure NOT breastfeeding is very inconvenient, not least at night. And few things are more intimate and loving than the act of breastfeeding. Robbing the child or mother of that is horrible.

Have you breastfed before? I'm married to someone who has, and suffering is an apt description of the experience, for at least a large fraction of the time. Moderate discomfort for the rest. The days when we started weening the kids are, by my wife's report, some of the best days she's ever had, because of how bad the days before were.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6400324/#:~:tex....

"Over 90% of women experience pain during breastfeeding initiation and lack strategies to self-manage breast and nipple pain."

My children, like most middle-class children in Sweden, are breastfed. So I guess I'm about as qualified as you to talk about it.

The only difference is that your position is in contravention of the evidence, whereas mine is backed by it. Breastfeeding pain is something the XXX vast majority XXX (ed: another commenter pointed out that only about 30% of women experience ongoing pain during breastfeeding -- so good for those who don't, but this is still a significant problem for many many women) of breastfeeding women experience. Some women are able to figure out strategies to mitigate it, but for some women the experience remains painful until weening.

What evidence would that be?

The intro to the study I cited above, as well as literally any other research you might care to look up on the subject. The phenomenon of breastfeeding pain is well documented. Feel free to cite a study showing breastfeeding pain is rare if you disagree.

From the study:

“ Although 90% of women report acute breast and nipple pain during the first week of breastfeeding initiation”

“ 30% of women who continue to breastfeed at 2 weeks after birth report persistent breast and nipple pain”

That’s certainly quite different from the suggestion that it’s a year of suffering in the normal case.

Breast feed if you want to, and quit when you want, without worrying about what other people think.

We took a few weeks with child one for mother’s nipples to handle the pain. The biggest issue was psychological for the first 2ish weeks, as we’d been told by some midwives that it will not hurt if you’re latching correctly. Visiting a breastfeeding specialist (for free) at 2ish weeks who told us sometimes the pain is unavoidable but normally goes in 4 to 8 weeks made a huge difference. Weaned completely at 9 months.

With child number 2, basically no pain. Weaned completely at 2 years. Mother is very glad she breastfed both, and was ready to stop when the children were.

Thats fair. I did not mean to misrepresent the numbers but plainly I did. A significant fraction of women have continuing pain, but not the majority.

My wife had a tremendous amount of pain while breastfeeding, to the point that it was harming her relationship with our children. Watching her suffer through that was emotionally painful for me as well. Having been through that experience and talked to other moms about it we know that she is not alone in her experience.

I agree with everything you said. Especially with acknowledging that breastfeeding, in particular, has costs associated with it. Something that isn't discussed much is that formula/bottle feeding gives the opportunity for dad to bond with the baby over feeding as well as allowing to divide the sleep deprivation more equitably between both parents.

This was 100% my favorite thing about weaning. It gave me more time with the boys and a chance to demonstrate my commitment to the effort to their mother. And she started getting a lot more sleep, which improved general happiness in the house, and everything that goes along with that.

> They trot out headlines from questionable studies from totally different living environments in the world that indicate some 3 IQ point increase in kids that were breastfed and then they act like it's proof that formula feeding is child abuse.

Breastfeeding, apart from being cheap, convenient and natural, has been shown to have numerous benefits, not just to intelligence but overall health, even for the mother. There is such an abundance of evidence for this that it's just silly to even question, but you can always research it for yourself.

Regarding women feeling anxious. Since refraining from breastfeeding is a significant risk factor, similar to not properly medicating, I think it's reasonable to view it in the same light. I.e. if you refrain from breastfeeding without a very good reason, you are increasing health risks for your child.

Some interesting statistics can be found here for example. Formula-fed children have about twice the risk of vomiting or diarrhea during their first year. Breastfeeding is about as efficient as antibiotics in preventing ear infections. Etc.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2998971/

General references:

https://www.who.int/health-topics/breastfeeding#tab=tab_1

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4781366/

Almost every study on breastfeeding will have a disclaimer like the one in this meta-analysis (or ought to if it doesn't).

"Because almost all the data in this review were gathered from observational studies, one should not infer causality based on these findings. Also, there is a wide range of quality of the body of evidence across different health outcomes."

I don't understand why the issue of breastfeeding in particular seems to cause people to entirely forget that correlation usually doesn't indicate causation.

https://www.gwern.net/Causality

Also "Formula-fed children have about twice the risk of vomiting or diarrhea during their first year."

Yes, that's bad. But it's not that bad. Try your best at breastfeeding, and if it doesn't work out, so be it. Better to focus your energy in being a good parent in other ways that you can excel at than dwelling on what isn't working for you.

Good advice, as far as I'm concerned. The decision to skip breastfeeding is irreversible if you stop producing milk, whereas you can always switch to formula. So it makes sense to try breastfeeding first and see if it works for you.

Make sure you get help. Breastfeeding isn't obviously easy, even though it seems like it should be. There are a lot of tricks need to get the baby to take it.

Don't give up easily. There is a reason formula samples are free in the early days, it doesn't take too many "just this once since it is on hand" events and mom is unable to produce any milk. Then you discover that formula is not cheap when it is too late.

That said, bottles are only slightly worse if at all. So if you need to use it, do so.

Yes, my wife had so many problems in the beginning. The newborn had to stay in the hospital for a week to treat an infection and there it was bottle fed. The milk wasn't going so the breasts needed massaging to clear the ducts and get it started. Then the baby wouldn't latch properly, she was also weak and sleepy from jaundice. We had to buy those little silicone nipple shields and that helped. It was a lot of struggle and my wife almost gave up on several occasions. But now after 11 months she's still breastfeeding and hasn't even used her breast pump or given formula ever. There is a friend of hers who pretty much gave up immediately and started using formula. It seems to be a trend, since we always get praised by our pediatrician and other doctors for continuing breastfeeding.

That was more an example of the SIZE of some of these correlations, rather than how bad diarrhea is. The effect is huge. Breastfeeding is more effective than a lot of medicines.

The same is of course true for almost any long-term factor, yet most people would accept that e.g. getting an education boosts your earnings even without a randomized double blind study.

When there is a strong prior reason to believe one thing is better, we don't need too many studies to tell us it is so. If, a-posteriori, we saw that you couldn't tell too much difference between college graduates and not by looking at their income, or if you couldn't guess whether someone was EBF as a baby by their health status, you might start wondering if the effect sizes are really so large, despite your prior beliefs.

Its very difficult to control for all factors when comparing breast-fed to bottle-fed babies. In 2014, a study [0] was published at Ohio State that compared babies over a long period. When looking at only sibling-pairs (babies in the same family where one was breastfed and one was bottle-fed), the differences in outcome disappeared.

Quote from the link:

"As expected, the analyses of the samples of adults and their children across families suggested that breast-feeding resulted in better outcomes than bottle-feeding in a number of measures: BMI, hyperactivity, math skills, reading recognition, vocabulary word identification, digit recollection, scholastic competence and obesity.

When the sample was restricted to siblings who were differently fed within the same families, however, scores reflecting breast-feeding’s positive effects on 10 of the 11 indicators of child health and well-being were closer to zero and not statistically significant – meaning any differences could have occurred by chance alone.

The outlying outcome in this study was asthma; in all samples, children who were breast-fed were at higher risk for asthma, which could relate to data generated by self-reports instead of actual diagnoses."

[0]: https://news.osu.edu/breast-feeding-benefits-appear-to-be-ov...

As someone who has fostered and adopted children with trauma backgrounds (including abuse and neglect), it's doubly frustrating to see parents equating things like sleep training and formula feeding with abuse and neglect.

When you have a kid that was intentionally burned as a toddler by a grandmother as punishment for crying, and another that was left strapped to a car seat with a box of cereal so his mother could go on a meth-binge, it's frustrating to see upper-middle-class mother's calling each other abusive or neglectful for allowing increased screen time during quarantine.

When my wife and I went to pre-baby classes they'd often use the phrase "Fed is best" and I thought it was strange because it sounded like something that could have rhymed and was a missed opportunity. Then I was informed that the phrase used to be "Breast is best" but, like you're saying, women who could not breast feed for whatever reason were subjected to this level of guilt and ridicule so much so that now they've dropped that phrase.

They'd say like "Sure, breast feed if you can but if you can't that is totally a-ok too. Get some formula, get some skin to skin time. Your baby will be fine". I liked how much effort the classes were putting in to not pressure people to breast feed when it wasn't always an option.

There's no need to feel, as a parent, that you've failed your child if you're not breast feeding.

That is very positive and reassuring to hear. When my then-wife and I had our son, it was still very strong "breast is best" messaging. It really has made a lot of parents feel awful amounts of guilt and shame.

Personally, until we have very strong evidence that breast milk is significantly better for the baby, I think the messaging shouldn't even be "breast feed if you can"- it should be "breast feed if you want". Some women have a terrible experience breast feeding even though the technically "can" produce the milk. It can be physically quite uncomfortable, it keeps dad from being able to bond as well, the baby might not be good at "latching", etc.

Do you have a good article backing this -

> I think the messaging shouldn't even be "breast feed if you can"- it should be "breast feed if you want".

Preferably a solid journal article, or an analytical news article. The top ones on Google are just emotive.

Nutrition from womb to 2 years is vital, it's probably the most important deal-able issue in the world today. I'll assume that advice is only for HN users who have clean water and access to good baby formula and the IQ's and education to do it properly.

I don't see why formula is not as good as, if not better than breast. But evidence is breast is best as far as I can see.

Skin-to-skin is totally BS nonsense. It was found to be beneficial for premature infants who need help regulating body temperature in low resource settings (where incubators are not available). So naturally, people started recommending it for term infants who don't need help regulating body temperature and it's risks completely ignored!

https://www.skepticalob.com/2019/04/fisher-price-rock-n-play...

https://www.skepticalob.com/2016/01/overselling-the-benefits...

Skin-to-skin is also for pair bonding. To toss it out as just for body temperature is too hasty.

> BS nonsense

This sounds like the conclusion of someone who does not have kids. You're going to wear a shirt all the time? What does this even mean to avoid skin to skin contact?

It looks like your links are talking about the first few hours or days while still in the hospital. I'm talking about skin to skin over the next many months.

Breast feeding can be difficult for many reasons. In traditional societies people with experience would take the time to coach a new mother. Sometimes a baby is slow to get the hang of it and will actually lose weight for a while before figuring it out. Allowing your newborn child to lose weight goes against mothering instincts, and without a supporting coach is really hard to accept. And if you "cheat" via bottle, the child will get spoiled and only take the bottle. Breast infections and soreness are also common. Coaching helps here also.

A compromise is to purchase human breast milk, perhaps mix it 50/50 with formula if your budget is tight. Still, you are often viewed as a failure for doing such.

The idea that it's somehow better to have your newborn baby be denied nutrition for their first days of life is a very dangerous one in my opinion.

There have been several cases in the U.S., even in recent years, of children becoming very sick and/or permanently disabled because of mothers waiting too long to give up on breast feeding.

And, honestly, infant mortality is a real thing. People talk about breast feeding at all costs because that's what humans did before formula and "it worked out just fine". It only worked out just fine for the children that survived...

There's a right balance, and expert coaches know what that balancing point is.

Another thing I forgot to mention is that in "ancient" societies, other mothers with experience would often help feed a new baby themselves until the new mother got up to speed.

Fully agree. Parenting gets a lot easier as soon as you accept that you don't have any clue what you are doing. The child must be loved, fed, washed, and dressed. Everything else is improvisation.

E: I remember sitting in antenatal class and mindful, well-educated parents asking stuff like the interval they should set their alarm clock to, so they know when to "correctly" feed their child. They read somewhere that a newborn needs milk every 1,5 hours and took that literally.

> dressed

You can probably even leave this one out!

As soon as they turn 2, getting them dressed does indeed require extensive improvisation :)

Long before that. I have to struggle with my 10 months old at times. She wants to crawl away and play with something (preferably something dangerous - it is amazing how easy it is for a plastic bag to end up in reach even when you are careful)

> neglect and abuse

There's a lot of hidden complexity and subjectivity in those two words.

Sometimes cultural differences can be self-reinforcing. Studies on corporal punishment and childhood trauma have shown that trauma increases when it's perceived as unusual. If a kid is beaten for disobedience and none of their peers are, it's more likely to cause lasting trauma. In societies where beatings are commonplace, kids are much more likely to adjust and grow up fine.

Definitely something that my wife and I struggle with. She's Vietnamese British, I'm Vietnamese American ; both of us current living in the U.S. Despite what our training classes recommend, we're co-sleeping with our 17 month year old daughter and it feels more intuitive.

So - if you don't mind the question, sorry for asking if you do - how/when you have sex?

Not the person you asked but I’ve co-slept three times and have some insights.

My answer would be that you do it while the baby sleeps, and you do it less. Otherwise on the odd occasion you’re away from the baby. It’s a drag. Though in my experience I was always so tired, it was generally a lower priority.

Others might have had a different experience though.

> Though in my experience I was always so tired, it was generally a lower priority.

This. As new parents, we really have to make it a priority otherwise, in general, we're just constantly exhausted. Raising kids does really require a village.

This shouldn’t be downvoted. Indeed, this is something our physician brought up with us as a reason not to let your child join you.

The theory goes that children are programmed by nature to prevent more offspring. A sort of incentive here.

Looking online there are mixed reviews of whether co sleeping hurt the adult relationship.

Well, my half-sister is six months older and my sister two months and two weeks younger...

Anytime and anywhere you have a chance to. Be spontaneous and creative. You don't need a bed to have sex in anyways.

https://www.amazon.com/portal-migration/bestsellers/baby-pro...

On the couch usually.

Secondary sleep space for the baby (we had a crib mattress on the floor in the living room for naps anyway) or secondary sex space for the parents. A futon in another room does double-duty when the kid is old enough to nap there safely.

Middle-of-the-afternoon is a good time. Older kids can be occupied with Legos while the baby naps and the parents sneak off.

Isn't that sort of an old joke? Before you have kids, put a jelly bean in a jar every time you have sex. After you have kids, take a jelly bean out of the jar every time. At the end of your life you'll still have jelly beans left...

Obviously it varies a lot, and that is just a joke, but man it has been very true for me. My wife had a poor experience growing up, walking in on her mother having sex (they lived in a tiny apartment, so most of the space was shared), and so she has no interest in sex at all if there are children in the house. Anywhere. And it's a 3000sf house, not a tiny apartment.

Doesn't help that the kids (8 & 10) routinely choose to sleep in our room rather than their own (they do not sleep in our bed, however, we nixed that after they were a few years old because it was too disruptive to my sleep).

Jokes about having less sex after marriage and practically none after kids wouldn't be so universal if they weren't relatable.

You don't seem very happy about the situation, do you even have a say in your home?

My wife and I co-sleep with my two boys, 1 and 3.

Our sex life has probably never been better in either frequency or quality.

We typically do it in the living room on the couch in the morning before they get up, or same location during their naps, or in my work-from-home office also during naps. Or where-ever we want when we have a baby sitter, although with the pandemic that's pretty rare.

I'd say about 75%-80% of our sexual activity is essentially scheduled at least 4-6 hours in advance, sometimes more. This works great for all involved. Occasionally if we miss our window because one of them wakes up early, we just reschedule to the next soonest window. We'll occasionally even stay up late after we put the boys down to makeup a missed session.

I also think breaking the habit of only having sex in our bed at a particular time when one or the other kind of vaguely expects it is a big contributor to the improvement in our sex life.

Instead we have explicit communication about when and where we're going to have sex. There's still some room to be spontaneous, but it's very limited with kids.

Here in Canada it’s sometimes discouraged and criticized to co-sleep, too. I was born here and had never even heard of co-sleeping until I was in my mid twenties. I found it pretty intuitive too, but got some flack from people over it.

After 3 kids I don’t really care about the criticisms anymore. They stop co-sleeping when they’re ready, and it was as simple as that. I mostly enjoyed it. Sometimes you miss having a bed to yourself though, haha.

> After 3 kids I don’t really care about the criticisms anymore

Even after having one kid, I too no longer care about the criticisms. We're all just trying to survive.

> but got some flack from people

How do they even know you're co-sleeping in the first place?

People are often curious about kids and child raising choices (or at least that has been our experience with our first). It comes up when talking about kids, when people are visiting our home, babysitting, etc.

The person probably shared private parenting habits and received such criticism..

Of course I shared private parenting habits - parents often discuss various approaches to problems or daily life. I didn't share without being prompted, though. I keep most private things to myself in person.

If sleeping came up and I mentioned co-sleeping, people were often critical. They think it's bad for the kid, dangerous, unnecessary, what have you.

I don't mind the criticism; I think it's helpful to know how people feel and reflect on my own decisions. People are remarkably harsh with their criticisms when it comes to parenting sometimes, but I think this reflects how uncertain, even insecure and anxious people feel about the decisions we need to make as parents. It's fine.

Yes, I’m not in any way judging or criticizing your decision to share your parenting habits, specially after being prompted. What I dislike sometimes is others trying to control at all times how parents should grow a kid. This will ultimately be passed over to kids, which may then propagate this behavior. Life, I guess.

Other parents usually ask questions on what how you are doing, what you are doing, etc, and unless you flat out refuse to answer the questions (which seems rude) or outright lie, then they will eventually learn that your kids are sleeping in your bed.

You definetly learn a lot by having kids. The first kid, you measure water temp, the second kid you just put your finger in. The third one, just the kid. Slightly exagerating, but by the second kid you don't have to relly as much any more on outside advice.

Kid 4 you just put in minimum effort because you after three sons/daughters you were trying to get the other but got more of the same.

If kid 4 does the best of the bunch then you know your parenting probably wasn't that great.

The advice against co-sleeping is a typical simplification of advice, where nuance is removed and all parents should receive the same, simple advice.

Peter Blair, based at the University of Bristol, has done some great work studying deaths caused by co-sleeping and found some very important factors, mainly the health of the child, any modifiers of the parent's sleep and the sleeping position. For example, drug use by the parents (including alcohol, cigarettes, over the counter & prescription medicine), making them sleep heavier. Also falling asleep on the sofa or a pillow near the child.

So much parenting advice is one-size-fits-none and it takes quite a bit of effort to work out the reality. Luckily, with a baby in arms there's often a lot of time available for reading the many opinions out there. ;)

"... we're co-sleeping with our 17 month year old daughter and it feels more intuitive."

Good for you. Not only should you do what works and is healthy for your own family but the first two years of your first child is really a magical time. Why not optimize for peace and tranquility ?

I will also add that in addition to the western compulsion to kick kids out of the bed there is also a western compulsion that married partners should be sleeping together every night or something is wrong with their marriage. I strongly advise all parents to at least be open minded to the idea that sleeping in different rooms could dramatically improve their sleeping and parenting logistics.

YMMV.

>A 2016 review that looked at research on children sharing not just a room but a bed with one or more of their parents found a high prevalence in many Asian countries:

Let me guess: there is a high correlation between sharing your room and poverty levels?

>there is a high correlation between sharing your room and poverty levels?

might be one variable. Another could be "average size of a typical home in sqm" and "population density of city where family resides"

30 percent of British children are living in poverty. https://cpag.org.uk/child-poverty/child-poverty-facts-and-fi...

I don't think poverty in britain or india mean the same thing.

Of course, poverty in Britain is something the Tories actually do want, whereas in India I'm sure every major party is fighting against poverty.

please leave your personal partisan politics at the door.

And some of those children, especially the poorest, will share beds with a parent.

See eg this from Buttle: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-45017513

I think you'd find some evidence for historical poverty being one factor of several in cultural practices of bed sharing. Japan would be a notable exception (plenty of co-sleeping, unremarkable poverty rate).

I also don't think it has become much less common in communities where poverty levels have fallen. Anecdotally, my SO is part of a community originally displaced from India and now settled all over the world, where members have disproportionately become very wealthy. Bed sharing is absolutely the norm in those households, much to my distress when we visit her family!

Not sure what you mean by Japan being an exception? Bed-sharing remains very much the default there.

I was trying to say that this is common in Japan, where poverty is almost certainly not the major factor. A counter to the parent comment's assertion. Should have been clearer.

I don't understand needing a room for yourself before puberty strikes. Even then, sharing the room with a same-gender sibling doesn't sound too bad. It's funny because these same people go to college and share their dorm room for the 1st 2 years of university, when someone needs the most amount of privacy.

> correlation between sharing your room and poverty levels

In India, unless you are super rich, having a room to yourself is pretty rare. This becomes especially true because the richest people want to stay in the biggest cities, where the ratio of housing/income outpaces places like SF and NYC.

The priority for bedrooms usually goes as follows:

    Parents -> Grand parents -> Guests -> Kids/Servants

Only-childs in a wealthy-ish nuclear family are the only ones who get a room all to 1 person.

> The priority for bedrooms usually goes as follows:

    Parents -> Grand parents -> Guests -> Kids/Servants

I've only ever seen this order once, but I would agree that this is pretty much how most Indian households are setup. My SO's grandparents lived with their daughter & her family (6 in total) in a tiny one bedroom situation, and while I wasn't privy with their sleeping arrangements, I think the grandparents slept on the floor in the hall. It wouldn't surprise me if the female members of the household slept in one room while the men slept in the other. Their house was too small for multiple beds, so they usually rolled out mats when it was time to sleep. I think the elderly grandfather had a cot.

Growing up the youngest of three siblings in a 3 bedroom home, I usually slept on the sofa in the living room. I was supposed to share a room with my teenage brother, but he wouldn't tolerate me to be in the same room.

Genuine question: the bedroom is traditionally (where I come from, Western Europe) also a common place for couples to have sex. In addition, many people presumably would prefer not to walk in on their parents, or have sex in front of their children. So how does this work in cultures where it's common for children not to have their own rooms until puberty starts (so 10 to 13 years?)? Do people get more adventurous about when and where they do it, or is there less of a taboo on getting it on in front of the kids, or, since you mention India, are those delicious spices used to mask the taste of the sleeping pills everybody is feeding their children?

I wonder about this myself. I have no clue when my parents had sex and our house was one of the bigger ones (2 bedroom vs 1 bed room). I was ALWAYS in the bedroom, so no way I could've missed it when awake.

Indians frequently send their kids over to an aunt/uncle's place once every month or so....so maybe then ? Another common solution is to move your kid to the living room for sleeping.

I slept with my parents until my brother was born, and never spent a night away from them before this. So...I guess they did it while I was in the room. X|

> delicious spices used to mask the taste of the sleeping pills everybody is feeding their children

The most plausible theory I have heard so far. Indian food IS sleep-inducing and I sleep like a rock, so I won't be one to disagree there.

The simple truth is that dealing with young babies is way easier when they're in the same bed. When they cry, you can comfort them immediately, if you need to breastfeed, it takes about 5 seconds to get started. And they sell these nifty little divider things if you're paranoid about rolling over and crushing them, although as the article says this only appears to be a problem in practice if the parents are morbidly obese and/or on drugs/alcohol.

> this only appears to be a problem in practice if the parents are morbidly obese and/or on drugs/alcohol.

Or if you have a baby who fusses but doesn't actually need anything.

"Parents in <X> are better parents than you" is a real crowd pleaser when it comes to a chance to explain why your <personal pet peeve about modern parenting> has just been Validated by Science.

Someone once said that there is no more a right way to 'parent' than there is a right way to 'spouse' or 'child'. Everyone is different, every relationship is different. When I give advice to new parents, I tell them exactly that. Their relationship with their kid is going to be specific to them and their kid, and don't feel pressured to do things the 'right' way by an external source.

IMO that is excellent advice.

But we should continue to keep the threes a secret from potential parents, or the birth rate may go down even more precipitously.

I highly recommend the book Cribsheet on this topic (https://www.amazon.com/Cribsheet-Data-Driven-Relaxed-Parenti...). The author is an economist at Brown and applies research techniques to determine where there are causal relationships between parental behavior and child outcomes.

For example, she looks into the research behind breastfeeding vs formula – a very hot topic where I already see the pitchforks coming out in this thread. Her conclusion if I'm recalling correctly is that there are only relatively minor direct benefits to breast milk over formula. But there are significant benefits to being the type of parent that is intense + dedicated enough to breast feed despite how unpleasant many mothers find it to be, and that dedication explains why studies turn up larger differences in outcomes between breastfed vs formula fed babies (it's just correlation vs causation).

> For her part, Kuroda co-slept with her four children as a way to adapt to being away from them during the day. "I'm working full time and if I separate the whole night, it's really minimal time for the baby. We can intensely communicate, even in the nighttime. It’s real communication and time together."

IMO the rise in attachment parenting methods stems from the high rate of mothers working full-time outside the home, feeling guilty about being away from their children all day and "missing out" on developmental milestones, or feeling guilty about a minimum wage daycare worker spending more waking hours with their children than they do, and trying to 'make up' for this lost time with co-sleeping and other attachment methods.

I view this parenting style as a sort of pathological paternalism, it's presented as being in the child's best interest, when in reality it's a psychological need of (usually) the mother. Babies need lots and lots of high-quality, restful sleep, and the families that seem to be dealing with serious sleep deprivation issues for both parent and baby are usually in the attachment camp.

We did co-sleeping with our kids. The motivation was our own sleep. Mom could feed baby with near-zero fuss. We moved away from it as they started sleeping through the night.

Western = Anglophone? I suspect cultural norms are quite different in Italy, Greece, Spain and other countries.

These cultural norms might be less widespread in Italy, Greece, Spain, but I would say they're closer to being norms in those countries than outside of Europe. Especially with younger parents. They're certainly norms in most of the non-anglophone EU.

That said, I guess a lot of that could potentially be connected to outsized anglophone/US influence in developed countries.

Do you have a lot of experience with multiple EU countries?[1] Or are you just using “outsized influence” to extrapolate that non-English speaking countries can be neatly categorized as being a homogeneous contrast to English-speaking countries?

[1] The only anglophone EU country is Ireland.

> Do you have a lot of experience with multiple EU countries?

Yes.

> The only anglophone EU country is Ireland.

Technically, though I would still tend to think of the UK here too given the recent-ness of its membership.

From the perspective of the Lindy principle it is weird.

I have an eighteen-month old child and have been reading a lot about child rearing since my wife got pregnant.

It’s taboo to say this, and I’m sorry if this offends anyone, but I suspect that a lack of adult attention in the first three years of life is a principal factor in the rising autism rates we’re seeing in modern economies. This would explain why autism seems to “cluster” in upper class homes, where the parents work nonstop.

It turns out this hypothesis was put forth by Kanner in the 50’s and is as old as autism itself, but it was rejected for political reasons and it is not refuted by the science.

I first heard this hypothesis from the lectures of Gabor Maté, and it makes a lot of sense to me. If you look at what autism treatment actually is, it’s all just play therapy where you give a child attention and teach them that if they bid for an adult’s attention they will respond empathetically. This treatment only makes sense if they didn’t already learn to do this as an infant.

I suspect that a lack of adult attention in the first three years of life is a principal factor in the rising autism rates we’re seeing in modern economies. This would explain why autism seems to “cluster” in upper class homes, where the parents work nonstop.

Upper class parents don't necessarily need to work non stop, and when they do, they can afford to have an adult give their kids attention. To make this claim, you have to show that upper class parents neither give their kids attention nor hire a nanny/au pair/have a grandparent looking after their kids.

Checkout this article, "Childhood autism spikes in geek heartlands": https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20589-childhood-autis...

There's a correlation between parents who are both "systemizers" and their child having autism.

I've also heard the theory that Austism is basically what we've been genetically selecting for over the last 100 years or so - the world wants brainless consumers - what is better than someone with sensory disorders, who can be primed to get up and buy with a simple prick?

>the world wants brainless consumers - what is better than someone with sensory disorders, who can be primed to get up and buy with a simple prick?

That's a pretty broad and inaccurate generalization of autism spectrum disorders. If anything I think people on the spectrum are far less likely to be convinced to buy products through advertisement. Autism is a sort of innate stubbornness.

> the world wants brainless consumers

We don't have to select for that, the vast majority of people are already brainless consumers. And most of them think they are not.

> On the contrary, Kanner held tightly to his original proposal that autism was an innate condition, which was widely understood to mean it had a genetic basis. His behavioral observations of parents contributed to a breakthrough concept that is wholly consistent with genes being a key part of the autism story. Instead of parenting causing autism, Kanner’s idea — which has since been validated — was that autism (and its genetic roots) underlies some of the behavior in a subset of parents.

[1] https://www.spectrumnews.org/opinion/viewpoint/correcting-th...

Fascinating how classic research from the 40s has been turned on its head completely.

Would be interesting to see parent's response.

I can think of some rather obvious reasons why Kanner would reframe his position publicly. It's just way too taboo.

Kanner said that his believed autism had a genetic basis. I think it's a cop-out, as I don't think it makes any sense to blame genetics for the sudden appearance and dramatic rise of autism (and other childhood disorders) over the timespan of a few decades, even if genetics may certainly play a role in our susceptibility to these disorders.

In any case, this is merely my suspicion. I'm not a researcher on this subject.

The reason why I wrote that comment is because the stakes are high and the evidence is suggestive enough that this merits more of a discussion.

Every parent has to decide how much attention their child gets. How many parents would do things differently if they knew the impact it could have? Reading the research definitely opened my eyes and changed my opinion on how to raise our child.

From the article and his papers it seems he never changed his opinion, but that he was being misrepresented 180 degrees, and that you, in good faith, believed that was his position.

I also don't see evidence he claimed it is only genetic reasons.

What he hypothesised (supported by current scientific understanding according to [1]) was that both autism and parenting behaviours have a common cause (genetics) making it a prime example for correlation does not imply causation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism

I won't quibble. The larger point is that there are potentially devastating consequences if a child fails to attach to a loving and attentive adult, and that this is not adequately discussed or appreciated in our society.

This is a huge tail risk that every parent should understand. If you are a parent or ever become one, you have the information to look into it and come to your own conclusions.

quote: He wrote that, overall, the parents seemed perfectionistic and preoccupied with abstractions, rather than showing a genuine interest in people.

I find this sentence interesting in comparison to the phrase "dumb people talk about people, average people talk about things, smart people talk about ideas" that I've seen in various forms on the internet.

Hot take: People are over-optimizing for grand impact, while neglecting the more profound impact on the local level. Most people will not be senators, but I think many people, with some work, can run for office as an alderman, mayor, or county representative.

I'm a layman, but I have a theory it's related to noise levels in modern environments (especially always-on TVs). Curious what your thoughts are, since you seem to be somewhat familiar with the literature.

A simpler hypothesis is that "upper class people" are getting married later and having kids later. Higher parental age is associated with autism (among many other things).

I also saw some research suggesting that engineers are more likely to have Autistic kids. The increased social mobility of women has undoubtedly lead to more "power couples" (in the modern sense), I wonder if perhaps there is some effect that people with slight Autism risk factors are more likely to mate with each other these days?

Totally spit-balling, but I guess the larger point is there are a lot of possible explanations for what OP describes (if it's even true, diagnosis may just be more likely in those families)

> This would explain why autism seems to “cluster” in upper class homes, where the parents work nonstop.

The diagnosis of any mental health condition has causal factors outside of the presence and severity of the underlying condition. Specifically, there needs to be enough stress/maladaptation that diagnosis is sought in the first place, sufficient resources and access to care to seek diagnosis, and a support and care system that is otherwise unable to handle the patient.

It's not as simple as "has disease" => "get diagnosis". Bill Gross, the "Bond King", was too busy running mutual funds to get an autism spectrum diagnosis until a psychologist mentioned Asperger's in a dinner party in his seventies, whereupon his wife commented along the lines of "yeah, you obviously have it". If you don't get demands placed on you that you cannot meet, you don't get diagnosed.

Anyhow, my point is that upper class families are far more likely to A) place additional demands on their children, B) be able to seek professional diagnosis, and C) contract out childcare to workers in lieu of DIYing it and just putting up with their child behaving differently. This all is more than enough to predict the gap in diagnosis without any causal link between adult attention and autism. It's also the sort of thing to explain the correlation between diagnosis and low IQ - if you're autistic and smart, you're more likely to get enough pieces of your life right that nobody ends up putting in the effort to generate an official diagnosis.

> I suspect that a lack of adult attention in the first three years of life is a principal factor in the rising autism rates we’re seeing in modern economies.

My suspicion is that modern economies are a lot more atomized, and people suffer a lot more for not fitting into the square holes that are increasingly the only thing on offer. This also explains the rising diagnosis rates for other mental health conditions, especially ADHD.

I have data set of one against this, I find it to more of a physical difference. But hoping we can get some conclusive research around it.

> This would explain why autism seems to “cluster” in upper class homes, where the parents work nonstop.

Are you under the impression that people lower income households work less? If anything, I'd expect the opposite to be true.

> This would explain why autism seems to “cluster” in upper class homes, where the parents work nonstop.

This is an unexpected observation for me. Do you have any references you can point to? I would be interested in knowing more about this.

I got that from the Wikipedia article on the Epidemiology of autism, citation 78.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_autism#cite_no...

thanks!

Yes! As a person raising kids in "the Western way", we ARE weird.

Obviously, this is a broad oversimplification, but I do think the way we manage our kids time and limit their freedom is problematic.

That said, I think many of the problems stem from good intentions and unintended consequences. For example:

1. We don't want our kids to get hit by a car, so we tell them only to play in the back yard. 2. In many homes, both parents want a fulfilling career, so most kids are in some kind of child-care after school, so our kids don't have others to play with in the neighbourood.

I'll copy a comment I wrote elsewhere in this thread:

I'm sure their parents are trying to do what is best for their children, but it doesn't seem to be working.

I slept with my grandma, mother when I was a child <10. That's because our apartments were super tiny back then in China. It isn't much of a choice.

My son is sleep-trained to sleep alone in his room. At first, he would refuse and cry, and he woke up every once awhile, later he just got use to it and slept 12 hour straight. Not only he slept without any distraction (me), but also it is much easier on me as well.

Important metric I think is whether the baby sleep enough, rather than style of parenting. Sometimes it is just economic factor.

I wonder how much is caused by having both parents working. Kids were raised differently 50-70 years ago when one salary was enough for a family.

I wonder if salaries were more competitive because there were less workers? If the cultural norm was to only have one parent work, then it seems like the supply of workers essentially doubles* if both parents work, leading to less competitive wages.

*not exactly, but essentially. Yes, not everyone is married etc.

This is what's known as the "lump of labour" fallacy - the idea that there's a fixed amount of work that needs to be done, therefore opening the job market to more workers necessarily lowers wages due to "increased supply".

The reality is that increasing the supply of workers doesn't necessarily mean increased competition for jobs. More people available to work means that more can be produced across the board; each additional worker can create opportunities for further additional workers. The pie can be grown at the same time that it's sliced more ways.

> each additional worker can create opportunities for further additional workers

By more people working, we created more opportunities for more people to work?

I think there is a fallacy within that "lump of labour fallacy". I'm not saying there is a fixed amount of work needed, but eventually you do run into economies of scale: less and less addional work is needed to support more people.

Hasn't cost of living and other expenses have increased faster than wage growth? With more jobs just for the sake of creating jobs, does each additional job pay the same or more?

I'm of the opinion that we need more opportunities for people to work less, so they can have more time for raising kids or persuing hobbies.

>By more people working, we created more opportunities for more people to work?

Yes, because more workers = more people with money = more people who stimulate production through spending.

The issue with the "economies of scale" argument is the same issue that the original lump of labour argument has - it assumes that there is a sensible upper bound on the amount of work people want done at any one time.

The only reason more efficient workers would lead to less work per worker is if the work to be done is bounded. What history shows is that instead, more efficient workers work the same amount and produce more, and the consumption of the product of that work is effectively unbounded.

For an example in tech: advancements in programming theory and practice over the last ~50 years have made it so that the modern programmer is easily able to produce the kind of programs that computers used 50 years ago in a fraction of the time it originally took to code them. Does this mean we need a fraction of the number of programmers compared to 50 years ago? No, because the improvements in efficiency have been completely offset by the demand for more complicated programs. In general, there doesn't seem to be any kind of bound on program complexity - the easier the programmer's job becomes, the greater their requirements become.

> By more people working, we created more opportunities for more people to work?

What I was getting at, is that it sounds like the goal is just to work for the sake of working.

(I should have put an elipsis after "to".)

>The pie can be grown at the same time that it's sliced more ways.

Except the exact opposite has happened.

The salaries were not more competitive than they are now. Families who raised children on one income back then quite simply expected and did with much less than single income families do today, not to mention with how much two income families make today.

I'm on my phone and I'm having a hard time finding a single source that shows this, and it's possible that I can't find it because it doesn't exist, but I have found that housing prices have outpaced wages, car prices have outpaced wages, and tuition prices have outpaced wages (though tuition prices is a whole different issue). Real Wages, which accounts for inflation, have barely budged.

It seems like both parents work to pay for child costs that exist because both parents work.

Real Wages, which accounts for inflation, have barely budged.

If real wages have barely budged, it means precisely that it is exactly as affordable to buy a basket of goods as it used to be. You can't argue both that all costs have outpaced wages, and that the real wage hasn't budged, because this is just logically contradictory.

It seems like both parents work to pay for child costs that exist because both parents work.

Yes, it is often the case that the income of one parent is just about enough to cover the cost of child care necessary to enable this work. This is usually justified by positing that this is necessary for the career growth of the second parent. This makes perfect sense, but my point is that people used to expect less in the past, and one of the things that they didn't expect was good career growth of both parents.

I’d put it on the other side, though after correcting for inflation maybe it’s the same thing depending on the sector.

If you’re buying a house with two incomes, you can outbid a couple with one income by a factor of two-ish. You don’t need more houses to keep up with more workers per house, so you just see prices get bid up. Eventually a house costs 1.7 full time incomes because that’s what the couple you’re bidding against probably has.

> when one salary was enough for a family.

One salary is still "enough" for many of the definitions of "enough" from back then.

Hell, even now my wife stays home and I feel like we live like kings.

Making enough money is important, but past a certain fairly modest income, avoiding stupid lifestyle expenses is more important.

> Kids were raised differently 50-70 years ago when one salary was enough for a family.

... in the US. Meanwhile in Europe in the fifties, in some of the countries devastated by the war, both parents had to work 6 days a week to barely make a living (e.g. my grandmother had to take a loan to be able to afford a coat for winter).

I wouldn't call it "weird" but there's certainly advantages and disadvantages. Bed sharing is one area where my wife (American) and I (Asian) have decided to do things the Asian way. By that, I mean I chose to do things the Asian way since I'm the nighttime parent. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210222-the-unusual-ways...

> Debmita Dutta, a doctor and parenting consultant in Bangalore, India, says that despite Western influences, bedsharing remains a strong tradition in India – even in households where children have their own rooms. "A family of four has three bedrooms, one each for each child and for the parents, and then you would find both the children in the parent's bed," she says. "It's that common."

> Bedsharing is one way to reduce the burden of babies waking up at night, says Dutta. Her own daughter had a rollout bed next to her parents' that she could sleep on until she was seven years old. "Even after she stopped breastfeeding, she still liked to sleep with us in the same room," she says.

I gave up on sleep training for precisely that reason. It's super easy for me to feed the baby a bottle and get it back to sleep without even really waking up. But sleep training involved multi-hour sessions in the middle of the night where my daughter would make herself puke, sometimes more than once in the same night, sometimes followed by dry-heaving in protest after her stomach was empty. After a bit she was able to sleep on a sofa-sleeper in our room, which she quickly vacated when our second was born (due to the crying at night). I didn't even try sleep training with our second--I felt so guilty leaving him alone in a crib, with him standing holding the bars like some sort of prisoner.

So I've recently become a father and have done a lot of reading into co-sleep, crib, etc out of my own paranoia of being a bad father and such.

I could go on and on about the back and forth. The one thing I do want to say and point out that is many articles like this BBC one use statements like "the rest of the world" or is "common in many other cultures" when discussing co-sleep and other "older" practices.

But what percentage of the world actually practices co-sleeping? While it is indeed common in Asia and Africa, only 40 percent of documented cultures practice co-sleep regularly [1]. So it has become a minority practice in the world at large, despite the fact that many blogs or articles make it seem like Western society is strange for not doing it as much.

So instead of Western society being novel and strange, could it be that we're onto something? Saying "it's always been done this way" isn't a scientific statement. While having babies sleep in cribs is a newer practice, there is still a lot of data backing it.

There is indeed some bad research when it comes to demonizing co-sleeping (equally equating co-sleeping parents who use drugs and alcohol with those who don't). But even when controlled for those variables, it still has been shown that co-sleeping still increases the risk of SIDS when there are no hazards present, although not as much as some studies suggest [1].

As a data driven person, when I read all of this, I opted to not co-sleep. It's just what a lot of data supports, so I don't see why it still gets demonized a lot.

I'm not saying you shouldn't co-sleep. If you like it and want to do it, go for it. But I just don't understand the vilification of Western practices when it's been shown to work in many cases.

1: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/05/21/6012896...

I recommend Sweet Sleep as a resource for anyone interested in cosleeping/bedsharing.

It gives a lot of practical advice and looks at the research to address the safety concerns. The conclusion is that bedsharing will multiply existing risk factors for SIDS but if those risk factors are already low, adding bedsharing into the mix does not increase the risk by a significant amount (assuming it's done in accordance with safety guidelines).

https://www.amazon.com/Sweet-Sleep-Nighttime-Strategies-Brea...

I was under the impression that the risk of SIDS isn't the only thing when it comes to bed sharing. Adult beds are softer and have more give, so babies get turned over more easily so that their airway can get blocked in the mattress. There are more things like pillows and blankets that can get block the airway. And then there's of course the parent that's sleeping next to them.

Do all of those risks get clumped into SIDS when it comes to these statistics?

The other part of the equation is practicing safe bedsharing practices like the safe sleep seven guidelines:

"If you are: 1. A nonsmoker 2. Sober and unimpaired 3. A breastfeeding mother

and your baby is: 4. Healthy and full-term 5. On his back 6. Lightly dressed

and you both are: 7. On a safe surface

Then your baby in bed with you is at no greater risk for SIDS than if he’s nearby in a crib."[0]

A safe sleep surface means the mattress is not too soft (we tested our adult mattress to make sure it met the standards for crib mattresses), no gaps by the wall that the baby can get wedged in, bed only (no couch or recliner), light bedding, sleepwear without long ribbons or drawstrings that can strangle, etc.

It's important to do the research and not be cavalier about the risks, but I think it's worth learning how to work around them so everyone can get great sleep.

[0] https://www.llli.org/the-safe-sleep-seven/

Of the 16 citations in this article, most of them don't seem to have to do with the question of whether bedsharing (under the seven conditions) increases the chance of SIDS and/or suffocation.

Citation 12 hypothesizes why bedsharing with a breast-feeding mother reduces the time infants sleep in the prone position.

Citation 14 through 16 is about breast-feeding vs not breast-feeding in regards to bedsharing.

Citation 11 contains two studies, one with 20 mother/infant pairs and the other with 26 mother/infant pairs. It compares breast-feeding vs not breast-feeding with regards to bedsharing.

I don't see how that allows the author to come to the conclusion that "safe sleep seven" practices result in the same chance of SIDS/suffocation as crib sleeping best practices. It looks like the author is making a claim and citing sources that only justify why the author believes that claim to be true. It doesn't actually provide statistical evidence that the claim is true.

Here's a study that showed that bedsharing increases the risk of SIDS, even when the parents don't smoke or take alcohol or drugs (although the absolute risk is small in both cases, 0.08 vs 0.23 per 1000 live births): https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/3/5/e002299.short

Edit: I found a couple of other studies that said there wasn't significant difference in risk of SIDS when you take out non-breastfeeding / smoking / drinking / etc. However, that brings me to my earlier question: do these statistics lump together suffocation with SIDS?

that's an interesting observation. beds in asia are traditionally harder from what i have observed, so that might be a factor.

Western culture is different in a significant way. Individualism is valued much more than in the east.

This is an established sociological fact.

While what you say is true, I think it's debatable whether this is reflected in our childcare practices.

Funny the next article after this one is actually about that.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201231-how-the-way-you-...

One of the biggest ways I see is the idea of when to move out of your parents' household.

At least in American society, it's considered imperative to move out ASAP - when leaving for college, or at the latest, upon graduating. Even if it means dumping a huge portion of your paycheck into rent for place barely 15 minutes from your parents' home.

In other societies it's more common to live with your parents well into adulthood. Marriage is often the point where you have to move out.

That’s not the case where I live in the small non-American West.

We’ve all seen the American TV show/films where some Mega Loser has failed to move out the year they become eighteen and graduated the year they become twenty-two. Maybe it comes off as a trope for non-Americans.

In America, if you don't move out ASAP, you are considered a failure, a loser, a (wo)man-child, etc.

In other countries (or even cultural enclaves in the US), it's considered perfectly normal and acceptable. You'll see highly paid professionals like medical doctors, hedge fund managers or SWEs making huge salaries living with their parents.

Westerners are from Saturn, Orientals are from Pluto: Rapsey’s five definitive sociological facts™

The only thing I feel certain of is that hitting children or abusing them is a sad unnecessary practice. Adults need the wisdom and sense to handle problems with logic and words. Physical violence is simply bullying and using superior size and strength, which is irrelevant in the modern world and which predisposes your children to violent behaviors.

What makes you feel certain of this? I may be wrong, but a majority of human history seems to point to (roughly) "spanking is ok, anything more is not". Children do not understand logic the same as adults.

I really don't believe this is true. I was spanked my whole childhood. It never taught me one single thing, because I just wanted to know "why" X was bad and I was never told.

It was no more effective than just telling me no.

People use spanking as a crutch, it really has no place in the child raising toolkit imo.

So the explanation is more important than the spanking (or other discipline).

Depends on the kid, and depends on when. When you were one, you might have listened to "no", but there are plenty of kids who don't. And it matters because of things like wanting to play in the street. I can't tell a one-year-old what two tons of car moving at 30 miles an hour is going to do to them. But I can train them that every time they play in the street, it hurts.

That sounds cruel. On the other hand, letting them get hit by a car is much more cruel, and not all of us have fenced front yards.

I have no problem with spanking for safety issues. But be careful, because a kid in danger triggers fear and panic in parents, and once the crisis is over, that seems to almost automatically morph into anger. Do not spank in anger, ever.

Have you ever met 1 years old? Cause this sounds like you did not and are just imagining things.

I have, yes - four of them, up close and in detail.

One year old are just learning to walk. They are slow and dumb. If they play on street, it is 100% fault of adult. If adult is beating them after that, adult should not have a kid.

The one time I remember being spanked as a child was -- many, many years after the fact -- explained to me in passing to be for the exact reason you describe. It seems neigh impossible to me to validate that the spanking was "necessary" in any reasonable interpretation of the word; sure, I was never hit by a car as a kid, but you can't really prove a negative either. I can say, unequivocally, however, that 2-year-old me experienced the spanking as a completely arbitrary and utterly humiliating display of violence with absolutely no rhyme or reason whatsoever.

Just because something was done historically doesn't make it right or correct.

I agree, and we're starting to get heavily in to epistemology here, but modern sciences do not have the ability to construct properly controlled studies, and "harder" sciences do not have enough understanding of the underlying biology to provide a definitive answer.

At best we can get a "we think it's like this", but I'm not sure I give that a higher epistemic status than tens of thousands of years of human history. This is probably a pointless discussion, since there is not enough information to reach a conclusion.

For majority of human history, even sever child abuse was seen as unfortunate thing that however happens, so what.

The adult domestic violence was also accepted a lot.

I'm generally not in favor of spanking, but just some observations:

- It's easy to find people who were spanked that are in favor of spanking, people who were spanked that aren't in favor of spanking, and people who weren't spanked that aren't in favor of spanking. People who weren't spanked that are in favor of spanking seem almost non-existent.

- Just perusing Google Scholar and reading abstracts, studies of spanking much more often than not link it to negative outcomes, most commonly "externalizing behavior". And while some studies find it not meaningfully linked to negative outcomes, no study I have seen links it to positive outcomes.

- Children not understanding logic the same as adults does not entail that physical punishment be necessary in child rearing.

It creates child abuse apologists, like yourself

There is a long, long history of research into the grim effects of corporal punishment in child-raising. As a starting point, see the widely cited 2002 meta-analysis by Gershoff [0] as well as this other meta-analysis they did more recently which I am less familiar with [1]. I also highly recommend going through the research work of the late Murray Straus at the University of Wisconsin [2] who spent much of his time systematically analyzing how spanking harms child development in just about every single way you can imagine.

[0] Gershoff, E. T. (2002). Corporal punishment by parents and associated child behaviors and experiences: a meta-analytic and theoretical review. Psychological bulletin, 128(4), 539.

[1] Gershoff, E. T., & Grogan-Kaylor, A. (2016). Spanking and child outcomes: Old controversies and new meta-analyses. Journal of family psychology, 30(4), 453.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_A._Straus

Humans also owned slaves and treated women as domestic property for the majority of human history.

I was an elementary science teacher for 3 years, I found superior logic and intellect and explanation was better than any punishment I could dole out. Nevermind that causing physical suffering by violence is wrong.

Highly recommend the work of economist Emily Oster, [1] who digs into the data around popular/important questions related to pregnancy/childhood.

She looks at the 'popular wisdom' and then analyzes the relevant data. Her goal is to give parents information they can use to make informed choices about relative risk. Should you drink at all while pregnant? Is sleep training terrible (or amazing)?

Dr. Oster gives nuanced answers to questions that are too often addressed as categorical imperatives.

https://emilyoster.net/

We put the crib close to our bed, much easier for mom. Dad got ear plugs.

We had our baby in our bed between us and usually I woke up first when the baby wanted to be nursed and just gently pushed it so she could get nursed by her mother. Worked fine. We're in Austria.

It's funny, human mothers have a unique trait through which they can identify the cries of their particular child, even at a playground where a lot of kids are making noise. Somehow, mothers are able to cut through all the din and identify the voice of their young child, at the exclusion of all others.

Nature does so much to bring mothers closer to their young, yet fathers do not possess this "talent." In fact, we seem eager to block out some of that natural closeness we feel towards our children. We use ear plugs now, but I am sure we used animal fur and cotton to achieve the same effect centuries earlier.

I can hear my daughter just fine on a crowded playground. It's all about spending a decent amount of time with your own children.

Any sources? At least my experience tells differently.

Yes, I provide this in my follow-up reply to my comment. [0]

All humans have the capability to intricately form an aural bond with their own (and other) children if they have enough meaningful interactions with that child. But there is nonetheless a specific change brought about in women during their first pregnancy that gives them an advantage on this front, especially with their own children.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26254581

human mothers have a unique trait through which they can identify the cries of their particular child, even at a playground where a lot of kids are making noise.

That has nothing to do with being a mother and everything to do with spending a lot of time with that child. I'll bet that anybody who spends enough time with a child will be able to do that, regardless of that persons gender or genetic relation to the child.

Please see my general response to all the negativity I've received here [0].

To address your specific point, though, which was echoed by others in this thread, there is a lot of truth to the human ability to hone their auditory memory, especially when it comes to sounds that fall within the human auditory frequency range. Many of us have experienced this phenomenon not only with their own and others' children, but also with their house pets (especially cats and parrots), and even machines (i.e., your car, your air conditioner, your server, etc.)

Nonetheless, as I have shown, there is a particular biological difference exhibited between first-time mothers and first-time fathers. Nothing about this statement invalidates or calls into question your own statement and I agree with it wholeheartedly.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26254581

I taught kindergarten for five years and I was able to identify more than 30 children’s voices whether they were speaking out making some unidentifiable utterance. Humans are really good at distinguishing very small differences in the vocal range of sounds.

If you spend more time with your child, you will also develop this "magical" power.

As a man who put his career on hold to be the stay at home parent, this seems extremely out of touch. In my house I’m the one with the “talent”; it has nothing to do with gender. It had everything to do with being in tune with another human being.

Agreed, I did the same thing.

Towards the end I could tell, from the sounds of his crying, whether he was hungry, tired, or hurt too. (Towards the end in the sense that he was able to answer questions, or use words to explain a little what was going on. Raising him bilingually, and it took a while for him to start speaking.)

I am shocked by the responses I have received to this comment.

First off, I thought it was a lot more conventionally understood that mothers' bodies undergo permanent hormone-driven changes during pregnancy - and that these changes yield some more-or-less common outcomes across cultures and locales. [0] One of those outcomes is the following:

> The researchers found that the mothers had surprisingly consistent responses to their crying babies, “and in a very short amount of time from the start of the cry, five seconds, they preferred to pick up and hold or to talk to their infant,” Bornstein said.

I also thought it was much more conventionally understood that fathers do not exhibit the same changes as mothers do. [1] Nevertheless, I want to make it clear that I do not have children. My understanding of this phenomenon stems from my background in psychoacoustics, not child-rearing.

Second, though, and perhaps more importantly, I am pretty disappointed in this community for laboring to interpret my points as misogynistic, out of touch with modern norms, or whatever, when a simple google search would have easily brought my points into context. Perhaps I failed to follow the conventions of citing resources to learn more about these things, but as I already indicated I didn't do this because I thought the majority of those commenting would have already been aware of this research. I apologize for not including it and I will try to do better in the future.

[0] https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/23/health/moms-babies-crying-res...

[1] https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/womens-mens-br...

Honestly, we're a damned resilient species. This is micro-optimization. Your kids are going to be awesome almost certainly, just like every generation so far has been more capable than the ones before.

The science on this stuff is half-baked. The real evidence is very low. If you took the same standards people hold to something they don't want to happen (let's say legalization of LSD use) and then applied it to most of the papers, they'd fail the test.

I have a nine year old who still gets tucked in every night and I spend half an hour by his bedside every night listening to audiobook stories or just talking about his day.

He was never a good sleeper. Since birth he needed human contact to fall asleep and stay asleep. Perhaps it's a genetic wiring or perhaps it's because wife and I are not believers in "sleep training". Our idea is that kids will loosen these ties on their own terms when ready i.e. when their nervous systems grow mature enough to feel safe sleeping on their own.

Many will scoff at the fact that we have a nine year old who has a sleep routine of a five year old. And yet... he is one of the best performing kids in class, always outgoing, self confident, popular with peers and teachers alike without being an asshole to anyone younger or older.

I'm a parent and I'm never going to judge another. But I think we're doing something right by our kid. But spending all this time by his side is taxing, not gonna lie.

What fascinates me about this topic is the amount of words spent on it, yet the topic of how/when to have conjugal relations with a kid sleeping in the room is never brought up. What is the norm about this in cultures that commonly cosleep? Do they stop having sex? Only get their loving on the fire escape?

In Thailand (and most of Asia I guess) most parents share the bed with their baby up to a few years old or even longer. Mother and child on bed, father on the ground or opposite. Also a matter of available space. But for sure helps the bonding process to stay close to your little one. Sex life will suffer as a result I guess... Most times family is around the child all the time. Group behavior is spoon fed. And I do agree: a separate room for a new born is madness. Mother and child stay together. You see it in the animal kingdom, and that's what we are. Also nothing wrong with a plain mattress on the floor. No falling down risk, no bars, freedom. Be careful with bedding as usual.

Asia and other areas, there is the support from extended families for baby care. At night, there are grand parents / other in laws (brothers sisters) that take turn taking care of baby at night. And during day time too, you can leave babies with them and take proper rest.

Infant monkeys cling to their mothers 24x7. Until very recently the vast majority of humans slept in one room huts with the youngest child next to the mother. My kids had their own beds, but slept with me until nine or ten until they decided to prefer their own beds.

Many of our civilisation's needs and desires have been created by marketers. Whether it is people selling expensive child care equipment or books promoting fads. You don't need most of that shit. There is some good stuff to know for health and safety but you have to think critically which is hard for a first time parent going into the unknown. We bought a lot of gear that never got used or which turned out to be less effective than simpler means.

It was super stressful trying the crying it out method for our first child. (Now we have six.)

What eventually worked, and in hindsight it makes a lot of sense, was to respond to their cries at longer and longer intervals, (e.g 1 min, 2 min, 3 min, etc.)

At some point it seems babies get this wrong idea in their head that they are helping you when they are crying out.

This slow weaning of response time teaches them that you are in fact close by, so it reduces their stress.

Though I was raised in the US. The one thing that I noticed that was weird was when my friends called their parents by the first name.

Also it was weird how kids and parents were friends with each other. Not in my house! Parent and child had only two things of conversation school, not getting sick, and making sure I eat the food before it got cold.

> "Is he in his own room yet?" is a question new parents often field once they emerge from the haze of life with a newborn. But sleeping apart from our babies is a relatively recent development – and not one that extends around the globe. In other cultures sharing a room, and sometimes a bed, with your baby is the norm.

Westerners have more sex?

Two kids, western parent.

We don't sleep with them so we can be well rested the next day and be better parents for them. This includes making sure the relationship with your partner is in good standing.

Prams are a convenient way to keep your children safe while being able to do your errands. Bending down especially with a child attached is not fun.

The thing that I don’t get from the Western culture is what is the point of parenting? Both parents work and they immediately unload their baby to a day care. I was shocked to learn that 9 month babies are sent to day-cares.

Is paying the bills for a human you barely see called parenting?

> The thing that I don’t get from the Western culture is what is the point of parenting?

Childcare in US is particularly shocking to any non-American, but it's a natural result of the rugged sort of capitalism combined with a threadbare social safety net.

> I was shocked to learn that 9 month babies are sent to day-cares.

9 months is actually on the older side, in the US. Daycares frequently enroll infants younger than a month. Maternity leave is ridiculously short in the US (IIRC, 3-weeks is mandated by the law, this includes pre- & post-partum). Some companies have started to go above and beyond, and even dropping the non-birthing parter a bone by giving them a few days :). Additionally, I don't think any person taking maternity leave is entitled to their full salary, and beyond 3 weeks, they are entitled to $0, which combined with at-will employment means you have to be get back to work ASAP. Childbirth itself is a very expensive endeavor - thousands of dollars for a vaginal birth with no complications, and tens of thousands for a cesarean.

From

Even with both parents working full time jobs the child spends more time with their parents than any other adult. They definitely get vastly more, and more focused one on one time as well. This is not “barely see” by any measure.

It should not be surprising that the societies most prone to toxic individualism have largely abandoned or forgotten the way children have been raised for thousands of years, in favor of ways that reinforce and perpetuate that toxic individualism.

Not given the conditions in the west, Comparing conditions in one culture with radically different areas with different access to $ and other services - clean water for example.

Some parts of the world still have mortality rates of over 20% up till the age of five.

"You are a product of your environment" --Clement Stone (b. 1902) https://archive.is/yPhyn

coming from another country i can see clear difference in how child are raised in usa.

There as long as baby is with mom, fed on time, and kept clean. baby just grows up fine. few months are hectic but then their night time matches everyone else. Given there is afternoon nap.

eventually they are like 5 and start playing with neighborhood kids and then it's just automatic.

Yes, everything humans do is weird.

And look were it has brought us in comparison. Moon, Mars ... living for ages.

> Kuroda [...] didn’t find any correlation between the amount of time babies were carried and the amount they cried. "I couldn’t agree with that," she says.

> Her research found that carrying a baby reduced [...] how much they cried.

...what?

Existing research said there was no correlation. Her research says there is a correlation.

Gotta say common sense is on Kuroda's side here, it's super common for babies to cry in strollers and then quiet down the moment they're picked up and held/plopped into a baby carrier.

Commonly observed: https://bonkersworld.net/baby-care

This is an example of how you can change the meaning completely by dropping the right words.

The part that you quoted as “Kuroda [...] didn’t find any correlation” is actually “Kuroda […] saw that previous research […] didn’t find any correlation” (and that's what she couldn't agree with), specifically:

> Kuroda began looking into the physiological effects of carrying infants when she saw that previous research, which used parental diaries rather than real-time physiological measurements, didn’t find any correlation between the amount of time babies were carried and the amount they cried. "I couldn’t agree with that," she says. Her research found that carrying a baby reduced their heart rate and movement as well as how much they cried.

and so on.

To be blunt and controversial, do people living in the mentioned region (Asia) even HAVE multiple rooms / a nursery? I mean I don't.

They say because people from India that move to Britain still have low SIDS incidence, that its cultural. How about, genetic?

I look forward to your GWAS results!

I look forward to a helpful reply to a question. Instead of snark.

I suppose that's fair. Trivial literature review shows that there's nothing remotely resembling a discrete "SIDS gene", and that while there probably are genomic variations that can pose a subtle elevation of risk, that risk can't be evaluated outside the context of a given infant's environment and its effect on the likelihood of any such risk to materialize into SIDS proper. That genomic risk is so subtle that it can't even be quantified in the case of an individual infant; it's only discernible via broad whole-genome studies, and even their comprehensiveness and interpretation remains an open question [1].

So, in short, the framing of your prior comment, in which it can be cultural or it can be genetic, fails to capture the current best understanding - which is that it very probably is both cultural and genetic, and very probably as much or more the former than the latter.

The snark probably isn't all that justified, I grant. But I don't like the attitude of genetic essentialism toward which your prior formulation gestures. That kind of thinking is fully a century out of date at this point, and the extent of harm it's done in the world during and since its heyday strikes me as ample reason to regard it with suspicious distaste. In another context I doubt I would give it such a curt and pithy response, but I think a higher than usual epistemological standard is fair here, and the research I've just summarized for you is literally a single Google search away.

On the other hand, to construct that Google search requires that one know the term "GWAS" and what it means, so perhaps I've treated you a bit more harshly than you deserved. Still only a bit, though, I think; the kind of genetic essentialism I decry might have seemed reasonable a century ago, but these days it's sloppy thinking at best.

Worse, that same imputation of clear and discrete gene-level variation in complex, often behavioral, traits, across whole human populations, without any reproductive isolation to make such an idea even barely plausible even in a case where we're talking about traits that might potentially be primarily gene-linked - we call that "eugenics", a pseudoscience whose utter epistemological baselessness and staggering moral hazard are at this point I think clearly enough understood as to require no enumeration for anyone with even a rudimentary sense of history - at least I hope they are! If I'm wrong about that, we're all in for a deal of horror.

In any case, I suppose I've committed the error of expecting someone to know more than perhaps was reasonable, so I'll apologize for that. What you said deserved a critical response, rather than the glib one I initially gave it. I hope I've improved somewhat on that initial response here.

[1] https://genomemedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/gm... (2010, conclusions incrementally refined by later literature)

You are a gentleman and a scholar. Thank you for a very enlightening response!

They do believe SIDS has a biological component

This is one of those "I can't prove it but I know this to be true"s. I would bet on this with 1/50 odds.

I do whatever is most convenient for me. We slept with our babies until they were 3-4 months. I typically did all the nighttime stuff like changing diapers etc because I fall asleep so fast. I was never exhausted. They did breast feed, but I would put them in the right place while my wife slept, then when they were done would change the diaper.

When they started to sleep 5+ hours we moved them to their own room. We did let them cry, but I could easily tell if it was going to ramp down or if their crying was getting worse.

When she was 1 our oldest regressed and I slept in her room for a month so she wouldnt come wake us up. She regressed multiple times.

Our middle child never came down because he slept with his sister until he was about 4.

Our 5 year old has started coming down to wake me up 2-3 times at night. I told her to either sleep with her brother or sister and not to bother me (I do all nightime activities).

I found kids books incredibly boring so didnt read to my kids.

I hardly play kid games with my kids, though I do have them participate in things I like to do.

Im trying to give them independence as quickly as possible. We have a rule that the youngest person that can do a job has to do the job. So the youngest has to fetch things, while the oldest is starting to make meals and do laundry.

They only get internet from 6am-7am once they are ready for the day and in the evening once all their work is done. I have never had to wake any of them for school ever. If they complain about being bored they get to do chores.

I dont really use anyones' advice and would never feel shame or confusion about how to raise my children. I do see how many of our parents are scared to parent their kids.

Another great example of Betteridge's law.

Nothing culturally Western will ever be considered weird by people in the West, by definition.

Quite the contrary - we seem to have made a sport of hating our own culture. Even the good bits.

Unless you're a psychologist:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology#WEIRD_bias

No,no it's not. Things can be different without being weird. Weird is a judgement while different is a fact.

For example, I could say BBC opinion pieces are weird garbage but that would be an opinion.

I could say "man it's weird this is so high up on hackernews with no comments and six points", that would be an opinion too.

I agree. How can it be weird anyway? Isn’t culture relative? I always get so confused by these things.

The internet is a better place if we engage with the actual content of articles and not just the headline. By only engaging solely with the headline you are just encouraging more clickbait by proving to content creators that the headline is all that matters.

They didn't write the headline by accident - they published it and its ok to judge what they chose to publish. If BBC didn't write clickbait headlines there would be no clickbait headlines to criticize them over.

This headline does represent the article. The article talks about different cultural practices but is questioning if one of them is weird because it doesn't conform to other groups practices.

Do you normally call people or groups of people weird in a newspaper because they don't conform with what you consider your 'normal' cultural practices? Would you consider that a feature of an inclusive society?

The internet would be a better place if opinion pieces were kept on separate websites from news, and people wouldn't need to criticize how they're written. Then there'd be a lot less worry about if it was weird.

I think that the article is trying to point out that some western parenting practices are potentially harmful to infants. In this case, "weird" is a very kind way of expressing the articles concern.

It doesn't, though. It mentions sids a lot but then quotes a doctor to say the research is unclear. Other countries experience sids at reduced rates but its not clear if thats because of bed sharing, and there's no evidence in the article one way or another.

If they want to point out potential harmful behaviours, they should do that, and then they would get called out on doing so with little to no evidence. Instead they went with "weird" because they have no argument per se.

I agree that the article does choose not to say that their claims are backed with evidence. The article in fact does correctly state that they don't have evidence that bed-sharing is safer. However, they do state that room-sharing is current pediatric best practice, and provide links [1], [2] to articles to back that up.

Given that as far as I know, room-sharing is not standard Western parenting practice, I believe they have backed up with an appeal to authority the idea that Western style parenting is harmful. Furthermore, link [1] contains a link to [3] which is an recommendation from a pediatric journal that provides links to scientific papers that suggest room-sharing reduces SIDS risk by up to 50%. (see bullet point 4 of link [3]) Thus I think the appeals to authority are backed by evidence.

Thus I think that the article could have made a stronger point if they had talked about room sharing more instead of bed sharing, but I think they do have an evidence backed point that Western parenting is potentially harmful. They avoid ruffling parent's feathers too much by understating their point.

[1]: https://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-ini... [2]: https://www.lullabytrust.org.uk/safer-sleep-advice/ [3]: https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/138/5/e201629...

Again, this article is written poorly, the headline is pure clickbait, and its worthy of any criticism it garners.

It's great to steelman someone else's arguments in a discussion. It's terrible to let BBC print garbage with clickbait headlines without criticism, because it will keep happening, and its bad for society.

It doesn't make the point your making, and the way it goes about making its point is not something I'd accept in an inclusive society.

I agree that the article is poorly written, and doesn't more than tangentially make the point I was making. I think I can understand why you would want criticism a poorly written article in the supposedly high quality BBC. My curiosity is peeked about the inclusive society point. Nothing in the article ran afoul of my speech norms. I don't think my speech norms are particularly well developed though. What part of the way the article makes its point is something you would not accept?

If we're accepting of other cultures, you shouldn't call one weird because it doesn't' conform with other cultures. Isn't the point to celebrate differences? The whole premise of the article is nonsense.

I think I understand now. Thank you for explaining. To me Western culture is a set of knowledge and practices one grows up with, but I don't attach my identity to any particular culture, nor do I hold people responsible for any harm caused by practices their country's culture accepts. I can see that if someone had said something like "programmers are weird", then it would feel like an attack to me though because I identify as a programmer. Many people do attach their identities to their county's culture, so we should be careful about how we discuss cultures. Did I miss anything?

I'm amazed that corporal punishment in schools is still legal throughout much of the US [0].

Perhaps it's mostly not used. I'm not sure because I went to school in New Jersey where it's outlawed even in private schools.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_corporal_punishment_in_...

I thought this was going to be a case where it's not explicitly spelled out in the constitution, so it's not expressly illegal unless a state makes it so. But no, corporal punishment has been codified to be expressly legal in some states!

Can you imagine fighting for the right to legally beat a child? Not even your own child, but someone else's?

Hmmm - Sorry for bringing this up, HN.

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