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As any parent can tell you, there are (far too) many people, books, websites, and magazine articles offering child-rearing advice to the new parent. Much of the advice is related to topics that, frankly, really don’t matter-trust me, the difference between swaddling my daughter “properly” versus swaddling her in my own highly incapable and messy way was undetectable at 4 a.m.; she cried either way.
The big issues, though-that’s where things can get scary. Take, for example, the following advice to late-19th-century parents, which was published as part of a pamphlet called The Care and Feeding of Children by Luther Emmett Holt:
It is tempting to dismiss this kind of bad advice as simply uninformed by more recent advances in research with infants (and in this case, it’s a reasonable assumption-infancy research was virtually nonexistent in 1894). Surprisingly, though, parents are still taught child care techniques that are inconsistent with psychological research with infants and children. Take, for example, the following blog post about cry-it-out techniques from a parenting blog called Partners in Parenting:
“What does this (sleep training) method entail? It’s pretty simple: put the baby down asleep at bedtime and don’t return to the room until the end of the sleep period. So, at nap-time, you put the baby down cooing and gurgling, walk out of the room, close the door, and don’t return for two hours — even if your baby is crying the entire time. Same thing at nighttime.”
This is advice given to parents by many pediatricians, nurses, sleep experts, and parenting gurus. There are lots of variations on the theme, but the gist is the same: Babies will learn to put themselves to sleep, and will go to sleep without a fuss, if parents will stop rewarding the infant’s cry with a response (comforting, rocking, feeding, etc). I can’t emphasize enough how common this advice is-there are numerous books on the topic, child care websites recommend it, and at every single well-baby visit I took my infant daughter to, we were encouraged to “train” Lily to sleep by letting her cry in her crib if need be. (In case you’re curious, we managed to teach Lily to fall asleep without leaving her to cry alone.)
Thoughts? We’re talking about attachment this week in class. Is this advice consistent with fostering secure attachments?
I agree that this is advice is everywhere. My own parents always said when my little brother was younger that if you just let him cry alone in his room at he will eventually tire himself out and it’s better if he just learns to not be dependent and spoil him by responding to his every call.
One of the readings for this week was about this very issue. Ainsworth et. al. (1972) debunks this argument and supports it with evidence:
“These findings are, of course, inconsistent with the views of those who assume that to respond to crying is to reinforce it, so that mothers who respond promptly are likely to have ’spoiled’ babies who cry more, whereas mothers who refuse to reward this changeworthy behavior by responding to it should themselves be rewarded by having babies who cry little. According to our data the reverse is true.”
The interesting thing is that this article was published in the early 1970’s and the populace still believes in the opposite. But, lets face the facts, a best selling baby book by a “doctor” will have a greater influence on the masses than empirically valid research. It’s why people like Dr. Phil and any other advice guru is able to hold sway over millions of scared mothers that want to just do right with their own. It’s just too bad that often this advice is about as worthless as the paper degrees are printed on.
I agree with Justin. Even when I started working as an Au Pair in 2002, my host parents told me similar things about putting the little one to sleep.
I do NOT think the above mentioned advice fosters a secure attachment at all:
Justin already mentioned the article by Ainsworth et al. who also label crying as one of the “attachment behaviors” mostly shown in situations perceived as threatening. In their study the Strange Situation Procedure was applied and they found out that most of the children in the sample started crying when the mother first left the room and that a stranger couldn’t calm the baby down. Ainsworth et al. reason that it was clearly the mother’s absence which caused the crying and not only the mere feeling of loneliness.
It seems that if you put your baby to bed and leave the room, the child might perceive the situation as threatening and needs to be reassured that everything is alright & that his/her attachment figure (= in this case the mother) is still around and responding to his/her needs.
In the chapter about the development of the person we also read for this week (by Thompson) it is also said that there is a
“modest but reliable association between the sensitivity of the parent and the security of the child”
- which implies that the better the caregiver responds to the signals of the child, the better (or more secure) the attachment. The chapter also mentions that attachment is not necessarily stable over time and that e.g. “stressful events” can lead to a change in attachment.
So, if the infant cries in his/her crib and does not get any help or reassurement, the affectinal tie between the child and the mother might change from secure to insecure or disorganized.
All in all, I think the above mentioned advice is not a good one in terms of attachment theory and it is sad that such books are still published although research provides us with completely different findings.
Hi Lara,
I just can’t help but write something too, but this will probably be less developmental and more about research paradigm. I think a lot of those old parenting advices are influenced by the history of psychology. Since we (earlier psychology field) had some “physics-envy”, the field had more behaviorists-type research studies (observable behavior, easier to manipulate and measure). Voila, Watson and Skinner were the Zeitgeists (and probably still are). Then, those research studies influenced the advices, which are very behaviorist. If baby cry, the parents need to distinguish it. And now, finally, we are focusing on the “softer” (which I do not agree) part of psychology- attachment. By the way, those earlier behaviorist studies had a hidden layer of oppression (sexism). Behaviors are outwardly observable, therefore they are good; emotions are inwardly, therefore, they are not good. How did that associate with oppression? This parallel to the social norms that male needs to be active agent of his environment (outward), but female needs to be docile and obedient (inward). Therefore, studies about outward behaviors are good, but inward emotions are ignored.
Gee, I hope I am making sense.
P.S. I miss you and Lily, any plan on coming down to Dallas?
Is there any research into whether parents are more likely to let boy babies cry it out than girls?
Just curious, thinking about how connected many women are compared to men.
I recently became interested in birth order because of an after dinner debate. You know, the theory or believe that first borns are type A’s and second borns are ignored, etc… etc… I discussed the issue with a few social psychologsts that explained to me that there wasn’t much science behind the concept. Now, I’m not trying to get in a discussion about birth order; however in my own research I did come across a few studies that identified a significant decrease in “face time” between parents and their second born child. As a parent of a young child - I can’t imagine how I’d ever have the same amount of time to make the same kind of investment in the second child as I did the first. Do we need to add someting extra to the second child to make sure we’re building healthy attachments?