The diabolical genius of the baby advice industry
January 17, 2018 3:39 AM Subscribe
Every baffled new parent goes searching for answers in baby manuals. But what they really offer is the reassuring fantasy that life’s most difficult questions have one right answer. [slGuardian Long Read by MeFi's own Oliver Burkeman]
One book I would recommend to new parents and/or anyone interested in The Best Way To Raise Babies is Meredith Small's Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent. She looks at the ways several different cultures raise babies, and the conclusion is roughly 'the way we look after babies reflects our own culture's values and challenges, and as there is no One True human culture, there is no one right way to do this. That said, babies do have particular needs and expectations based around biology and evolutionary history, so some ways to approach particular issues will suit them better than others.'
I read a lot of historical baby/child advice books in my previous career. It's fascinating how much the advice changes, and how little the "you must do this or else" tone does.
posted by Catseye at 5:22 AM on January 17, 2018 [10 favorites]
I read a lot of historical baby/child advice books in my previous career. It's fascinating how much the advice changes, and how little the "you must do this or else" tone does.
posted by Catseye at 5:22 AM on January 17, 2018 [10 favorites]
The post title makes me imagine that there's one guy, in a lair where they also make stuff like strollers that cost more than my first car, churning out these books.
posted by thelonius at 5:30 AM on January 17, 2018 [10 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 5:30 AM on January 17, 2018 [10 favorites]
The worst baby and child books are the ones focusing on non-life-threatening stuff. Most books will give pretty well doctor-vetted advice about illness and safety (*). Makes sense -- sane publishers wouldn't want the liability of a book that told parents not to take injury or illness symptoms seriously.
But once you get out of the area of "when does babby go emergency room" you start getting into the worst hysterical self-serving predatory garbage. Food and sleep are the big ones for me. There are shelves and shelves of books claiming that the reason your kid isn't eating or sleeping properly is because it's ALL YOUR FAULT and YOU ARE SCARRING YOUR CHILD IRREPARABLY WITH EVERY SECOND YOU DON'T FOLLOW THIS ADVICE!!! The article doesn't really capture the accusatory subtext that accompanies a lot of this junk.
And sleep training! Basically every parent I know has a story. I have only a lot of anecdotes, but the through-line for them seems to be that yes, it does work great for some kids. For others, it doesn't and never will, and it amounts to torture for everyone involved to continue to try. At least as far as balance-of-anecdotes the majority seems to be in the latter camp.
(*) anti-vaccination stuff excluded
posted by bgribble at 6:37 AM on January 17, 2018 [13 favorites]
But once you get out of the area of "when does babby go emergency room" you start getting into the worst hysterical self-serving predatory garbage. Food and sleep are the big ones for me. There are shelves and shelves of books claiming that the reason your kid isn't eating or sleeping properly is because it's ALL YOUR FAULT and YOU ARE SCARRING YOUR CHILD IRREPARABLY WITH EVERY SECOND YOU DON'T FOLLOW THIS ADVICE!!! The article doesn't really capture the accusatory subtext that accompanies a lot of this junk.
And sleep training! Basically every parent I know has a story. I have only a lot of anecdotes, but the through-line for them seems to be that yes, it does work great for some kids. For others, it doesn't and never will, and it amounts to torture for everyone involved to continue to try. At least as far as balance-of-anecdotes the majority seems to be in the latter camp.
(*) anti-vaccination stuff excluded
posted by bgribble at 6:37 AM on January 17, 2018 [13 favorites]
My brother-in-law is fond of quoting this sequence in reference to all the fear-mongering urging parents to BUY THIS THING FOR YOUR CHILD OR ELSE:
"Surely you can't put a price on your family's lives?"
"I wouldn't have thought so either, but...here we are."
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:41 AM on January 17, 2018 [8 favorites]
"Surely you can't put a price on your family's lives?"
"I wouldn't have thought so either, but...here we are."
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:41 AM on January 17, 2018 [8 favorites]
When we had the Littlest Naberius some...well, by the calendar I guess it was 17 months ago now, but subjectively, sometime in the late forties - I remember Dinah Shore was all over the radio singing Buttons and Bows - but I digress. When we had her, Madame Naberius's OB GYN practice had a rotating staff of doctors. You got whoever was doing hospital rounds that day, and there was one weird guy, competent, but a little odd, who she really didn't want handling the birth. But she got the doctor she wanted, and everything went great.
Couple days later, when it's time to check out of the hospital, this guy was on. So he comes barging into our room as we're getting ready to go and out of nowhere starts ranting about just this topic. How all these books are nonsense, a scam! Nobody knows how to raise a kid! They're all different. The line I remember was "There's a manual, all right! She'll give it to you! One page a day!"
He was an odd guy. But he wasn't wrong. Sometimes all the books we read - and we read a lot - were really helpful, sometimes they didn't help at all. And it's not like you could tell what was going to work and wasn't until you'd tried it. It was pretty much exactly like if we'd taped all the pages on the wall, thrown a dart and said, okay, let's do that then.
posted by Naberius at 6:44 AM on January 17, 2018 [16 favorites]
Couple days later, when it's time to check out of the hospital, this guy was on. So he comes barging into our room as we're getting ready to go and out of nowhere starts ranting about just this topic. How all these books are nonsense, a scam! Nobody knows how to raise a kid! They're all different. The line I remember was "There's a manual, all right! She'll give it to you! One page a day!"
He was an odd guy. But he wasn't wrong. Sometimes all the books we read - and we read a lot - were really helpful, sometimes they didn't help at all. And it's not like you could tell what was going to work and wasn't until you'd tried it. It was pretty much exactly like if we'd taped all the pages on the wall, thrown a dart and said, okay, let's do that then.
posted by Naberius at 6:44 AM on January 17, 2018 [16 favorites]
A lot of the child-rearing stuff strikes me as similar to the software development methodologies I come across at work.
* Someone finds a solution to a problem they have
* A few other people find it useful
* It gets written about and published
* (In the software world, people get to talk at conferences about it)
* (And consultants spring up to promote the One True Way)
* Fame and profit follow
But if it isn't your problem, then it might not be your solution...
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 6:54 AM on January 17, 2018 [14 favorites]
* Someone finds a solution to a problem they have
* A few other people find it useful
* It gets written about and published
* (In the software world, people get to talk at conferences about it)
* (And consultants spring up to promote the One True Way)
* Fame and profit follow
But if it isn't your problem, then it might not be your solution...
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 6:54 AM on January 17, 2018 [14 favorites]
A lot of the child-rearing stuff strikes me as similar to the software development methodologies I come across at work.
My attempts at an Agile Baby Development Paradigm failed horribly. Turns out babies have terrible balance and basically no object avoidance. Fortunately they heal quickly.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:00 AM on January 17, 2018 [24 favorites]
My attempts at an Agile Baby Development Paradigm failed horribly. Turns out babies have terrible balance and basically no object avoidance. Fortunately they heal quickly.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:00 AM on January 17, 2018 [24 favorites]
There is a very good book I read years ago related to this subject: "For Her Own Good:a hundred years of expert advice to women" It covered all sorts of changing "expert"advice on all aspects of women's health and childcare. It was frightening.
In my own family it has gone back and forth. My immigrant Polish grandmother raised 5 children, breastfed them all, and had no special theories. My mother had me and my brother in the late 40s, and missed all the stringent advice on "discipline" for babies because she and my Dad lived with her parents after the war, so she did what her mom said, breastfed and picked us up when we cried, even though that was rare among educated people in those days. My aunt was a nurse and raised her kids by the book.
I was a hippie mommy in the early 70s, breastfed my babies and always kept them in the same room with me until they were two, had baby carriers, and joined La Leche League with the second kid I raised. My mothering was complicated by having been forced to give my firstborn up for adoption as an unwed mother in the 60s. I had a Dr. Spock book that was helpful about illnesses but mostly did what I felt was right, experts be damned.
Fast forward to present day, I have a two year old grandson, first child of my youngest son and his wife. They read lots of books, attended lots of classes, and are very loving but anxious parents. My daughter in law breastfed and pumped milk until the baby was around 8 months old, but unlike me she had a lot of problems with it. I never gave advice, just tried to be sympathetic. My son is a very engaged, hands-on Dad, even changes diapers which my husband never did. Baby goes everywhere, they had many sort of carriers that both parents used.
End result of all this, everyone grew up ok despite whatever style of child-rearing was followed.
None of my babies nor my grandson were fussy, but I have friends whose kids were and that was a different and more difficult experience no matter what the parents did. Every baby is different, follow your heart and common sense and get the non-judgemental help you need when things get tough.
posted by mermayd at 7:45 AM on January 17, 2018 [8 favorites]
In my own family it has gone back and forth. My immigrant Polish grandmother raised 5 children, breastfed them all, and had no special theories. My mother had me and my brother in the late 40s, and missed all the stringent advice on "discipline" for babies because she and my Dad lived with her parents after the war, so she did what her mom said, breastfed and picked us up when we cried, even though that was rare among educated people in those days. My aunt was a nurse and raised her kids by the book.
I was a hippie mommy in the early 70s, breastfed my babies and always kept them in the same room with me until they were two, had baby carriers, and joined La Leche League with the second kid I raised. My mothering was complicated by having been forced to give my firstborn up for adoption as an unwed mother in the 60s. I had a Dr. Spock book that was helpful about illnesses but mostly did what I felt was right, experts be damned.
Fast forward to present day, I have a two year old grandson, first child of my youngest son and his wife. They read lots of books, attended lots of classes, and are very loving but anxious parents. My daughter in law breastfed and pumped milk until the baby was around 8 months old, but unlike me she had a lot of problems with it. I never gave advice, just tried to be sympathetic. My son is a very engaged, hands-on Dad, even changes diapers which my husband never did. Baby goes everywhere, they had many sort of carriers that both parents used.
End result of all this, everyone grew up ok despite whatever style of child-rearing was followed.
None of my babies nor my grandson were fussy, but I have friends whose kids were and that was a different and more difficult experience no matter what the parents did. Every baby is different, follow your heart and common sense and get the non-judgemental help you need when things get tough.
posted by mermayd at 7:45 AM on January 17, 2018 [8 favorites]
ianso: I know a mother who took her small baby to hospital based on the advice in "What To Expect When You're Expecting" — one of the books singled out in his article — against the advice of her husband. The baby turned out to have meningitis, where 24 hours could have made all the difference. It could be dead or severely handicapped by now if she hadn't read the book and followed the advice therein promptly.
As a parent of two boys, I will say that within the first year or two, err on the side of caution when it comes to possible illnesses, because tiny people are particularly fragile. I remember keeping an eye on my sick leave days, talking with my wife about who should take the day to take the coughing kid to the doctors office. Even if it was nothing, we had that confirmation from a professional. And having an on-call after-hours nurse or doctor is wonderful, because you can frantically call, describe the symptoms, and a calm, reassuring person can tell you if it's something the kid will overcome on their own, if it's worth a trip to the doctor's office the next day, or if you should get to an emergency room STAT (if that last one wasn't already clear).
After a while, kids usually become more durable to the world around them. Now that the boys are 3 and 6, I'm close to having 2 weeks of sick leave, and I honestly can't tell you the last time I took a sick day.
mermayd: I had a Dr. Spock book that was helpful about illnesses but mostly did what I felt was right, experts be damned
Works for us!
posted by filthy light thief at 7:59 AM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
As a parent of two boys, I will say that within the first year or two, err on the side of caution when it comes to possible illnesses, because tiny people are particularly fragile. I remember keeping an eye on my sick leave days, talking with my wife about who should take the day to take the coughing kid to the doctors office. Even if it was nothing, we had that confirmation from a professional. And having an on-call after-hours nurse or doctor is wonderful, because you can frantically call, describe the symptoms, and a calm, reassuring person can tell you if it's something the kid will overcome on their own, if it's worth a trip to the doctor's office the next day, or if you should get to an emergency room STAT (if that last one wasn't already clear).
After a while, kids usually become more durable to the world around them. Now that the boys are 3 and 6, I'm close to having 2 weeks of sick leave, and I honestly can't tell you the last time I took a sick day.
mermayd: I had a Dr. Spock book that was helpful about illnesses but mostly did what I felt was right, experts be damned
Works for us!
posted by filthy light thief at 7:59 AM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
And having an on-call after-hours nurse or doctor is wonderful, because you can frantically call, describe the symptoms, and a calm, reassuring person can tell you if it's something the kid will overcome on their own, if it's worth a trip to the doctor's office the next day, or if you should get to an emergency room STAT (if that last one wasn't already clear).
Per the Peppa Pig thread from a few weeks ago, you are not supposed to do that, you are wasting doctors' time and should just know all this stuff on your own.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:09 AM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
Per the Peppa Pig thread from a few weeks ago, you are not supposed to do that, you are wasting doctors' time and should just know all this stuff on your own.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:09 AM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
Yeah, most of the books are somewhere between mildly helpful and actively useless (hello, yes, no, I am not going to take the baby to the emergency room every time he has weird colored poop; I have seen the things he picks up off the floor to eat, and if it didn't kill him on the way through, it's not going to kill him on the way out), but they are all LEAGUES better than their modern counterpart, the breathless forum posts on momblogs. Homeopathic teething gels will cure your ails! You ate WHAT while you were breastfeeding?! Never break eye contact with the child while he's awake or he'll grow up to be a sociopath! The APA's vaccination schedule is all fine and well, but here's 12 pages of unpunctuated rambling about mercury.
posted by Mayor West at 8:09 AM on January 17, 2018 [12 favorites]
posted by Mayor West at 8:09 AM on January 17, 2018 [12 favorites]
fwiw Hand in Hand Parenting. The core principle is that stressful issues can be avoided and the resulting off-track behavior healed. Yes, I'm affiliated - it worked so well I volunteered, and now spread the word at every opportunity.
posted by emmet at 8:31 AM on January 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by emmet at 8:31 AM on January 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
Per the Peppa Pig thread from a few weeks ago, you are not supposed to do that, you are wasting doctors' time and should just know all this stuff on your own.
I watch a lot of Peppa Pig these days. Let me assure you that wasting Dr. Brown Bear's time is no big loss.
whoa, I missed that thread entirely! Shame. I have strong opinions on that subject that the world needs to hear...
posted by Naberius at 9:33 AM on January 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
I watch a lot of Peppa Pig these days. Let me assure you that wasting Dr. Brown Bear's time is no big loss.
whoa, I missed that thread entirely! Shame. I have strong opinions on that subject that the world needs to hear...
posted by Naberius at 9:33 AM on January 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
I'm 4 months pregnant with my second (my first is 7) and oh my god, I am so looking forward to ignoring these books and all the dogmatism this time around! I refuse to allow myself to be made full of self-doubt and anxiety this time over whether or not I breastfeed, wear the baby, sleep train, etc. I'll be doing a mixture of what works (different for every child) and what keeps us all sane.
posted by kitcat at 9:36 AM on January 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by kitcat at 9:36 AM on January 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
Wasn't that pretty much Dr. Spock's shtick? That generally your instincts will be right, do what is comfortable for you? Lots of practical advice as well, but I seem to recall that he was known (and criticized by more prescriptivist types) for that.
posted by tavella at 9:49 AM on January 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by tavella at 9:49 AM on January 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
I think a lot of this is down to overestimating the actual influence you have on your child's development. The idea that certain routines or behaviors, playing certain music, avoiding TV, or certain TV, only buying wooden toys, etc., will turn you child into a genius, or, more truthfully, the fear that not doing these things will doom them to mediocrity, is basically a vain belief in how fucking important you are in their life, not just in the brought into this world and kept alive for at least 18 years sense, but in 'molding' their outcome.
It's bullshit: keep your child alive, fed, loved, socialized and educated, sure, but other than that the biggest impact you have on your child is genetic, and it's kind of late to try to upgrade that.
posted by signal at 9:56 AM on January 17, 2018 [4 favorites]
It's bullshit: keep your child alive, fed, loved, socialized and educated, sure, but other than that the biggest impact you have on your child is genetic, and it's kind of late to try to upgrade that.
posted by signal at 9:56 AM on January 17, 2018 [4 favorites]
I remember the day I put all the gifted baby books in a couple of grocery bags and walked them over to the recycling bin. Someone scolded me for not donating them to Goodwill or selling them at Powells, so I explained the ways in which their advice had mainly helped to increase the guilt levels in the house, that I couldn't imagine doing that to someone else, and that I wasn't willing to have another syllable back in circulation.
Peers who hadn't yet had children were full of opinions about the whole thing, sorta armchair child-rearing our decisions and avowing that they were going to use this approach or that, thereby totally crushing parenting. I had two quotes for them:
No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force.
—Helmuth von Moltke the Elder
and
"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."
—Mike Tyson
And that's kinda how it went for them. We were lucky to have a big kid who tanked up at 8 p.m., went to sleep easily, and stayed down most of the night and has generally been pretty mellow and low-maintenance. He responded really well to some cherry-picked stuff about the importance of a consistent bedtime routine. Some of them had sorta squirrelly sleep resisters who evolved into mean little pinchers and biters over the years, resistant to any attempt to normalize their schedules.
"I guess you were right about Ferberizing."
"Only to the extent I said all of it was sort of a coin toss. I had no opinion on what it would do to your child and didn't offer one at the time."
If they'd extended the same courtesy to me I'd extended to them—gentle acknowledgement that parenting is hard even when it's easy, and patient refusal to judge people doing the best they can—they wouldn't have had to feel like we needed to have some sort of conversation about who was right or wrong.
posted by mph at 10:06 AM on January 17, 2018 [7 favorites]
Peers who hadn't yet had children were full of opinions about the whole thing, sorta armchair child-rearing our decisions and avowing that they were going to use this approach or that, thereby totally crushing parenting. I had two quotes for them:
No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force.
—Helmuth von Moltke the Elder
and
"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."
—Mike Tyson
And that's kinda how it went for them. We were lucky to have a big kid who tanked up at 8 p.m., went to sleep easily, and stayed down most of the night and has generally been pretty mellow and low-maintenance. He responded really well to some cherry-picked stuff about the importance of a consistent bedtime routine. Some of them had sorta squirrelly sleep resisters who evolved into mean little pinchers and biters over the years, resistant to any attempt to normalize their schedules.
"I guess you were right about Ferberizing."
"Only to the extent I said all of it was sort of a coin toss. I had no opinion on what it would do to your child and didn't offer one at the time."
If they'd extended the same courtesy to me I'd extended to them—gentle acknowledgement that parenting is hard even when it's easy, and patient refusal to judge people doing the best they can—they wouldn't have had to feel like we needed to have some sort of conversation about who was right or wrong.
posted by mph at 10:06 AM on January 17, 2018 [7 favorites]
"There's a manual, all right! She'll give it to you! One page a day!"
My coworker likes to quote his kid's pediatrician with similar ideas. "All the books...the problem is...babies can't read."
For me, it wasn't the manuals that were the problem. It was the middle of the night internet searches. I remember when every single google result for "baby won't sleep" and "baby will only sleep on me" had turned the purple that indicated that I had clicked through.
posted by vunder at 10:20 AM on January 17, 2018 [5 favorites]
My coworker likes to quote his kid's pediatrician with similar ideas. "All the books...the problem is...babies can't read."
For me, it wasn't the manuals that were the problem. It was the middle of the night internet searches. I remember when every single google result for "baby won't sleep" and "baby will only sleep on me" had turned the purple that indicated that I had clicked through.
posted by vunder at 10:20 AM on January 17, 2018 [5 favorites]
I remember the day I put all the gifted baby books in a couple of grocery bags and walked them over to the recycling bin. Someone scolded me for not donating them to Goodwill or selling them at Powells, so I explained the ways in which their advice had mainly helped to increase the guilt levels in the house, that I couldn't imagine doing that to someone else, and that I wasn't willing to have another syllable back in circulation. ow the
I love how they produced guilt even on their way out. Also, donating or selling used books probably results in someone else, not you, discarding them: at least you made sure they went to recycling, not the landfill.
posted by thelonius at 10:33 AM on January 17, 2018 [4 favorites]
I love how they produced guilt even on their way out. Also, donating or selling used books probably results in someone else, not you, discarding them: at least you made sure they went to recycling, not the landfill.
posted by thelonius at 10:33 AM on January 17, 2018 [4 favorites]
I haven't thought about this years (Mrs Bored for Science and I aren't quite at the "let's have kids" stage), but years and years ago, I would up doing a research paper on different generations of Spock's Baby and Child Care (from the original 1940s version up through a 1990s version). The changes were dramatic, particularly around the shifts in prevailing psychological models (the transition from behaviorism to cognitive psychology). Totally haven't thought about that since 2003 or so.
posted by Making You Bored For Science at 11:01 AM on January 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by Making You Bored For Science at 11:01 AM on January 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
It was the middle of the night internet searches.
My partner is pregnant. I am the Designated Googler - we basically have a longstanding policy that neither one of us has to Google our own bodily symptoms lest the symptom-haver become convinced of his or her impending death - so I do the middle of the night internet searches for "is this thing that is weird right now because I am pregnant"?
Spoiler: the answer is always yes.
posted by madcaptenor at 11:02 AM on January 17, 2018 [7 favorites]
My partner is pregnant. I am the Designated Googler - we basically have a longstanding policy that neither one of us has to Google our own bodily symptoms lest the symptom-haver become convinced of his or her impending death - so I do the middle of the night internet searches for "is this thing that is weird right now because I am pregnant"?
Spoiler: the answer is always yes.
posted by madcaptenor at 11:02 AM on January 17, 2018 [7 favorites]
so I do the middle of the night internet searches for "is this thing that is weird right now because I am pregnant"?
Spoiler: the answer is always yes.
My gallows humor in the middle of pregnancy was that if you google any symptom the answer is usually, yes, you have cancer. But if you google that same symptom + pregnancy, the answer is usually oh yeah, that's totally normal.
posted by peacheater at 11:23 AM on January 17, 2018 [14 favorites]
Spoiler: the answer is always yes.
My gallows humor in the middle of pregnancy was that if you google any symptom the answer is usually, yes, you have cancer. But if you google that same symptom + pregnancy, the answer is usually oh yeah, that's totally normal.
posted by peacheater at 11:23 AM on January 17, 2018 [14 favorites]
Someone recommended this baby health book on AskMe that seemed really good (upon reading it as a nonparent, deciding whether to gift it to a friend):
If your kid eats this book, everything will still be okay -- it's basically a brief guide to figuring out whether you need to take the kid to the emergency room right now, or if the problem can wait for a call to the pediatrician tomorrow.
posted by LobsterMitten at 11:29 AM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
If your kid eats this book, everything will still be okay -- it's basically a brief guide to figuring out whether you need to take the kid to the emergency room right now, or if the problem can wait for a call to the pediatrician tomorrow.
posted by LobsterMitten at 11:29 AM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
LobsterMitten, I'm kind of disappointed that that didn't turn out to be a novelty book made of food.
posted by madcaptenor at 11:59 AM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by madcaptenor at 11:59 AM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
I enjoyed the article but I‘m also kind of questioning its premise. I mean...the super-naive parent who actually believes following a book will solve her tricky parenting issues...isn‘t that just a straw man (or straw woman, in most cases)? I don‘t know *any* of the parents caricatured in this discussion and I know parents across the spectrum - from ‚sleep train‘ to ‚breastfeed until 7 and homeschool in a school bus‘ ... and none of them lives ‚by the book‘. They read these books with mild amusement, try a few things here and there, and ignore the rest. Which has been my approach as well. Give parents some credit, they are (mostly) not naive, ignorant or misguided...
posted by The Toad at 12:01 PM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by The Toad at 12:01 PM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
When Mrs Hector first became pregnant we had just returned from post conflict Africa . Her family was thousands of miles away (this is pre Whattsapp era for the young ones ) and I was estranged from mine. Opening up the end chapters of "What to expect..." and finding the exact same question we were asking ourselves was such a relief. Not the answer, just the fact that someone else had lived through the same. Sometimes that's all you need. That and common sense
posted by Malingering Hector at 12:07 PM on January 17, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by Malingering Hector at 12:07 PM on January 17, 2018 [7 favorites]
It was the middle of the night internet searches.
Oh yeah. Those were actually oddly reassuring for me. Because no matter how bizarre the situation, they always ended up the same way.
My wife: Honey, there are salamanders coming out of her nose! (Hypothetical Example)
Me: Did you say salamanders?
My Wife: Yeah, look! Is that normal? That can't be normal.
Me: Hang on. [Starts typing] Baby has...
Google Autocomplete: ...salamanders coming out of nose.
Me: Huh.
And invariably - invariably - the number one hit would be a thread on some parenting forum or another from like 2005 going, "My baby has salamanders coming out of her nose! Is that normal?"
And invariably - invariably - there would be like 83 responses from parents going, "Perfectly normal." And "Oh yeah, you're going to get salamanders." And "Mine had that with newts too!"
Spared ourselves more than one frantic after-hours call to the on-call service our pediatricians have for dealing with panicked parents in the dead of night.
posted by Naberius at 12:18 PM on January 17, 2018 [14 favorites]
Oh yeah. Those were actually oddly reassuring for me. Because no matter how bizarre the situation, they always ended up the same way.
My wife: Honey, there are salamanders coming out of her nose! (Hypothetical Example)
Me: Did you say salamanders?
My Wife: Yeah, look! Is that normal? That can't be normal.
Me: Hang on. [Starts typing] Baby has...
Google Autocomplete: ...salamanders coming out of nose.
Me: Huh.
And invariably - invariably - the number one hit would be a thread on some parenting forum or another from like 2005 going, "My baby has salamanders coming out of her nose! Is that normal?"
And invariably - invariably - there would be like 83 responses from parents going, "Perfectly normal." And "Oh yeah, you're going to get salamanders." And "Mine had that with newts too!"
Spared ourselves more than one frantic after-hours call to the on-call service our pediatricians have for dealing with panicked parents in the dead of night.
posted by Naberius at 12:18 PM on January 17, 2018 [14 favorites]
Give parents some credit, they are (mostly) not naive, ignorant or misguided...
I think the thing I hate worse than the advice is the way parents treat each other over the advice. At one point I found myself reading through parenting book reviews in Amazon where parents were (passive-aggressively) abusing each other for positive or negative reviews of a given parenting book.
Like, most people want to get parenting "right" for whatever value of right they're aiming for. And I don't think feeling secure in your own choices is something that comes naturally to everyone. Add to that the scolds who're convinced anything that's not their way is actively harmful to the child, etc. and it's just a toxic stew of guilt and judgment, ladled out by a self-powering flywheel of recrimination and abuse.
New parents are in profound need of kindness, but between well-intentioned advice givers who unintentionally create a sense of constant observation and judgment, and actively abusive drive-by types, they don't always get a lot of it; and that makes it even harder for them to extend it.
posted by mph at 2:56 PM on January 17, 2018 [6 favorites]
I think the thing I hate worse than the advice is the way parents treat each other over the advice. At one point I found myself reading through parenting book reviews in Amazon where parents were (passive-aggressively) abusing each other for positive or negative reviews of a given parenting book.
Like, most people want to get parenting "right" for whatever value of right they're aiming for. And I don't think feeling secure in your own choices is something that comes naturally to everyone. Add to that the scolds who're convinced anything that's not their way is actively harmful to the child, etc. and it's just a toxic stew of guilt and judgment, ladled out by a self-powering flywheel of recrimination and abuse.
New parents are in profound need of kindness, but between well-intentioned advice givers who unintentionally create a sense of constant observation and judgment, and actively abusive drive-by types, they don't always get a lot of it; and that makes it even harder for them to extend it.
posted by mph at 2:56 PM on January 17, 2018 [6 favorites]
As someone who is nearly 20 weeks pregnant, this article was extremely timely and pertinent to me. I’ve been trying to read as much as possible to ease my anxiety about not knowing what to do since this will be my first and I have little to no experience with kids and babies, and this article kind of drove home for me that it’s possible that I’m making myself even more anxious by trying to do All The Reading. I will say though that John Gottman’s relationship and childcare books have been pretty helpful, as well as that book Running on Empty which discusses childhood emotional neglect. As someone who was raised by parents who emotionally neglected me and did other harmful stuff, I feel like my default parenting program has a virus and I basically need to hack it or else I will continue the cycle of abuse. Therapy has helped a bit, but I was hoping that doing research/reading would also help.
This line in the article stood out to me: Our mistake, Gopnik argues, isn’t one of employing the wrong techniques, but of thinking in terms of techniques at all – in imagining that anything as complex as a relationship between humans could be reduced to a set of consciously manipulable variables. I think I just need to keep this to heart and try to do the best I can.
Thanks for posting this - all good things to think about!
posted by FireFountain at 3:10 PM on January 17, 2018 [8 favorites]
This line in the article stood out to me: Our mistake, Gopnik argues, isn’t one of employing the wrong techniques, but of thinking in terms of techniques at all – in imagining that anything as complex as a relationship between humans could be reduced to a set of consciously manipulable variables. I think I just need to keep this to heart and try to do the best I can.
Thanks for posting this - all good things to think about!
posted by FireFountain at 3:10 PM on January 17, 2018 [8 favorites]
I think it can be helpful to read the books. I certainly learned somethings from them, like:
The Wonder Weeks - sometimes, your baby will be inexplicably fussy. You might feel better about it and manage to get through it with less frustration if you imagine that their cognition is making this incredibly fascinating leap forward. Here are some cool things our brains have to figure out in very early life.
Secrets of the Baby Whisperer - your baby cycles through three things: eating, very low key interactions with the world, and sleeping. Lots of babies like it if you are pretty consistent with these things and follow a routine. You might retain your sanity if you think of how you will get some me-time if you can just make it thought the current cycle.
Those are my lame summaries, from what I remember from years ago. It's just that these books need to be taken with a grain of salt. I look at my 7-year-old and - it's maddening, but there's still no real way to tell whether I did things right or messed them up royally. Would she be going to sleep better at night if I had just let her cry it out when she was 9 months old?
Who knows. There's just no point in making yourself sick worrying over it. Now that I'm having my second, I may still read some of them. But I will be reading them very skeptically.
posted by kitcat at 3:39 PM on January 17, 2018
The Wonder Weeks - sometimes, your baby will be inexplicably fussy. You might feel better about it and manage to get through it with less frustration if you imagine that their cognition is making this incredibly fascinating leap forward. Here are some cool things our brains have to figure out in very early life.
Secrets of the Baby Whisperer - your baby cycles through three things: eating, very low key interactions with the world, and sleeping. Lots of babies like it if you are pretty consistent with these things and follow a routine. You might retain your sanity if you think of how you will get some me-time if you can just make it thought the current cycle.
Those are my lame summaries, from what I remember from years ago. It's just that these books need to be taken with a grain of salt. I look at my 7-year-old and - it's maddening, but there's still no real way to tell whether I did things right or messed them up royally. Would she be going to sleep better at night if I had just let her cry it out when she was 9 months old?
Who knows. There's just no point in making yourself sick worrying over it. Now that I'm having my second, I may still read some of them. But I will be reading them very skeptically.
posted by kitcat at 3:39 PM on January 17, 2018
I always thought a good business idea would be essentially Cliff Notes for baby books. One page with every unique and at least somewhat meaningful point or piece of concrete advice (most books have 3-5, some fewer). Because if there's one audience that doesn't have time to read an entire fucking book, it's new parents.
posted by gottabefunky at 10:11 PM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by gottabefunky at 10:11 PM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
Where is this "sleep train" and can I leave the baby on it while I get a good night's sleep?
posted by oheso at 4:11 AM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by oheso at 4:11 AM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
Parents are afraid of some possible bad outcomes for their kids (what exactly these are varies from parent to parent and with the age of the child). They want to believe that there is something they can do to prevent this bad outcome. Buying a book and trying the techniques it recommends is a way to try to prevent it. If the bad outcome is rare, most of the time it will even appear to work.
I think this fear is a significant part of what’s going on with the antivax movement. Parents are afraid of their kids developing autism. There is no scientific consensus on what causes autism (though we’re pretty sure that vaccines aren’t it). The antivax movement offers a simple way to keep your kid from getting autism- don’t vaccinate them. Since a lot of vaccine preventable diseases are relatively rare in the US, your kid probably isn’t going to get them or have serious complications from them even if they aren’t vaccinated. Most kids aren’t autistic, so they probably won’t get autism. It seems to work!
posted by Anne Neville at 6:35 AM on January 18, 2018
I think this fear is a significant part of what’s going on with the antivax movement. Parents are afraid of their kids developing autism. There is no scientific consensus on what causes autism (though we’re pretty sure that vaccines aren’t it). The antivax movement offers a simple way to keep your kid from getting autism- don’t vaccinate them. Since a lot of vaccine preventable diseases are relatively rare in the US, your kid probably isn’t going to get them or have serious complications from them even if they aren’t vaccinated. Most kids aren’t autistic, so they probably won’t get autism. It seems to work!
posted by Anne Neville at 6:35 AM on January 18, 2018
I mean, for each kid, there are some things that work and some things that fail miserably. As long as you don't get sucked into the guilt (that part is real), reading a variety of suggestions for things to try can in fact be quite helpful. Sometimes one or more of them actually works. However, the notion that there is One True Way For All Children is balderdash.
I also suspect that, in the vein of "No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force.", people tend to espouse the theories that tend to mesh with their kids. When my elder child was a toddler/preschooler, I was a super-rigid scheduler. We would not attend any weekend event from 1-4PM because that was naptime. My mom used to rail at me - I needed to loosen up - why did I hate fun?; but no, it was because we were in for hours of screaming if we messed with naptime. However! Not all kids are like this! My other kid is not like this! And so, in the past year or so, we've finally become able to attend other kids' birthday parties (which are inevitably in the early afternoon).
Unfortunately people have a bad habit of becoming a little evangelistic about the things that worked extremely well for their specific kids. There are absolutely tactics that work very well for specific kids in specific situations. It's when you try to extrapolate to absolute truth that it all goes to shit.
posted by telepanda at 7:30 AM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
I also suspect that, in the vein of "No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force.", people tend to espouse the theories that tend to mesh with their kids. When my elder child was a toddler/preschooler, I was a super-rigid scheduler. We would not attend any weekend event from 1-4PM because that was naptime. My mom used to rail at me - I needed to loosen up - why did I hate fun?; but no, it was because we were in for hours of screaming if we messed with naptime. However! Not all kids are like this! My other kid is not like this! And so, in the past year or so, we've finally become able to attend other kids' birthday parties (which are inevitably in the early afternoon).
Unfortunately people have a bad habit of becoming a little evangelistic about the things that worked extremely well for their specific kids. There are absolutely tactics that work very well for specific kids in specific situations. It's when you try to extrapolate to absolute truth that it all goes to shit.
posted by telepanda at 7:30 AM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
I've spawned a few monkeys. What I've learned is that babies do not cry for no reason. There is always a reason.
Also, it is very helpful to know the physics of the digestive tract and the path that air bubbles might take. Helps with burping. Pat on the back while rocking gently from side to side works wonders and can even minimize the messy volcano effect.
posted by Monkey0nCrack at 5:16 AM on January 19, 2018
Also, it is very helpful to know the physics of the digestive tract and the path that air bubbles might take. Helps with burping. Pat on the back while rocking gently from side to side works wonders and can even minimize the messy volcano effect.
posted by Monkey0nCrack at 5:16 AM on January 19, 2018
« Older Gritty McVittie | Bengal Shadows Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
On the other hand, I know a mother who took her small baby to hospital based on the advice in "What To Expect When You're Expecting" — one of the books singled out in his article — against the advice of her husband. The baby turned out to have meningitis, where 24 hours could have made all the difference. It could be dead or severely handicapped by now if she hadn't read the book and followed the advice therein promptly.
So yes, there's a lot of crap out there and some of it is very suspect, but that's less than half the picture. Personally, when we had our first baby, what with all our parents in another country, I was lost and off-balance as hell and WTEWYE (& prenatal classes) gave me a good framework on which to base my own parenting.
posted by ianso at 5:10 AM on January 17, 2018 [8 favorites]