Sleep Training IS A Feminist Issue (Just Not in the Way You Think)
A piece is making the rounds claiming that sleep training is a feminist issue. I think it is too, just not the way the original author believes.
A piece is making the rounds claiming that sleep training is a feminist issue. I think it is too, just not the way the original author believes.
I feel like sleep trainers are like a mythical monster where every time you cut off one head with science and reason, two more take their place that are even more dangerous than before. In the last few months alone, the media has highlighted this method of locking your child in a room for 12 hours a day under the guise of “helping” your child and a method of sleep training newborns by not feeding them at night.
A study in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics has made rounds recently with a bold claim that bedsharing actually harms infant sleep at 18 months by doubling the risk of “sleep problems”.
Today I've had enough. I've had enough of the rampant stupidity that permeates popular parenting advice and the asinine conclusions about responsive parenting. So here's what I REALLY think.
Doctors, family, and baby "experts" like to promote cry-it-out and controlled crying as forms of sleep interventions for infants despite protests that it ignores infant communication and stresses parents out. What if, contrary to what parents are told, it also doesn't really work too well?
For new parents, a certain level of sleep deprivation is part of the job description, but how can one stave off the negative effects or at least minimize them?
I hear people argue all the time that we don't need to be as responsive to our children because there aren't wild animals anymore. We couldn't be looking at the issue any more wrong if we tried.
Dr. Haig suggests infant night waking is an evolutionary trick for babies to increase mom's postpartum amenorrhea and suggests sleep training is therefore okay. But is this the whole story?
This is for those of you who have gone the cry-it-out route and now regret it. The two biggest questions I'm asked on the topic - have I done irreparable harm and can I fix it? - are discussed herein.
Most "expert" bits of advice rely upon the assumption that what works for one baby will work for all... Yeah, right.