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There is way too much romanticization of a false past here in this larger HN discussion. Yeah, sleep patterns were different, and many people slept with their i
by kaitai 4y ago
There is way too much romanticization of a false past here in this larger HN discussion. Yeah, sleep patterns were different, and many people slept with their infants. Infant mortality was also higher, as was maternal mortality, and corporal punishment was common. Sleep-deprived women with piles of children were not spending loving moments staring into their babies' eyes; they were smacking the slightly older children on the back of the head to hurry up and take the chicken feed out and slop the pigs. From my own family histories, I know that babies were often ignored, because at some point having a 1/3 of your babies die means you just don't invest very much emotional energy in them anymore. Very young children were tied to furniture to keep them out of trouble. By age four, some were at work (although the average age to start work in Victorian England was about 10, and the Factory Act came into force to regulate labor conditions for 9-13 year olds). Wet nurses were common, and in parts of England and France in the 1780s for instance it was extraordinarily common to simply ship your baby out to the country so you could work or maintain your aristocratic figure (see references at https://www.geriwalton.com/breastfeeding-or-nursing-with-wet-nurses-in-the-eighteenth-century/#_ftn2 https://www.geriwalton.com/breastfeeding-or-nursing-with-wet... for instance).
For my own part, we did some version of sleep training (checking every 5 min until crying stopped). This was overall extraordinarily effective. The reassurance that we're not leaving, we're coming back -- quite important. But as important: the discovery that the child in question doesn't like rocking, bouncing, white noise, or any of the other interventions that are billed as crucial. Leave that kid alone for 4-12 minutes? Asleep. Rock/bounce/white noise? Awake for hours. Why torture the child to satisfy someone else's interventionist idea of good parenting?
Every kid is different. And not every cry needs intervention. This kid cried every time a fart came. At some point you just need to learn the world won't end if you fart, and that is simply gained by experience, not mom or dad rushing to reassure and making a big deal of every fart.
- unity1001 4y ago> There is way too much romanticization of a false past here in this larger HN discussion Some stuff is evolutionary. Co-sleeping is seen in all mammal species. And its an important part of the group sentiment, including the social support it brings. The lack of it causes anxiety in mammal species. Even domestic cats prefer to take care of their young in groups of mothers until the kittens grow up. > This kid cried every time a fart came. At some point you just need to learn... ...that those farts have been causing pain in his abdomen or scrotum. Its amazing how it did not occur to you and instead you let the kid to just 'go through' it. > England and France in the 1780s for instance it was extraordinarily common to simply ship your baby out to the country so you could work or maintain your aristocratic figure Inbreeding, negligent and sociopathic aristocrats are never good examples for anything related to the basic tenets of human civilization. Less, parenting. Sheeesh. If your parenting morning star is murderous 18th century aristocrats who starved their people to be able to live in extravaganza with their powdered wigs...
- shaklee3 4y agoyou made a lot of claims with no evidence. please cite where it creates anxiety.
- unity1001 4y agoHave you not read the rest of the thread? There are a ton of comments in that direction, but hey: https://acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jcpp.13390 https://acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jcpp.... > In their recent paper published in JCPP, Bilgin and Wolke (2020a) argue that leaving an infant to ‘cry it out’, rather than responding to the child’s cries, had no adverse effects on mother–infant attachment at 18 months. This finding opposes evidence across a wide range of scientific fields. Here, we outline several concerns with the article and argue against some of the authors’ strong claims, which have already gained media attention, including a report on the NHS website. We suggest that the authors’ conclusions should be considered one piece of a larger scientific whole, where ‘cry it out’ seems, overall, to be of detriment to both attachment and development. Crucially, we are concerned that this study has issues regarding power and other analytical decisions. More generally, we fear that the authors have overstated their findings and we hope that members of the public do not alter their parenting behaviours in line with such claims without further research into this controversial topic.
- shaklee3 4y agoah, yes! link to a group of people who didn't like the outcome of a study, so they wrote about it with links to older studies that the more comprehensive one already addressed. of course, said people didn't bother to do their own study, but needed to get it off their chests how mad it makes them that the newer/more data-driven studies go against their instincts.
- jjulius 4y agoThank you for this perspective.
- 4y ago