Each generation has its parent whisper.
My mother and father had Benjamin Spock, The pediatrician who has promoted the revolutionary idea that children should be dear and kept, not whipped or spanked. His 1946 monument book, “The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care”, has become one of the best -selling books of the 20th century.
When I got pregnant, I died “what to expect when you expect”, by Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel, who dominated the market for years after its publication in 1984. I have assumed it since it fell into a little disadvantage for what a number of new parents consider it a alarmist approachThe leading detractors to call it “how to panic when you wait”.
After my daughter's birth in 1992, I relied on T. Berry BrazeltonA deeply compassionate pediatrician whose “contact points” books have popularized new ways of thinking about the development of children. Each development jump, he wrote, is accompanied by a temporary regression.
Then came Harvey KarpWho wrote “The happiest baby in the 2002 bloc” in 2002. His important contribution was the idea that the first three months of life are essentially the “fourth quarter”. He taught us to trigger the baby's comfort reflex by taking him, an ancient practice which he helped to revive and make chased sounds. He was also my daughter's first pediatrician, but when he published his mega-Retcord, my daughter was already 10 years old.
And now she is waiting for her own child.
Friends of my age who have become grandparents tell me that things have changed. Their children generally adopt a more structured approach to meals and bedtime, for example. And the whispering parent for his generation of digital natives, high with easy access to all human knowledge, is not a pediatrician, a psychiatrist or a doctor.
She is Emily Oster, economist at Brown University and mother of two children whose books “wait better”, “Cribsheet” and “family business” encourage parents to adopt a decision -based approach. (Its popular website is Mother.)
Armed with the best and most relevant information of high quality studies, it supports, mothers and dads can make their own decisions concerning subjects such as breastfeeding, sleep training, toilet training and – perhaps Its most controversial position – Whether it's ok to have an occasional glass of wine during pregnancy, as she did. (I had two glasses of wine the first night of the Los Angeles riots, when I was four months pregnant, and my daughter has diplomas from UC Berkeley and Yale.)
I was happy to have a girl in part because I did not want to face the prospect of circumcision, which was going to be a controversial problem with me. In “Cribsheet”, Oster describes its risks and advantages. While friends told me My concern about inflicting pain On an infant was ridiculous, Oster quotes A 1997 study Showing infants who experience pain during circumcision have stronger responses to pain at their blows four to six months later. In other words, the data have confirmed my fears – although doctors now tend to recommend a kind of pain blocker for the procedure.
“I wanted to approach pregnancy of the way I was used to the rest of my life, as a person who loves data,” said Oster by phone on Thursday. “I wrote” To expect better “of this frustration.”
After the birth of her first child, for example, she made decisions concerning the evening meal as an economist. Was it more judicious to cook from scratch, to use a meal preparation service or take to take away? “How does the cost of these choices compare to the planning and preparation of meals by myself?” She writes. And what was the value of his time, or “opportunity cost”, as an economist would say?
“This economic approach to decision-making,” she writes, “does not make a choice for you, only tells you how to structure it.”
Dr. Karp told me one day that becoming a parent for the first time is like standing on one side of a high brick wall: you can only imagine Which is on the other side. “With a first child,” writes Oster, “most of us are ready to be a little surprised by all the experience. After all, you have never done it before. Even me, an extremely neurotic person, I knew that things would happen that I did not expect.”
On the advice of her doctor, for example, she put mittens on her little daughter, Penelope, so she would not inadvertently scratch. Then his mother told him that it would guarantee that Penelope would never learn to use her hands.
Oster plunged into research. Although she has found no study on the question of whether the mittens prevent babies from learning to use their hands, she found a showing that during the last half century, there was only 20 reports Babies injured by mittens – barely enough to compete.
“I think there are a lot of … older generation advice which, I think, are often very well intentioned and which are not always useful,” Oster told me. “I think that part of the problem is actually – and I say that with love – it is difficult to remember what it is to have a baby.”
Pushed by studies or not, each generation offers new parental practices and prohibitions.
“My mother said:” To put the baby to sleep on his stomach “, said Oster. “For data -based reasons, we don't do this anymore.”
It turns out that babies sleep on their stomach more at risk sudden infantile death syndrome. The current expert advice is that infants must be asleep on the back with nothing other than a mattress and a sheet adjusted in the cradle or cradle. The “bumper” of the cradle were forbidden In the United States, in 2022 because babies can be trapped against them and suffocate. The co-sleep with your baby is also considered a non-NU.
“It is now absolutely something that you will do with not,” said Oster, “and it is also something that people do and do not speak.”
However, says to Oster: “What I try to be clear is that the co-coming is not without risk, and that is even as safe as possible, there are low risks depending on the risks that people take every day. No choice in life has no risk, and you have to balance the risk against the benefit.”
Thirty-two years ago, when I was pregnant with Chloé, my colleague from Times Bob Sipchen, father of three children, took me aside.
“Listen, Abcarian,” he said. “The only thing you need to know is that no parent thinks that another parent is doing a good job.”
He was so right. One of the great challenges of parenting is to learn to strengthen yourself against the opinions and advice of all the others.
This is where parents' whispers come in: the best of them give you the confidence necessary to make what suits you.
Bluesky: @ rabcarian.bsky.social. Subjects: @rabcarian
