Once again we are still fighting this completely made up claim, in 1962 pediatrician Walter W. Sackett Jr wrote, “If we teach our offspring to expect everything to be provided on demand, we must admit the possibility that we are sowing the seeds of socialism.” (By which, as an American in the middle of the Cold War he meant a damn Ruskie). Clearly that’s ridiculous, and yet, people believed it to be scientific fact – because a doctor said it.
Which brings me to the other major difference with Holt and Watson compared to previous authors. They were doctors. People believed them because they were the “experts”, the ones with the fancy letters after their name. At the time of their writing, infant mortality rates were sky high. Mothers were scared. They didn’t know why babies died, no one ever had. All they had to go on was a collection of old wives tales and superstitions, and here was a doctor who had written a book which he claimed was based in scientific fact saying that babies needed to cry for two-three hours a day in order to fully develop their lungs. It sounded true at the time. 100+ years later we know that babies lungs are actually fully developed by 38 weeks and that the process of labour strengthens them ready for breathing in the outside world. But yet, this is still one of the most commonly heard pieces of mothering “advice” – sometimes still given by doctors. The impact of a male, doctor (that’s four levels of privilege: gender, class, education and profession) in a patriarchal and classist society telling thousands of concerned mothers that something was fact, cannot be underestimated. Even now the number of women who say things like “I don’t need to know that much about childbirth, my doctor will tell me what to do” is astronomical. We have been conditioned to believe that doctors are the font of all knowledge, are always completely up to date, never get things wrong and always put your best interest first.
They were doctors. People believed them because they were the “experts”, the ones with the fancy letters after their name. At the time of their writing, infant mortality rates were sky high. Mothers were scared.
Now, we’ve looked at where the supposed need to “Cry It Out” came from, but what about the belief that babies need to be trained to sleep in the first place?
Karin Bergstermann has written a paper summarising the history of infant sleep in Germany. Specifically, she focuses on how the cultural climate shifted to one where parents believe that their children need to be taught to sleep, and where mothers feel pressure to sleep train their children as well as house them in a separate room. Annie at PHD in Parenting has thankfully sumarised Bergstermann’s article in English, and I highly advise you all to read it.
So what did Bergstermann find? Politics played an interesting role in shifting the climate of parenting advice. Do read the whole article, but I will quote Annie’s conclusions here:
“Overall, as I read Bergstermann’s review of the literature, I noticed two major shifts. The first was when the advice turned from information of a medical nature (developmental information on normal sleep from doctors and medical professors) to “housewife” advice (tips and tricks that would benefit the mother, but that don’t necessarily consider the best interests of the child). The second shift was when the advice became politicized, turning it from something mothers may want to consider to something they were expected to do, creating the ‘good mother’ and pitting her against the ‘bad mother’ who spoils and coddles her child.”
Now the whole myth of the “bad mother” had actually existed in the housewife magazines and books as well as in “old wives tales” for a long time before 1930s Germany. Mothers were blamed for anything and everything that went wrong with a child. Dwarfism? In nine out of 10 cases it is the mother’s fault. Dumb child – mother’s fault. Screaming child – mother’s fault. Stillbirth – mother’s fault. As I said earlier, they had no way of knowing what actually caused these things, so they just guessed. And in a world where women were inferior, they often got the blame. Conversely, if your son was bright and healthy it was clearly the father’s influence and in the 1740s doctors tried to claim that men should raise children because women were too weak minded and couldn’t be trusted to do a decent job of it.
The change in 30s Germany was that you were now a “bad mother” if you did not sleep train your child. This was new. Before that plenty of “experts” had recommended and even strongly pushed for sleep schedules and warned against night feeding, but their arguments for it had been “scientific”. (As in they claimed there was a health-related benefit). Now, however, it was not just recommended – if you didn’t do it you were damaging your baby.
This is still the core argument used by sleep trainers today. It comes in a few variations. There’s the standard “if you don’t teach your baby to sleep/sleep on a schedule/self soothe they will never learn to do it/will always need your help/you’ll create a rod for your own back”. But we now also have the supposedly scientific evidence that babies will suffer growth retardation and brain damage if they don’t get x number of hours sleep at y age.
This taps into two sets of maternal fears. The first being the irrational yet extremely common fear that a child’s behaviour at x age will be their behaviour forever. This is quite clearly illogical, but given that we live in a culture where almost no one has lived experience with babies and children before they have one, it’s easy to see why so many first-time mums fall into this trap. We have no knowledge of normal child development to allay our fears. The second set of fears it taps into is the fear of causing damage to their child’s health. This is a logical fear, but one that is in this case being exploited to undermine mothers’ self-belief, make them trust in “experts” and convince them that sleep training is a “necessary evil”. Which is clearly bull. It’s not necessary at all. It never was. Babies all over the world, for all of time, have eventually taught themselves to sleep through the night, have eventually taught themselves to sleep independently, have eventually weaned themselves and have napped on their mothers or in the arms of another loving caregiver for every nap with no schedule or clock watching for as long or as little as that particular baby needs at that particular stage of their individual development with no adverse effects.
That is what the science tells us is “normal” human development, and everywhere, except for the West, this is how babies and toddlers still live. This is how we westerners raised our children before the industrial revolution came along with its need to force mothers into factories and a need for compliant workers. It’s how we raised our children until some doctor with a publishing connection decided to tell us that it was wrong.
And it’s how I parent because I don’t rely on Victorian myths to inform my parenting choices.
Originally published HERE.
Nicole Gorring is a single mama to her beautiful boy C who was born in 2012. Before motherhood, Nicole had always followed the expected path. Not anymore. You can read more from Nicole at Integrity Calling: a blog about birth, parenting, and generally challenging social norms.
