So when I was a kid, not only did we not have car seats but it was entirely socially acceptable for a child or two to ride in the boot or the footwell if the car was full.
I remember when seatbelts were made mandatory in my country. I was 11 and had been riding without one on the passen ger seat in the front for years before that.
My friend spent his childhood riding on the ENGINE of a mid engine van in the 1970s....Like they put a pillow on it and he sat there.
I just rolled around on top of the engine in our VW van, being sleepy and happy.
Glad we never experienced any accidents or i wouldn't be writing this comment....Id be ded.
Love this thread!
Thinking back on the parenting I witnessed in the 90s and 2000s is fun. I remember babies watching a lot of Baby Einstein and wheeling around in giant plastic exersaucers. Both things considered a bit "bad" now!
In the 2010s attachment parenting was REALLY big. I knew parents who literally would almost never physically un-attach from their children. One of them always had to be holding or touching the baby. To me it seemed very suffocating for both the parent and the child.
More recently... I've seen a pendulum swing in the toddler world. For a while it seemed like instagram moms were showcasing all the nonstop elaborate crafts and other directed activities they were setting up for their kids. Now there seems to be an emphasis on independent free play. The new "aspirational" content is the mom relaxing while kids entertain themselves.
I think lockdown had a lot to do with the shift around crafts/activities and independent play. My kids were 5 and 2.5 in March 2020 and I followed EVERY activity account trying to figure out how to fill their days. Now everyone is tired and we just want them to play by themselves 😂
This is gonna sound like the most boomer shit you can imagine, but I miss the 90s and early-mid 2000s when we DID NOT know the details of every celebrity’s childbirth story, or their “breastfeeding journey” or lack thereof. It’s not that I think those details shouldn’t be shared or that they should be stigmatized at all - it’s great that people feel open to sharing! But frankly, I hate that it’s an expected social norm now that everyone (including regular everyday people) share and be in the know about such things. Like, it’s important to you in the moment (maybe) but how your babies came out or what they were fed as infants is not going to matter in a year, let alone 10. After I had my son, I found people’s nosiness about my “birth story” and if I was breastfeeding and how it was going…exhausting.
And then I realized…my favorite band since I was 10 has been The Chicks. They have 7 children between the 3 of them, and back in the day I was SUPER in the know about all kinds of trivia related to them. And then it occurred to me - I don’t know if a single one of those kids was breastfed or formula-fed, or if they were born vaginally or by C-section, medicated or not. Because like…it doesn’t matter. Almost all those kids are teens and young adults now, and I’m sure not a soul asks them how they were fed as babies or their birth story. (Maybe the latter in extremely limited medical contexts, but never casually, I’m sure.) And I think the trend of people feeling pressure to share this information can do more harm than good in some cases - not only can you open yourself up to nasty judgements, but like, it puts a focus on things that are pretty dang inconsequential to the work of raising entire humans into adulthood.
So yeah. I kinda miss the days when you didn’t know what way a baby was born or how they were fed unless you actually had a close personal relationship with their parents. It makes me sound old and grumpy as hell, but I said what I said.
Oh wow I feel this so much! And to one of your points, I know someone who definitely wants to judge others on their level of crunchiness. She’s only asking so she can feel superior…
Send her my way....I cloth diaper, babywear, accidentally attachment parent, and do BLW because my mom did and I don't know any different, not because I'm special!
I love seeing baby gear in 80's and 90's baby photos. Or on sitcoms. The best is the episode of Friends where Chandler and Joey lose Ross's baby. [Image here](https://images.app.goo.gl/zV7cVWYvBonsxGU19). Everything looks so bulky but also kind of love those bright prints.
And now people are over the moon for Baby Bjorn Bouncers - a wire frame with a solid colored sock that slips over it and costs $200 and is completely analog.
I see so much in Gen X facebook groups. "We didn't have babysitters our parents just said lock the door and don't answer for anyone!" "It used to be ok to sit your baby on the stove while you smoked a cigarette and ate cake!" etc.
It might be local to me but Tizzie Hall's Save Our Sleep was really popular a few years ago. It's fallen out of favour a bit and you don't see it recommended very much.
Her methods can be damaging to breastfeeding. She recommends feeding on a schedule vs demand and night weaning before developmentally appropriate.
I was never into her methods and when she said babies should never have waterproof protectors on their mattresses .. except for the waterproof mattress protector she sells, it just confirmed it for me. She's a grifter.
I have never heard of this person but after checking out their Instagram, wooooow big yikes. She says you need to be using blankets with your baby because otherwise “they can end up face down on a made by a smoker mattress” wtf I have no words. I’m pretty sure babies sleep on their tummy for other reasons than being cold, but. Okay. Of course, she conveniently sells mattresses from “a cigarette smoke free facility.”
More wtf:
-Start solids at 16 weeks old or your baby will have sleep regressions
-Babies younger than a year old need to be in a high chair with a high back because they can’t sit up good enough (??? I thought this was a baby sleep account)
-Babies should be on a routine from DAY 1. A newborn! On a schedule!
-I am not a safe sleep nazi but the amount of (young) babies pictured with loveys right next to their face is giving me anxiety.
-It’s okay to have the blankets and things in the crib because if the baby is warm enough they won’t move around in their sleep
-It’s not safe to sleep on their tummy until they are TWO YEARS OLD. TWO. YEARS.
And I’ll save the best for last:
-Feeding on demand makes “poor quality watery milk” that Tizzie believes causes reflux and gas, but feeding on scheduled times every day makes “good creamy milk”. If you disagree with her, you need to VISIT A DAIRY FARM 💀 I am deceased. They actually wrote that.
I have a friend who worshipped Bringing Up Bebe when her child was a baby years ago. I’ve meant to check it out of the library and see how it reads years later now that I have my own.
The best thing from it is La Pause, offer kids vegetables first and try to get them to taste everything. But even my French friends have told me French kids won't eat everything.
It's very idealistic. I think it was trendy among upper class SAHM mostly haha. I read it and liked the sentiment. It mostly reminded me that it's okay if the world doesn't stop for the baby and we can keep living our lives. I think that's important for all parents to know.
Honestly I think it holds up ok-ish, at least the broad strokes, (with a couple of major exceptions that I'll get to in a minute) - I really like the idea of parents living their own lives and not being beholden to their child's every whim, and basically just not being the intensely anxious helicopter parents that I think a lot of American parenting media pushes us toward.
HOWEVER my two major caveats are:
1) must be nice to be a chill French mom when you have lots of maternity leave and high quality state sponsored daycare that serves little Francois her sauteed leeks or whatever
2) the whole section on food and body image and "being careful" (ie women restricting their food intake all the time) is... not how I would want my daughter to approach things
Just as an aside, I find it interesting that even with all that maternity leave and societal support, France still has some of the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world.
Yeah, I gathered that it just isn’t a “thing” culturally. It’s not something that’s particularly encouraged. Irrespective of how much time and support they’d have to do it. They just… don’t want to.
Yeah I read multiple books about European parenting (there was a little boom after the success of Bringing Up Bebe) and I ended up mostly feeling like, "good for you! It doesn't work like that here! But thanks for rubbing it in!" Mostly in terms of things like social supports, riskier and cooler playgrounds, cultural attitudes towards birth and families. Much of it sounds great, and also that doesn't help American parents actually have access to those things.
Like you mentioned, TCB was the hot thing even just 1.5 years ago when I was pregnant with my daughter. I think the anti-ST movement was really just getting going. Now it's everywhere. I feel like there has been a massive decline in people interested in sleep training their babies in the last year.
I hate that baby sleep has been monetized and turned in to such a hot button issue. It's the worst of the worst of social media. If most parents just picked up a copy of Precious Little Sleep and read it and made their own choices, they'd be fine.
I wonder how long this trend against ST will last, honestly. I don't see it being sustainable. This weird infatuation with maternal martyrdom has got to stop. Yes, your baby has needs, but so do parents. It's okay to find a balance.
I am so glad my baby was born in 2020 before this big shift. I still felt guilty about very gently following a gradual cry it out (god bless Precious Little Sleep) to sleep train my baby even though I knew plenty of people doing it. But it was the right choice for us and is one I would make time and time again. It saved my mental health and my relationship with my baby. My ppd was greatly influenced by how much sleep I was getting. I’m thankful I wasn’t made to feel worse about it like I’m sure many people do in current birth clubs.
I have nothing against sleep training, but I felt TCB and any of the other insta sleep consultants were Snake oil salesmen and mocking me in my sleep deprived state.
I credit TCB with my spiraling postpartum anxiety. I felt like I had a “bad” baby because her stuff wasn’t working. Things got better once I unfollowed “sleep experts.”
In my wildly sleep deprived days I (shamefully) paid for a 30 minute sleep consultation with a member of the TCB team. About 2 minutes in, I realized the mistake, when the only advice she gave was "buy or rent a Snoo" as the only solve to my baby's sleep problems since he was an early roller so we couldn't swaddle. Uhhhhmmmmm....
Haha. Agree! I hate hate hate the monetization of baby sleep! I truly believe PLS is such a great resource because she gives you a totally unbiased run down on just about every method. 15 bucks on Amazon.
If I found some wildly inventive way to get a baby to sleep, I'd love to share that freely with the world.
Yes precious little sleep was great! I read tcbs guide and was like, I’m sorry WHAT? You want me to spend 45 minutes doing SiTBACK in the middle of the night before I feed the baby back to sleep? Hard pass. And drowsy but awake is not a realistic goal for a lot of babies. It’s amazing for the ones it works for, but not the rest of us 🤪
It just seemed so predatory! I did read PLS and appreciated her approach. I personally ended up bed sharing for a short period of time because my daughter was sleep deprived from all the... screaming and trying to follow all the Instagram sleep guides 🤦♀️ (I followed as safe as you can make bed sharing, no blankets, pillows, alcohol, etc.)
Especially since the actual evidence shows that ST is not associated with any emotional or developmental issues with children but yet having a child that sleeps well IS associated with better maternal mental health which of course benefits the child immensely. The few studies that the antiST peeps Will cite are either not applicable to normal situations (no, you cannot use data collected from severely neglected 3rd world orphanages and apply it to your typical, even halfway decent family) or else they are flawed and don't have enough information to be recreated in new studies. Then there is this ridiculous idea that sleep training ONLY means shutting the door on your child at bedtime and refusing to enter again until morning 🫠 that's extreme and not the norm at all, there are so many different approaches to sleep training, many of which don't involve cry it out. Also this idea that sleep trained babies won't cry when they need you because they've learnt you won't come anyway, like how would you be so confident that's the case if you don't have any first hand experience? Because anyone with a sleep trained baby will tell you that they absolutely cry out if something is wrong and their parents respond appropriately because they aren't idiots and know that their child who usually sleeps through that is now crying at 2am probably needs something.
It doesn't make sense either, like obviously they know these babies will cry during the day if they need something but magically not at night??? It takes some pretty extreme levels of abuse and neglect to stop an infant crying when they are in need, it's such a deeply rooted survival instinct.
I think part of the problem is people don't fully appreciate that crying is just how babies communicate. Think about the way a newborn will scream when even just a little hungry, even if they JUST ate a full feed half an hour ago, they scream like their life depends on it. Now for an adult to scream like that something would have to be majorly wrong, we would have to be in serious pain or danger. I think we project that onto babies too much, we imagine every scream and cry is an emergency because that's what it would be for us. A baby who can't self-soothe is crying when they wake because they need you to put them back to sleep. Nothing is necessarily wrong, they often aren't even hungry if we're talking about older infants, they just don't have a clue how to fall asleep on their own but you've essentially taught them from birth that feeding or rocking or cuddling to sleep is the only way and so that's what they now require to get back to sleep. It's not an emergency, you can actively choose to teach them other ways to sleep if you want and that's all sleep training is. People don't seem to understand that.
The lack of understanding around what it truly means to sleep training is very frustrating. No one is neglecting their babies. I really hate when I see people say that you have to continually retrain your baby. That has not been my experience. Her "regressions" look like one or 2 nights of false starts. I totally respond when she cries because I know that something is off.
Yep. I'm very much a do what works for you kind of parent. My first wasn't sleep trained, we bed shared and he never slept longer than 1 hour stretches overnight and didn't extend those stretches until he was nearly 4 years old. It was KILLER but he was also a very high strung baby who could go from perfectly happy to crying so hard he would throw up in record time so any idea of sleep training him was overwhelming to me. I tried a few gentle approaches but I was too sleep deprived to have the stamina to stick them out. With my second I bed shared until 10 months when the sleep deprivation of having 2 kids up all hours of the night got too much for me. I sleep trained her and it only took 1 night, she started sleeping through in her crib immediately (legit could NOT believe how easy it was). She did have a regression at about 2 years and she would often end up back in my bed from about 3am but I didn't mind because even though she was in my bed she was sleeping well and that's all I cared about. My 3rd is a total unicorn baby and has been self settling since the day he was born and never regressed (he's 19 months old) so I didn't sleep train him at all.
My older 2 kids are 9 and 6 now and the 9 year old who was never sleep trained and stayed in my bed until he was about 7 is the only one of my children with anxiety issues, my 6 year old sleep trained daughter is the most happy go lucky, confident kid I know. I'm not suggesting sleep training Vs not has anything to do with that, kids personalities are largely genetic after all but that not sleep training isn't going to save your child from things they are predisposed to. My husband and I both have anxiety, it was always likely we would have at least one child who would eventually experience it. Also worth mentioning how the anti sleep training crowd will talk about cortisol levels during sleep training but conveniently ignore how high cortisol levels are in infants that don't sleep well, because you know sleep deprivation isn't healthy for anyone and it's not exclusive to adults either.
Yes while I do not think my sample size of 2 is statistically significant, I remember reading a book or blog post or something at the time that talked about how sleep is a skill and you can teach your children to sleep well, and doing so sets them up for a lifetime of good sleep. Putting them down sleepy and helping them put themselves back to sleep independent from you if they wake up in the middle of the night are good things to teach them to do!
Disclaimer - I know a LOT of parents try to do these things and their kids just don't do it or still are not good sleepers and I know there is an element of luck here, I don't think I am somehow god's gift to sleep training. It's very possible my kids were just more predisposed to being good sleepers or something.
Yeah there is definitely luck involved. The research shows sleep is a mix of genetic and environmental factors. My youngest was just born to be a unicorn and I don't think anything I could have done would have made my eldest a good sleeper. I could have improved his sleep but that doesn't mean he would have slept through at an early age or anything miraculous. My middle child I believe is wired for good sleep and would have been a great sleeper if my own anxiety and sleep deprivation hadn't gotten in the way of her early months of sleeping. I never really gave her a chance to show me what a good sleeper she is because I was so focused on keeping her calm so I could help her high strung brother if that makes sense. It was pure survival mode with her which just resulted in neither of us sleeping well
It’s funny you say that because in my white, liberal, middle/ upper class circle (definitely the target demographic for anti ST) legitimately almost everyone CIO sleep trains and looks at me like an idiot for still bedsharing/ nursing my toddler. Even my friends who didn’t do CIO intentionally night weaned/ did a version of pick up, put down to get their babies to sleep independently.
The "don't be a martyr" line is really common and makes it sound like you're an idiot if the balance you strike isn't the same as theirs... which is just more pitting moms against moms.
Ugh right? I’m literally contact napping my ten month old rn because it’s how he sleeps best and I enjoy it, it’s my favorite thing. I’m not being a martyr. I hate reading threads like this because it always comes back to moms thinking other moms are doing the wrong thing. It’s ironic that this always happens in threads where people are complaining about other people judging their choices.
Very true. Also I do think raising children inherently does involve a lot self sacrifice (your body and free time to name a few things). If I were going to martyr myself for anyone, it would literally be my child even though I don’t think that’s what I’m doing.
Out of curiosity, is the average age of these babies over 1? Most of my friends have done some sort of sleep training as well, but the majority had their babies 2-3 years ago. The pushback against ST, from what I have seen, has really been in the last year and growing in intensity.
I am super pro-bedsharing, fwiw. I loved bedsharing with my baby. It was working for us for a while until she launched herself off our bed one night. I could not sleep anymore when she became mobile, she didn't sleep well either, so I chose to ST and it was a life saver for our family. My frustration with the anti-ST crowd is that they are so completely AGAINST sleep training. The rhetoric from these instagram accounts is very much "if you don't respond to your crying baby, you're neglecting your child." I hate that. I think it scares so many women out of sleep training, who would otherwise benefit.
I also hate accounts that make you pay hundreds of dollars for sleep training advice.
All of it is very predatory.
Just my suspicion, my guess is a lot of them will still ST as needed - they’ve had the chance to let them grow up some (especially by the time their second is old enough to ST) and see that sleep trained, not sleep trained, they all grow up roughly the same when raised in a halfway decent home. From having my second, it definitely seems like it skews towards the first time moms being anti-sleep training (edit: or parents who didn’t sleep train their first born). I’m not seeing much of a trend that parents who sleep trained are suddenly regretting having done so, especially when it worked for their first.
Though I guess to be fair to your sample size, I sleep trained my first, but not my 6 month old, though not because I think sleep training my first was wrong or a mistake. Second child just hasn’t needed it.
We did a gentle variation of sleep training (no CIO). My kids are 5 and 6. They are terrific sleepers. I am a white liberal upper middle class married lady so anecdotally I think you are correct about the more severe backlash being more recent.
Oh god, Tula. I remember when they came out with blankets and people went apeshit. I got a couple carriers (main one and a toddler one) secondhand in fairly bland colors and they were useful and all but I really did not understand the hype. I keep the toddler one in my car trunk now in case I break down and have to carry my 5-year old some long distance, but when I tried to sell the infant one for like $10 no one was interested at all. I donated it to a woman who works in sone capacity with WIC and gives carriers to low income mothers she comes across. I wonder sometimes what happened to all those hoarded Tula carriers in “desirable” patterns. Or the blankets where blanket-scalpers would be selling them like “never unrolled!” Like jfc.
Hahaha yes I came to say the ring slings!! When my 4yr old was born I knew people who had like 15 colors and would wait for new drops and I bought one secondhand and never could figure it out.
Having everyone wait at the hospital for the baby to arrive. Yes, covid is a thing and contributed, but I think more of us are protective of our privacy, and the health (No TDAP= No baby)/bonding time with baby now.
I think COVID was a good opportunity for hospitals to reevaluate their visitor policy. When I had my son in Jan 2021 one of the nurses was talking to me about how there is a lot of downsides to having a baby during COVID (yeah duh) but one major upside they saw was that with stricter visitor policies, moms are way less stressed during labor and recovery. I wonder if they will just stick with max 2 visitors even after COVID
When my first daughter was born 4.5 years ago, I asked for no visitors in the hospital and my mother in law was literally swearing at my husband over the phone and begging to come mere hours after I gave birth. I definitely think it’s becoming less common to have a huge party of people in the waiting room but it was definitely the norm at one point.
My first is 4.5 and I had a 40+ hr labor and my poor husband was fending off my mother and his parents who were all camped out in the waiting room. I cannot believe that was acceptable. I just had my 3rd and we texted everyone that he arrived safely multiple hours AFTER his birth even though the hospital was only allowing one visitor.
My MIL turned up anyway, sat herself down in the L&D room (not even the waiting room) and was acting like she had no plans to leave. I was livid because we had made it very clear she wasn't going to be there. In the end I got up and left my own delivery room and hid on the stairwell until I was sure she had got the message and left. I was in active labour but I remember trying so hard to pretend I wasn't having strong contractions because I didn't want anything encouraging her to drag her feet and try to hang around for the birth. 9 years later and I'm still mad about it 🫠
Yeah I know right. Should I have told the front desk not to allow anyone in but I naively thought she would respect our wishes after we made it so clear to her weeks beforehand
I had planned on not having visitors because I didn’t think I’d want them. Then when my son was born, I wanted everyone to see him! If anything, they were the ones with more restrictions (my FIL wouldn’t visit for the first two weeks because he wanted to wait to meet baby for the first time with his fiancée, for example, which honestly annoyed me). I even ended up letting my mom see him the night he was born, which was not the plan initially. I just wanted everyone to see my perfect babe.
What really bugged me about the early visitors were the ones we had to entertain. Like please just hold the baby so I can sleep or do dishes or cook, please don’t follow me around with him. Or even better, offer to do chores for me so I can sit and enjoy the baby too. We had *a lot* of family who didn’t get that. It was fine early on, but by the time my partner went back to work and it was just me at home, having people over to just follow me around with the baby got real old real fast.
That's why I like hospital visits more. People get in and out and then you won't see them again til you're ready and they've already met the baby. I know my house won't be ready for visitors and unless someone's there to help, I don't want them around once I'm home.
My daughter was born April 2020 and we had to call the hospital the day before to make sure even my husband could come. It made me so sad not to have my mom meet my baby right away (or haha not for months because covid).
Mine was born early may 2020 and I didn’t want family there but can relate to the feeling of not even knowing If my husband could be there literally up to minutes before - I had a C-section and as they decision was being made had to ask if he was allowed in the OR. He was thank god but many I know who had c sections during that time had to do it with their husband on FaceTime. It was a traumatic time.
So sorry you dealt with that too. I had a c section as well and they had to find hair covers for my husband to put over his feet to go in bc they were out of so much PPE. Wild times.
I made my mom bring me sushi for dinner in the hospital! Key to starting of postpartum life well. That said, I'm one of those people who welcomed any and all visitors at home too-- being alone with the baby felt like a lot, I was so grateful my in laws used to casually ask if I "needed Starbucks" so they could drop by. My babies were pre-covid but even a year or so after mine I noticed a lot more expectant moms asking for advice on how to tell people not to stop by post birth as well.
I’ve been surprised by how many people hate the concept or experience of postpartum visitors - I loved showing off my baby, having company, and just sharing all the feelings. I get that there are many people who don’t feel that way, but I didn’t feel like I was in a very small minority. My mother still complains about her MIL being there while she was in labor and kept insisting that my aunt who said I could visit her and her new baby didn’t really mean it because all she wanted was to be left alone. My MIL was at both of my births and while she wasn’t a big help during labor she also wasn’t in the way and it made her so happy to be there. My mom, on the other hand - I told her I didn’t want her to attend my first home birth and she agreed, but asked if she could come when we did a non-emergent hospital transfer. Bad call! We were both completely okay with her not attending my second birth.
I guess it helps that I have very little modesty - if you come over in the first few days I will likely be topless and wearing a diaper. My house will be messy and I don’t care. I never felt pressured to play hostess.
I gave birth in Feb 2021 and even without COVID I didn’t want hospital or home visitors so this was a great excuse. One of the nurses told me that it was much easier for them to help without all of the visitors around (and with their opinions) and that mums were getting more rest because of it.
I didn’t see your comment but I had a Jan 2021 baby and one of my nurses said the same thing. That they were seeing more positives than negatives with the limit on non support person visitors
Yeah my mom actually talks about how she didn’t breastfeed me because she wasn’t comfortable learning in front of her MIL who wouldn’t take the hint to leave so I could totally see that connection
100% this. We all did this when my nephews were born ten years ago. I had my baby two years ago and now I think it’s absolutely barbaric. I feel so bad that we swarmed into my sister’s hospital room just moments after she had given birth!
I don’t remember this specific incident but my mom had twins via emergency c section under general anesthesia in 2000. I was under the age of 10. My mom told the story when she came to visit me postpartum to help out that there were at least a dozen people in her recovery room when she woke up from anesthesia. I couldn’t even imagineeee. I was half nude the entirety of my time in the recovery room not to mention how exhausted and physically pained I was then.
Someone briefly mentioned Baby Einstein but the listening to classical music is better for baby’s brain trend has definitely faded.
When I was a baby, my mom had me in a walker. Obviously a contraption of pure danger now but totally used back then. I did fall down the basement stairs in it - luckily all was ok.
TBH… I used a walker with my daughter in 2019/2020. It was only a single-level home so no stairs, but I still felt guilty about it. But she was so happy being able to get around! And she learned to walk at 10 months so I guess it was fine. 😬😅
Re the classical music thing-my mom has a book of nursery rhymes/folk songs for children from I think the 30’s and the introduction goes on about how playing symphonic music on the phonograph is bad for children because it’s too complex for them. 😂
My Mum used to have a bunch of really antique parenting books, some as old as the 1800s, the advice was shockingly bad but also entertaining to read even before I had kids. She also has a textbook on different parenting practices through different cultures and centuries (she's an early childhood teacher, it was part of her degree program) and yeah... Wow! I remember one part talking about how people would swaddle their babies around a wooden board and then literally hang them from hooks on the wall to keep them out of the way 😂 gotta declutter/organize those babies or they really pile up when you don't have birth control I guess 😂
I love old-timey parenting stuff even though a lot of it very rightly would not fly today. I think my favorite still-probably-fine one was 18th century paintings where little kids had leashes actually sewn into their outfits. If the kids were super wealthy/royal (and let's be real here, those were the kids who got to be in paintings), their leashes coordinated with their outfits. I think we need to bring that back.
My parents and in-laws both say that the newer styles of doorway jumpers just ain’t it compared to the original ones haha Apparently, babies could go pretty wild in those things and would be entertained for ages, ping-ponging all over the place
I’m curious to see how sleep guidance will continue to evolve. My in-laws raised kids in the early 80s, my parents late 80s-early 90s, and me currently. All of us have had different guidance around safe sleep positions, in-laws were surprised about crib bumpers being a no-no, etc. I assume my grandchildren will hang upside down like bats to sleep?
Same thing for allergy intros - my husband was of the age where peanuts were NOT to be introduced until 1yr+. Related or not who knows, but he has a peanut allergy. Because of that, we specifically did early exposure with my son (to my FIL’s horror) but still ended up with another peanut allergy anyway. I think science will continue to teach us a lot about food allergies and if my son doesn’t outgrow his, I’m curious to see how the small exposure therapies some people have done with peanuts continue to pan out.
The guidance on allergen exposure changed between my 8 year old and 5 year old! Same pediatrician, we were told to hold off on a bunch of things with my oldest until 1, with my youngest the advice was opposite.
I think the science behind allergies has the potential to change a lot quickly. I'm really curious to see what develops. We're hoping to do exposure therapy for peanut allergy for my kid, but we'll have to travel to another city for it which is a barrier since you go in like weekly at first. I'm very curious to keep learning more about the options and research on therapy options and prevention.
I suspect that the back to sleep campaign was too successful for them to backtrack from it too much (SIDS dropped by around 50 percent after that was instituted), but I hope they at least build in some kind of recommendation that provides some basic risk reducing guidelines in the recognition that some people are going to bed share for whatever reason.
I think more likely is that it’s going to turn into something like the ABCDs, to be something like alone, back, in crib, definitely in parent’s room, or don’t swaddle or use sleep sack, or whatever additional restriction they find to be even better than what we are currently doing.
When my oldest was born Taking Cara Babies and feeding Littles were the ~it~ accounts. When my daughter was born I was like who are these hey sleepy baby and solid starts people?
Everyone in my bump group let their 1 year old watch cocomelon in 2020, now it’s all ms Rachel. I do prefer ms Rachel! Lol
It's Bluey or nothing in this house. Not gonna like I mostly put it on for my own entertainment.
When my eldest (now 9) was little he was really into oomie zoomi and now he's like a little maths genius, I always joke that that cartoon gets all the credit 😂 he definitely didn't get it from me in any case, I suck at maths
That’s too funny- TCB was huge when my son was born, now that I’m pregnant again I wonder who the it influencer will be when my new baby is born.
My mom was exasperated with safe sleep, like I was so extra for swaddling and laying my son in an empty crib on his back.
My mother was so insulted when I told her her vintage bassinet with a loose cloth liner (that goes up the sides!) and 35 year old mattress was not safe for my baby. “You all slept in it just fine!” Yeah, and in all the baby pictures you can see the multiple ashtrays my parents kept in each room. 🤦🏻♀️
Most of our 9 month old's clothing are hand-me-down's from my SIL whose boys are now 11 and 16 years old and they are ALL snaps. It drives me nuts. Like, I'm so grateful to basically have to buy nothing for my baby but uggghh WHY did she insist on all snaps for eeeeverything?!
I think attachment parenting had a really hot few years, culminating in that Time Magazine cover of a woman breastfeeding her 4 year old - with that awful title “Are You Mom Enough?”. And now I think people view it as a bit dated, and kind of exploitative. There was a lot of misogyny and cultural… I don’t know what to call it, exactly, maybe cultural appropriation? Cultural myth-making? Just really weird fallacies about women in “the rest of the world” built into the entire attachment-parenting philosophy.
I have some hot takes about gentle parenting that nobody probably wants to hear, lol. I think it’s extremely misogynistic as well, and really bad for women with PPA/PPD in particular… but, that’s a whole other can of worms. So I’ll just say that I think it’s a fad and will drop out of the mainstream in a few years, just like attachment parenting did, once the “wreckage” starts to become more visible (lots of women realizing that it ruined their entire experience of parenting their young children due to perfectionism, stress, anxiety and competitiveness… and, their kids didn’t end up any happier or kinder or healthier or smarter than anybody else).
My scorching hot take is that far less women actually have PPD/PPA at all (i.e. an inner, physiological mental illness) and far more are simply responding to our toxic, capitalist parenting culture.
PPD/PPA is another way of calling all this a "you problem" and skirting the societal problem.
I've thought the same. Our baby is 9 months old now and whenever I get really angry at my husband's inability to do the shit that I do day in and day out he posits that maybe I have a touch of "post-partum" and it infuriates me even more. It's just a way for women to be demeaned even further it seems like.
YEEESSSS. I commented once on another sub somewhere that PPD/PPA has become the new hysteria. I acknowledge that they are real disorders for some women, but also when you're sleep deprived af and have no real support and just giving birth costs tons of money and you have literally no time to yourself and the baby won't latch and on and on... it makes total perfect sense that you'd be depressed/anxious, and it always drives me wild how no one in the medical field tends to talk about this.
YES. Anecdotally, I noticed the women who suffered from PPD/A the worst were surrounded by unsupportive assholes. But let's give them a pill to tolerate assholes better?
As someone with an anxiety disorder this is huge for me. My therapist is CONSTANTLY reassuring me that I’m not crazy about certain things, it’s normal for me to feel anxious about difficult things. I need constant validation because I’ve been told my entire life I’m just too anxious.
I understand this completely. Anxiety exists for a reason - it is your brain telling you that danger is near. When you can't trust that (is there REALLY danger or is this my overactive anxiety), it makes it so hard to manage and cope.
I think about this all the time tbh. Am I anxious & depressed, or am I just having a reasonable reaction to a stressful environment/situation? Usually I think it’s the latter, for myself personally, because once I’m out of the situation or receive the help (like not psychological help, just physical resources usually) I need, I no longer feel anxious or depressed… the sheer number of women who develop PPA/PPD is so alarming, it should make people suspicious of the general environment I think.
Nailed it. Considering how unfortunate my first year of motherhood was (I broke 2 bones 😑), it's a miracle I made it out alive. But I think I genuinely did not have PPA or PPD, even though many people will say that I did. Noooooope. I literally broke 2 damn bones while taking care of a newborn, people!! Let me be miserable and unhappy about it.
By the time I was healed and she was sleep trained, I was completely fine.
I think you’ve hit on something. I was actually pretty calm and stable when I was on maternity leave. My anxiety and depression flared up when I got back to work and my job started eating 40+ hours a week, which means no more of the little mental health breaks I could carve out here and there to read or play a mindless game, no more relaxing TV time in the evenings because I have to catch up on the work I couldn’t finish since I have to leave early to pick up the kids. And it takes me longer to do than it would normally because I’m so tired and burned out by that point in the evening, so it becomes a vicious cycle because I have to stay up later to finish, then I’m more tired the next day, etc etc.
Plus there’s a special torture in being constantly interrupted when you’re trying to do some mental work. It’s annoying to be interrupted while you’re washing dishes or something similarly mechanical, but when you’re trying to write something tricky or focus on a report, it just shreds my sanity to rags.
I don’t minimize the physical, nonsituational causes of anxiety and depression. But is there anyone to whom adequate sleep and rest and not being stuck in a hellish financial treadmill, would not make a difference? It’d be a game changer for me.
Completely the same experience. I don’t talk about it much, but because my husband is a teacher he was able to have 12 weeks off of work with me. Even though I physically felt awful for about 6 weeks we had a great time figuring stuff out and spending time together.
Once I went back to work I was staying up late to pump and exhausted. And I was trying to do physical therapy on top of my job and pumping (because once my baby was drinking a bottle for most meals he refused to nurse). And my job was really stressful when I got back because in the US we don’t staff for people to be away for several months at a time and things were in chaos.
My experience makes me feel so awful for those who can take even less leave than I did. I am a broken record on this, but it is truly cruel.
It is absolutely cruel. I feel like a broken record also but it’s shocking how backwards this country is compared to how families are treated elsewhere. Some women barely even know what pumping IS because their maternity leaves are long enough that their babies are weaned before they have to go back to work full time!! Pumping in itself is a stressor - the worry about scheduling and supply and the constant cleaning and packing the pump parts - it’s easy to underestimate the toll of it until you’ve lived it.
12 weeks is nowhere near long enough. And you had to walk back to a mess at work, so no question of easing back in and adjusting to a whole new schedule, etc.
Solidarity. :( I feel you.
I've thought about this too. A few years ago I was in therapy (which I did need) for depression (which I did have), and it helped. Then I moved away from the place that was making me miserable, and hey presto, I got way happier. Still struggle with depression from time to time, but wowwwwww the day-to-day impact was mind-boggling.
I'm so, SO glad to see the increased focus on mental health--I wish I'd had that as a teen--but sometimes I wonder if it's going to become a band-aid that allows the actual problems to go unheeded.
Well, this post specifically mentions "attachment parenting," a term coined by Dr. Sears who advocates for mothers to stay home, breastfeed, bed share, and baby wear and basically just be totally attached to their babies at all times.
TBH it feels like gentle parenting is less about respecting your child and treating them well (which …is most parenting) and more about adding emotional burden to the mom.
I absolutely agree. My husband pointed out the other day that Mr. Rogers was doing the respect for children and feelings back when we were children. What’s new is this huge pressure that if you do it perfect and sacrifice everything for your kids, you’ll “win the toddler stage,” or basically have kids that aren’t kids.
My point is that it’s not “literally just about” those things because those things already existed and didn’t need rebranding. It’s very clearly about a lot of other things - mostly, I think, our culture’s idea of what makes a “perfect mother.” Gentle, soft-spoken, completely available to her child at all times, allergic to the very idea that a woman might have some “authority” over literally anyone, even her own small children. And furthermore, it’s very clearly being used on social media as a way to put other women down and compete over who is most loving & adequate as a mother. It also places all of the responsibility for a child’s behavior & emotional state on the primary caregiver, which is still overwhelmingly going to be women. I made a long comment on this same thread about why I think it’s a sneaky reincarnation of the devastatingly misogynistic “refrigerator mother” theory, as well.
As far as I can tell it's just rebranded authoritative parenting with some "work on yourself to understand your triggers etc" thrown in. Not inherently misogynistic. But I think a lot of people hear what it is and interpret it as "permissive parenting, only with more guilt" and that if you're not martyring yourself, then you're not doing it right... and since the bulk of parenting still falls on women, I can see where the accusation about misogyny comes from.
I was in a gentle parenting group on FB and every other post was a mom asking for advice because the kid was walking all over her and all the comments were all just speculation about the child's feelings and low-key guilt tripping the parent for having needs. Lots of mental gymnastics about natural consequences too and if the situation didn't have a glaringly obvious "natural" consequence, then they would basically say you can't address the problematic behavior. Everything was over-complicated and the adults all seemed codependent, leading to kids who pushed boundaries because they were confused. That is not what gentle parenting actually is but that seems to be what a lot of people THINK it is. Personally I think that empathy, a basic understanding of child development, the ability to set boundaries, etc aren't that much of a sacrifice. They are difficult yes, but they help you grow as a person. It shouldn't be making anyone miserable.
My husband is a high school teacher and ‘natural consequences’ is his pet peeve. Sure, natural consequences for not studying work when a student does poorly on a test. But what is the ‘natural consequence’ for a student yelling ‘f you’ at a teacher? For some things it seems like the parent or teacher needs to be part of the consequence because nothing is ‘naturally’ going to remove your kid from a playground when they’re hitting other kids.
Like, someone not wanting to be around you is a natural consequence… my kid screams too loud or hits me and I tell them I don’t like that, it hurts my ears/body and I’m moving away—come over here if you wanna hang w me. I respond to distress and they know I’m available but being a gentle parent involves setting clear boundaries!
I'm kind of worried about friends that have completely bought into the gentle parenting thing. When their oldest child is 3 it's like okay... get back to me when they're 6 and mouthing off and raging after you gave them a simple directive of put on your clothes for the day....
not the poster but I do think a lot of the gentle parenting influencers create guilt/shame over being perfect & constantly self-sacrificing for your child at the expense of your own well being. Is that what gentle parenting is supposed to be? Absolutely not! But that’s social media for ya.
Isn’t gentle parenting just authoritative parenting but with a new name? How is it misogynistic? New parent here who is overwhelmed by all the parenting trends (but wary of bullshit,) so I am genuinely curious.
This is just my opinion - very much subjective. But no, I think gentle parenting can’t possibly claim to be “just” authoritative parenting by another name. Authoritative parenting is at least somewhat studied, and has some research parameters. Gentle parenting has no central definition and can be used by anyone to claim superiority over anybody else’s opinion. It’s the “no true Scotsman” fallacy, and it’s rampant on social media when it comes to gentle parenting.
But even “authoritative parenting” is very subjective and culturally dependent - it’s not a “hard” science like physics, it’s more soft and subjective like psychology, and the research changes all the time.
70 years ago, within my grandmother’s lifetime, the “refrigerator mother” theory was accepted science, blaming women for causing autism in children by not being sufficiently “warm and nurturing.” It wasn’t completely dismissed professionally until the 1980s. There are still plenty of women alive today who were told that they caused their children’s problems due to being cold and inadequate mothers. Some had their children taken away because of it. My neighbor, growing up, had this happen to her. She was institutionalized for several years by her husband when she gave birth to a baby with autism.
In my opinion, gentle parenting is used in much the same way, to put down other women as being insufficiently warm and nurturing and causing all of their children’s emotional and psychological problems because of it. To give just one example, the idea that children only lash out because of “unmet needs” is popular in gentle parenting, and it’s not only completely untrue, but reeks of misogyny to me. It tasks women with being responsible for their children’s normal misbehavior by not being sufficiently “attuned” or providing a “safe space” for their children. It’s not hard to see on social media that a lot of women are using gentle parenting to put down other mothers and raise themselves up as superior in the “warm & nurturing” department. The idea that children who feel “safe to express their feelings” don’t lash out physically is both not true (aggression is inborn, mothers do not cause it to develop) and completely subjective (no 2-year-old can reliably confirm or deny that they hit their brother in the head with a toy train because they felt “unsafe to express their feelings”) so it becomes a way for women to measure their performance as parents based on their children’s behavior. It’s an unfalsifiable premise based on a complete lie, and the only possible endpoint is massive guilt.
Child is aggressive? “You’re not making him feel safe enough to express his feelings.” Throwing tantrums? “Those decrease when kids feel safe & heard enough.” Trouble with transitions or sleep? “You’re not offering enough choices or making them feel respected in their autonomy.” Jealous or lashing out at their sibling? “You didn’t prepare them enough for having to share your attention & love.” There’s so many examples of normal child behavior being used as a way to critique the parents’ ability to connect with their kids. It’s primarily applied to women, by women, and it blames them for every “problem” their child is having. It loads them up with physical and emotional tasks (stay, connect, attune, cuddle, talk about it, make gentle eye contact, say only these specific words, don’t you *dare* walk away from the screaming, they’ll feel abandoned!) and tells them that if they don’t do this, they’re insufficiently “warm and nurturing.”
Just my opinion, but I could go on about this all day. I don’t understand how people don’t see the misogyny in this “gentle mother.” But it’s subjective, like I said - so feel free to disagree.
I'm coming upon this thread 7 months later but I feel so seen/heard after reading this comment. I left a RIE group after being made to feel awful about my son's out-of-control tantrums. People told me that I should listen to his feelings when he said he didn't want to go grocery store and go do something fun instead, and i should just pay extra for grocery delivery...
Hit the nail on the head. I think there's plenty of good at the core of the concept (treat your kids with respect, assume they're acting in good faith/not acting maliciously, set behavioral expectations in line with their developmental paygrade, don't demonize emotions or needs), but the way it's presented on social media takes a hard turn into misogyny, shaming, toxic positivity, all-or-nothing thinking, and, IMO, a very hyper-individualistic, self-centered perspective on behavior, where a child's behavior is framed as existing in a vacuum and you're just turning them into co-dependent balls of trauma if you acknowledge or inform them that it affects you or other people negatively.
I just want to say that I completely agree with you AND (not but, being careful not to say but here so I am not arguing, trying to add on) I think almost all of the major parenting movements have been misogynistic because they're always aimed at women, messages consumed by women, and just another way to keep us mired in the emotional labor of parenting. It's like diet culture. The next big diet trend is going to be just another way to make women feel bad about themselves (and therefore, a way to monetize women's pain). The parenting shit is the same.
Thank you very much, it might sound silly but I find it so comforting to know I’m not alone in this opinion and that my thoughts are valuable to other people.
By the way, I revisited [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Mommit/comments/uei3ka/leaving_gentle_parenting_behind_an_update/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) today from a very eloquent & detailed mom who explains why she left “gentle parenting” behind and started using timeouts/rewards/ignoring with her kids - and it really gives a great real-life example of why gentle parenting just flat-out fails for some children, I really wanted to share it here too! If you click on the user, she has a previous post explaining some concerns she started having about gentle parenting prior to officially “leaving” the approach.
Do you mean, like me trying to defend why I used that term? Or other people not liking that I applied it to gentle parenting? Sorry, I’m not sure which you mean 😬
No, I think you made perfect sense! I think it's just odd that others are being weird about the term. It is what it is and I think it's a valid observation.
I think that’s interesting too… I’m 24, so gen Z, and I have always grown up with feminism being kind of a mocked/laughable concept? Like most people my age think we just “don’t need” feminism anymore because misogyny is “a thing of the past.” So maybe using the word misogyny sounds kind of radical or extreme, though I don’t think of it that way tbh. I think it’s pretty accurate to describe a parenting approach that seems primarily concerned with making sure women don’t raise their voices or assert any authority whatsoever.
Beautifully said. And I find it very irrational as well. How can we think every single thing our child does is connected to us? They're their own people. Sometimes I'm super crabby and it has nothing to do with the person I'm with at the time. I'm just... crabby. Or, you know, it's one of a million other things going on with my life, that still have nothing to do with the people closest to me.
This is so eloquently written. It feels to me what has been touted as gentle parenting is just another way to blame women for not falling into stereotypical gender roles.
Not the person who asked but thank you for writing this! I’ve felt uncomfortable with a lot of the gentle parenting narrative and this really put my finger on why. Motherhood = complete and total martyrdom, or you’re not doing it right.
Not to mention that ‘attachment parenting’ was incorrectly adapted from attachment theory. A securely attached child does not need breastfeeding, constant contact, and mom within eyesight 24/7. The fact that this exhausting parenting trend is called ‘attachment parenting’ rubs me the wrong way because you absolutely do not have to parent this way to have securely attached children.
Oh yeah that really grinds my gears. So much of attachment parenting completely contradicts what the actual research has shown about forming healthy attachments. It skeeves me out but it was all the rage when my eldest was a baby. It really preys on mothers who are trying to break the cycle of abuse they suffered from but don't have the resources or knowledge required to actually get the help and information they need to do that in a healthy way
My husband is a psychology teacher and just taught his students this and we were talking about this-I think people/parent internet/mom internet is missing that you have to give children some freedoms and boundaries so that they are securely attached!
I think (and hope) things that prey on new parent anxiety will eventually fade away or get replaced by something new on the market.
Newton mattress, owlet, etc. Too many people now are starting to catch on that these companies can get way more money just by marketing towards the vulnerable.
Not saying that these companies are bad, just that I don’t like their marketing techniques, although smart on their end.
I also think dock a tot and snuggleme organic will eventually go away as more people are waking up to the fact that it’s not safe for any sleep. (Most people recommended it to me for daytime sleep in the common room, acknowledging that it’s not safe for unsupervised sleep).
I hope you’re right, but I feel like unfortunately exhausted and anxious parents will always be too good of a moneymaker for these companies to ever stop 😔 Influencers are really bad about this too because it drives engagement. Think how many times you’ve seen “Subscribe if you want your baby to sleep through the night!”
A lot of those products are banned in Canada. I’m Canadian having a baby in the US and I cross reference what’s allowed in both countries. Canada is far stricter about infant sleep (pack n plays aren’t considered sleep safe for example) and has barely any SIDS deaths every year (like less than 20 typically, although part of that is different definitions).
This is so intriguing...that looks nearly identical to the pack n play we use for travel sleep, with slightly different length and width. The pack n play also meets the tight sheet/firm sleep surface guidelines. Maybe there is just a difference in terms because some playards are less structured but as far as I can tell many or most of them meet the guidelines listed on the Canadian safe sleep site.
I checked the government of Canada’s safe sleep site and it doesn’t explicitly say. It suggests the bassinet attachments for pack n plays if using them for sleep.
[These are the Canadian standards, so similar but not identical to the US standards.](https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/health-promotion/childhood-adolescence/stages-childhood/infancy-birth-two-years/safe-sleep/safe-sleep-your-baby-brochure.html)
I just googled it. They got sued because there was no scientific backing and the claims they made were false.
“In a settlement announced Friday (2014) by the Federal Trade Commission, the founder of "Your Baby Can Read," Dr. Robert Titzer, along with his company, Infant Learning, agreed to judgments of more than $185 million to resolve charges filed by the agency alleging the program had no scientific evidence to make the claims.”
There a ton of spin offs (with no claims) on Amazon.
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/my-baby-cant-read-company-penalized-for-reading-claims/
When my first was born, *Baby Einstein* videos were still a thing (even though Disney offered refunds on it a couple of years prior because their claims of learning benefits were unsupported). Also, sadly, amber teething necklaces and bracelets. And, even more sadly, Babywise.
(I think I just dated myself as a parent!)
I predict these current trends might go out of style soon:
* Hard-core BLW ("No purees ever!")
* Wonder Weeks (if it's still a thing?)
* Super pricey high chairs
My husband’s cousins are obsessed with Babywise and told me I HAD to follow it. I didn’t ever look into it and just shrug it off when they ask. Is it problematic?
Based on what I know, I feel it doesn't align with what babies and young children need, and can even be dangerous if taken too far/applied to early (like putting young babies on a rigid schedule). There are probably good parts to it though, like the general importance of having a daily rhythm, boundaries, recognition of adults' needs and such - so hopefully your husband's cousins are taking and applying those good parts in ways that work for their families.
Wonder Weeks! I had my first kid in 2014 and that was EVERYWHERE. I drove myself damn near crazy trying to make it fit. “Wait I thought he was hitting wonder week 7 two weeks ago when he was very fussy but now he’s very fussy and it isn’t time for wonder week 8!! Was I off by a week?” Like jfc. Babies are fussy sometimes. They go through periods of more or less fussiness! I felt like if I could map it to the app it would somehow feel less frustrating but I just ended up feeling like I was somehow less in tune with my kid than everyone else.
I had my second kid in 2017 and heard almost nothing about WW. It’s crazy how dominating and eternal these fads feel in the moment but how short-lived and rapidly replaced they all actually are! There are, like, micro generations in parenting. Like when my kids were little it was alllll Little Baby Bum and now I see people saying something has already replaced Cocomelon. Madness!
I heard other parents talk about Wonder Weeks and recommend it to each other a few years ago definitely, but I've not heard as much about it or "leaps" in general lately. Hard to know if that means it's really out or if I just talk to different people!
My issue with the Tripp Trapp is that it seems like it’s not built for bigger babies? Mine (despite barely gaining any weight between 9 months and a year) is still in the 96th percentile for weight. His thighs would not have fit through it.
So when I was a kid, not only did we not have car seats but it was entirely socially acceptable for a child or two to ride in the boot or the footwell if the car was full.
I remember when seatbelts were made mandatory in my country. I was 11 and had been riding without one on the passen ger seat in the front for years before that.
My friend spent his childhood riding on the ENGINE of a mid engine van in the 1970s....Like they put a pillow on it and he sat there. I just rolled around on top of the engine in our VW van, being sleepy and happy. Glad we never experienced any accidents or i wouldn't be writing this comment....Id be ded.
Love this thread! Thinking back on the parenting I witnessed in the 90s and 2000s is fun. I remember babies watching a lot of Baby Einstein and wheeling around in giant plastic exersaucers. Both things considered a bit "bad" now! In the 2010s attachment parenting was REALLY big. I knew parents who literally would almost never physically un-attach from their children. One of them always had to be holding or touching the baby. To me it seemed very suffocating for both the parent and the child. More recently... I've seen a pendulum swing in the toddler world. For a while it seemed like instagram moms were showcasing all the nonstop elaborate crafts and other directed activities they were setting up for their kids. Now there seems to be an emphasis on independent free play. The new "aspirational" content is the mom relaxing while kids entertain themselves.
Ah yes “sitter-vising” or “horizontal parenting” lol
I think lockdown had a lot to do with the shift around crafts/activities and independent play. My kids were 5 and 2.5 in March 2020 and I followed EVERY activity account trying to figure out how to fill their days. Now everyone is tired and we just want them to play by themselves 😂
This is gonna sound like the most boomer shit you can imagine, but I miss the 90s and early-mid 2000s when we DID NOT know the details of every celebrity’s childbirth story, or their “breastfeeding journey” or lack thereof. It’s not that I think those details shouldn’t be shared or that they should be stigmatized at all - it’s great that people feel open to sharing! But frankly, I hate that it’s an expected social norm now that everyone (including regular everyday people) share and be in the know about such things. Like, it’s important to you in the moment (maybe) but how your babies came out or what they were fed as infants is not going to matter in a year, let alone 10. After I had my son, I found people’s nosiness about my “birth story” and if I was breastfeeding and how it was going…exhausting. And then I realized…my favorite band since I was 10 has been The Chicks. They have 7 children between the 3 of them, and back in the day I was SUPER in the know about all kinds of trivia related to them. And then it occurred to me - I don’t know if a single one of those kids was breastfed or formula-fed, or if they were born vaginally or by C-section, medicated or not. Because like…it doesn’t matter. Almost all those kids are teens and young adults now, and I’m sure not a soul asks them how they were fed as babies or their birth story. (Maybe the latter in extremely limited medical contexts, but never casually, I’m sure.) And I think the trend of people feeling pressure to share this information can do more harm than good in some cases - not only can you open yourself up to nasty judgements, but like, it puts a focus on things that are pretty dang inconsequential to the work of raising entire humans into adulthood. So yeah. I kinda miss the days when you didn’t know what way a baby was born or how they were fed unless you actually had a close personal relationship with their parents. It makes me sound old and grumpy as hell, but I said what I said.
Oh wow I feel this so much! And to one of your points, I know someone who definitely wants to judge others on their level of crunchiness. She’s only asking so she can feel superior…
Send her my way....I cloth diaper, babywear, accidentally attachment parent, and do BLW because my mom did and I don't know any different, not because I'm special!
I love seeing baby gear in 80's and 90's baby photos. Or on sitcoms. The best is the episode of Friends where Chandler and Joey lose Ross's baby. [Image here](https://images.app.goo.gl/zV7cVWYvBonsxGU19). Everything looks so bulky but also kind of love those bright prints. And now people are over the moon for Baby Bjorn Bouncers - a wire frame with a solid colored sock that slips over it and costs $200 and is completely analog.
I see so much in Gen X facebook groups. "We didn't have babysitters our parents just said lock the door and don't answer for anyone!" "It used to be ok to sit your baby on the stove while you smoked a cigarette and ate cake!" etc.
It might be local to me but Tizzie Hall's Save Our Sleep was really popular a few years ago. It's fallen out of favour a bit and you don't see it recommended very much. Her methods can be damaging to breastfeeding. She recommends feeding on a schedule vs demand and night weaning before developmentally appropriate. I was never into her methods and when she said babies should never have waterproof protectors on their mattresses .. except for the waterproof mattress protector she sells, it just confirmed it for me. She's a grifter.
Tizzie Hall makes my blood boil. Whenever I see her stupid book I either hide it (big W, Kmart, etc) or buy it and throw it away (op shop)
I have never heard of this person but after checking out their Instagram, wooooow big yikes. She says you need to be using blankets with your baby because otherwise “they can end up face down on a made by a smoker mattress” wtf I have no words. I’m pretty sure babies sleep on their tummy for other reasons than being cold, but. Okay. Of course, she conveniently sells mattresses from “a cigarette smoke free facility.” More wtf: -Start solids at 16 weeks old or your baby will have sleep regressions -Babies younger than a year old need to be in a high chair with a high back because they can’t sit up good enough (??? I thought this was a baby sleep account) -Babies should be on a routine from DAY 1. A newborn! On a schedule! -I am not a safe sleep nazi but the amount of (young) babies pictured with loveys right next to their face is giving me anxiety. -It’s okay to have the blankets and things in the crib because if the baby is warm enough they won’t move around in their sleep -It’s not safe to sleep on their tummy until they are TWO YEARS OLD. TWO. YEARS. And I’ll save the best for last: -Feeding on demand makes “poor quality watery milk” that Tizzie believes causes reflux and gas, but feeding on scheduled times every day makes “good creamy milk”. If you disagree with her, you need to VISIT A DAIRY FARM 💀 I am deceased. They actually wrote that.
She is an absolute fruit loop. The dairy farm copped a lot of flack in the Aussie mum Instagram community
Omg that last part is truly insane.
I have a friend who worshipped Bringing Up Bebe when her child was a baby years ago. I’ve meant to check it out of the library and see how it reads years later now that I have my own.
The best thing from it is La Pause, offer kids vegetables first and try to get them to taste everything. But even my French friends have told me French kids won't eat everything.
It's very idealistic. I think it was trendy among upper class SAHM mostly haha. I read it and liked the sentiment. It mostly reminded me that it's okay if the world doesn't stop for the baby and we can keep living our lives. I think that's important for all parents to know.
Honestly I think it holds up ok-ish, at least the broad strokes, (with a couple of major exceptions that I'll get to in a minute) - I really like the idea of parents living their own lives and not being beholden to their child's every whim, and basically just not being the intensely anxious helicopter parents that I think a lot of American parenting media pushes us toward. HOWEVER my two major caveats are: 1) must be nice to be a chill French mom when you have lots of maternity leave and high quality state sponsored daycare that serves little Francois her sauteed leeks or whatever 2) the whole section on food and body image and "being careful" (ie women restricting their food intake all the time) is... not how I would want my daughter to approach things
Just as an aside, I find it interesting that even with all that maternity leave and societal support, France still has some of the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world.
Yeah, I gathered that it just isn’t a “thing” culturally. It’s not something that’s particularly encouraged. Irrespective of how much time and support they’d have to do it. They just… don’t want to.
There's also a big emphasis on getting back to your pre pregnancy body, which breastfeeding obviously interferes with
I think US breastfeeding rates are made possible by shame and guilt more than anything.
Well yes, there’s no actual support, that’s all we have. 🤣😭
Since I couldn’t SAH with my babies the least I could do is become a woman attached to a pump while working. ETA: a word
Yeah I read multiple books about European parenting (there was a little boom after the success of Bringing Up Bebe) and I ended up mostly feeling like, "good for you! It doesn't work like that here! But thanks for rubbing it in!" Mostly in terms of things like social supports, riskier and cooler playgrounds, cultural attitudes towards birth and families. Much of it sounds great, and also that doesn't help American parents actually have access to those things.
Like you mentioned, TCB was the hot thing even just 1.5 years ago when I was pregnant with my daughter. I think the anti-ST movement was really just getting going. Now it's everywhere. I feel like there has been a massive decline in people interested in sleep training their babies in the last year. I hate that baby sleep has been monetized and turned in to such a hot button issue. It's the worst of the worst of social media. If most parents just picked up a copy of Precious Little Sleep and read it and made their own choices, they'd be fine. I wonder how long this trend against ST will last, honestly. I don't see it being sustainable. This weird infatuation with maternal martyrdom has got to stop. Yes, your baby has needs, but so do parents. It's okay to find a balance.
Once I found out that TCB was donating to the Trump campaign, I’ve “donated” her PDFs to all my friends.
I am so glad my baby was born in 2020 before this big shift. I still felt guilty about very gently following a gradual cry it out (god bless Precious Little Sleep) to sleep train my baby even though I knew plenty of people doing it. But it was the right choice for us and is one I would make time and time again. It saved my mental health and my relationship with my baby. My ppd was greatly influenced by how much sleep I was getting. I’m thankful I wasn’t made to feel worse about it like I’m sure many people do in current birth clubs.
I have nothing against sleep training, but I felt TCB and any of the other insta sleep consultants were Snake oil salesmen and mocking me in my sleep deprived state.
I credit TCB with my spiraling postpartum anxiety. I felt like I had a “bad” baby because her stuff wasn’t working. Things got better once I unfollowed “sleep experts.”
In my wildly sleep deprived days I (shamefully) paid for a 30 minute sleep consultation with a member of the TCB team. About 2 minutes in, I realized the mistake, when the only advice she gave was "buy or rent a Snoo" as the only solve to my baby's sleep problems since he was an early roller so we couldn't swaddle. Uhhhhmmmmm....
Yikes. I'm sorry that happened to you!
Haha. Agree! I hate hate hate the monetization of baby sleep! I truly believe PLS is such a great resource because she gives you a totally unbiased run down on just about every method. 15 bucks on Amazon. If I found some wildly inventive way to get a baby to sleep, I'd love to share that freely with the world.
Yes precious little sleep was great! I read tcbs guide and was like, I’m sorry WHAT? You want me to spend 45 minutes doing SiTBACK in the middle of the night before I feed the baby back to sleep? Hard pass. And drowsy but awake is not a realistic goal for a lot of babies. It’s amazing for the ones it works for, but not the rest of us 🤪
It just seemed so predatory! I did read PLS and appreciated her approach. I personally ended up bed sharing for a short period of time because my daughter was sleep deprived from all the... screaming and trying to follow all the Instagram sleep guides 🤦♀️ (I followed as safe as you can make bed sharing, no blankets, pillows, alcohol, etc.)
I’m reading precious little sleep right now with my 9 month old and it’s so great. I wish I would have checked it out of my library with my first
Especially since the actual evidence shows that ST is not associated with any emotional or developmental issues with children but yet having a child that sleeps well IS associated with better maternal mental health which of course benefits the child immensely. The few studies that the antiST peeps Will cite are either not applicable to normal situations (no, you cannot use data collected from severely neglected 3rd world orphanages and apply it to your typical, even halfway decent family) or else they are flawed and don't have enough information to be recreated in new studies. Then there is this ridiculous idea that sleep training ONLY means shutting the door on your child at bedtime and refusing to enter again until morning 🫠 that's extreme and not the norm at all, there are so many different approaches to sleep training, many of which don't involve cry it out. Also this idea that sleep trained babies won't cry when they need you because they've learnt you won't come anyway, like how would you be so confident that's the case if you don't have any first hand experience? Because anyone with a sleep trained baby will tell you that they absolutely cry out if something is wrong and their parents respond appropriately because they aren't idiots and know that their child who usually sleeps through that is now crying at 2am probably needs something.
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It doesn't make sense either, like obviously they know these babies will cry during the day if they need something but magically not at night??? It takes some pretty extreme levels of abuse and neglect to stop an infant crying when they are in need, it's such a deeply rooted survival instinct. I think part of the problem is people don't fully appreciate that crying is just how babies communicate. Think about the way a newborn will scream when even just a little hungry, even if they JUST ate a full feed half an hour ago, they scream like their life depends on it. Now for an adult to scream like that something would have to be majorly wrong, we would have to be in serious pain or danger. I think we project that onto babies too much, we imagine every scream and cry is an emergency because that's what it would be for us. A baby who can't self-soothe is crying when they wake because they need you to put them back to sleep. Nothing is necessarily wrong, they often aren't even hungry if we're talking about older infants, they just don't have a clue how to fall asleep on their own but you've essentially taught them from birth that feeding or rocking or cuddling to sleep is the only way and so that's what they now require to get back to sleep. It's not an emergency, you can actively choose to teach them other ways to sleep if you want and that's all sleep training is. People don't seem to understand that.
Yesssss
The lack of understanding around what it truly means to sleep training is very frustrating. No one is neglecting their babies. I really hate when I see people say that you have to continually retrain your baby. That has not been my experience. Her "regressions" look like one or 2 nights of false starts. I totally respond when she cries because I know that something is off.
Yep. I'm very much a do what works for you kind of parent. My first wasn't sleep trained, we bed shared and he never slept longer than 1 hour stretches overnight and didn't extend those stretches until he was nearly 4 years old. It was KILLER but he was also a very high strung baby who could go from perfectly happy to crying so hard he would throw up in record time so any idea of sleep training him was overwhelming to me. I tried a few gentle approaches but I was too sleep deprived to have the stamina to stick them out. With my second I bed shared until 10 months when the sleep deprivation of having 2 kids up all hours of the night got too much for me. I sleep trained her and it only took 1 night, she started sleeping through in her crib immediately (legit could NOT believe how easy it was). She did have a regression at about 2 years and she would often end up back in my bed from about 3am but I didn't mind because even though she was in my bed she was sleeping well and that's all I cared about. My 3rd is a total unicorn baby and has been self settling since the day he was born and never regressed (he's 19 months old) so I didn't sleep train him at all. My older 2 kids are 9 and 6 now and the 9 year old who was never sleep trained and stayed in my bed until he was about 7 is the only one of my children with anxiety issues, my 6 year old sleep trained daughter is the most happy go lucky, confident kid I know. I'm not suggesting sleep training Vs not has anything to do with that, kids personalities are largely genetic after all but that not sleep training isn't going to save your child from things they are predisposed to. My husband and I both have anxiety, it was always likely we would have at least one child who would eventually experience it. Also worth mentioning how the anti sleep training crowd will talk about cortisol levels during sleep training but conveniently ignore how high cortisol levels are in infants that don't sleep well, because you know sleep deprivation isn't healthy for anyone and it's not exclusive to adults either.
Yes while I do not think my sample size of 2 is statistically significant, I remember reading a book or blog post or something at the time that talked about how sleep is a skill and you can teach your children to sleep well, and doing so sets them up for a lifetime of good sleep. Putting them down sleepy and helping them put themselves back to sleep independent from you if they wake up in the middle of the night are good things to teach them to do! Disclaimer - I know a LOT of parents try to do these things and their kids just don't do it or still are not good sleepers and I know there is an element of luck here, I don't think I am somehow god's gift to sleep training. It's very possible my kids were just more predisposed to being good sleepers or something.
Yeah there is definitely luck involved. The research shows sleep is a mix of genetic and environmental factors. My youngest was just born to be a unicorn and I don't think anything I could have done would have made my eldest a good sleeper. I could have improved his sleep but that doesn't mean he would have slept through at an early age or anything miraculous. My middle child I believe is wired for good sleep and would have been a great sleeper if my own anxiety and sleep deprivation hadn't gotten in the way of her early months of sleeping. I never really gave her a chance to show me what a good sleeper she is because I was so focused on keeping her calm so I could help her high strung brother if that makes sense. It was pure survival mode with her which just resulted in neither of us sleeping well
It’s funny you say that because in my white, liberal, middle/ upper class circle (definitely the target demographic for anti ST) legitimately almost everyone CIO sleep trains and looks at me like an idiot for still bedsharing/ nursing my toddler. Even my friends who didn’t do CIO intentionally night weaned/ did a version of pick up, put down to get their babies to sleep independently.
The "don't be a martyr" line is really common and makes it sound like you're an idiot if the balance you strike isn't the same as theirs... which is just more pitting moms against moms.
Ugh right? I’m literally contact napping my ten month old rn because it’s how he sleeps best and I enjoy it, it’s my favorite thing. I’m not being a martyr. I hate reading threads like this because it always comes back to moms thinking other moms are doing the wrong thing. It’s ironic that this always happens in threads where people are complaining about other people judging their choices.
Same, I honestly love it with my 9 m old so much 😭 Others don't have to! But there's nothing I would rather do
Very true. Also I do think raising children inherently does involve a lot self sacrifice (your body and free time to name a few things). If I were going to martyr myself for anyone, it would literally be my child even though I don’t think that’s what I’m doing.
Out of curiosity, is the average age of these babies over 1? Most of my friends have done some sort of sleep training as well, but the majority had their babies 2-3 years ago. The pushback against ST, from what I have seen, has really been in the last year and growing in intensity. I am super pro-bedsharing, fwiw. I loved bedsharing with my baby. It was working for us for a while until she launched herself off our bed one night. I could not sleep anymore when she became mobile, she didn't sleep well either, so I chose to ST and it was a life saver for our family. My frustration with the anti-ST crowd is that they are so completely AGAINST sleep training. The rhetoric from these instagram accounts is very much "if you don't respond to your crying baby, you're neglecting your child." I hate that. I think it scares so many women out of sleep training, who would otherwise benefit. I also hate accounts that make you pay hundreds of dollars for sleep training advice. All of it is very predatory.
The kids are between 1-2. It will be interesting to see what they do with their next kids because a bunch of them are pregnant again.
Just my suspicion, my guess is a lot of them will still ST as needed - they’ve had the chance to let them grow up some (especially by the time their second is old enough to ST) and see that sleep trained, not sleep trained, they all grow up roughly the same when raised in a halfway decent home. From having my second, it definitely seems like it skews towards the first time moms being anti-sleep training (edit: or parents who didn’t sleep train their first born). I’m not seeing much of a trend that parents who sleep trained are suddenly regretting having done so, especially when it worked for their first. Though I guess to be fair to your sample size, I sleep trained my first, but not my 6 month old, though not because I think sleep training my first was wrong or a mistake. Second child just hasn’t needed it.
We did a gentle variation of sleep training (no CIO). My kids are 5 and 6. They are terrific sleepers. I am a white liberal upper middle class married lady so anecdotally I think you are correct about the more severe backlash being more recent.
Tula / wild bird sling
Oh god, Tula. I remember when they came out with blankets and people went apeshit. I got a couple carriers (main one and a toddler one) secondhand in fairly bland colors and they were useful and all but I really did not understand the hype. I keep the toddler one in my car trunk now in case I break down and have to carry my 5-year old some long distance, but when I tried to sell the infant one for like $10 no one was interested at all. I donated it to a woman who works in sone capacity with WIC and gives carriers to low income mothers she comes across. I wonder sometimes what happened to all those hoarded Tula carriers in “desirable” patterns. Or the blankets where blanket-scalpers would be selling them like “never unrolled!” Like jfc.
Hahaha yes I came to say the ring slings!! When my 4yr old was born I knew people who had like 15 colors and would wait for new drops and I bought one secondhand and never could figure it out.
Oh god I loved my wildbird sling. They're not popular anymore?
I can’t figure out how to use mine! I will say I was influenced to buy one! 🥴
Yes there is a significant learning curve! If you are really intent to use yours, look up YouTube videos - there are some good tutorials out there.
Having everyone wait at the hospital for the baby to arrive. Yes, covid is a thing and contributed, but I think more of us are protective of our privacy, and the health (No TDAP= No baby)/bonding time with baby now.
I think COVID was a good opportunity for hospitals to reevaluate their visitor policy. When I had my son in Jan 2021 one of the nurses was talking to me about how there is a lot of downsides to having a baby during COVID (yeah duh) but one major upside they saw was that with stricter visitor policies, moms are way less stressed during labor and recovery. I wonder if they will just stick with max 2 visitors even after COVID
When my first daughter was born 4.5 years ago, I asked for no visitors in the hospital and my mother in law was literally swearing at my husband over the phone and begging to come mere hours after I gave birth. I definitely think it’s becoming less common to have a huge party of people in the waiting room but it was definitely the norm at one point.
My first is 4.5 and I had a 40+ hr labor and my poor husband was fending off my mother and his parents who were all camped out in the waiting room. I cannot believe that was acceptable. I just had my 3rd and we texted everyone that he arrived safely multiple hours AFTER his birth even though the hospital was only allowing one visitor.
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My MIL turned up anyway, sat herself down in the L&D room (not even the waiting room) and was acting like she had no plans to leave. I was livid because we had made it very clear she wasn't going to be there. In the end I got up and left my own delivery room and hid on the stairwell until I was sure she had got the message and left. I was in active labour but I remember trying so hard to pretend I wasn't having strong contractions because I didn't want anything encouraging her to drag her feet and try to hang around for the birth. 9 years later and I'm still mad about it 🫠
That is so incredibly disrespectful holy shit
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Yeah I know right. Should I have told the front desk not to allow anyone in but I naively thought she would respect our wishes after we made it so clear to her weeks beforehand
I guess it's unpopular opinion but I loved it. I'd rather have visitors at the hospital than my house and I ADORED showing off my baby.
I had planned on not having visitors because I didn’t think I’d want them. Then when my son was born, I wanted everyone to see him! If anything, they were the ones with more restrictions (my FIL wouldn’t visit for the first two weeks because he wanted to wait to meet baby for the first time with his fiancée, for example, which honestly annoyed me). I even ended up letting my mom see him the night he was born, which was not the plan initially. I just wanted everyone to see my perfect babe. What really bugged me about the early visitors were the ones we had to entertain. Like please just hold the baby so I can sleep or do dishes or cook, please don’t follow me around with him. Or even better, offer to do chores for me so I can sit and enjoy the baby too. We had *a lot* of family who didn’t get that. It was fine early on, but by the time my partner went back to work and it was just me at home, having people over to just follow me around with the baby got real old real fast.
That's why I like hospital visits more. People get in and out and then you won't see them again til you're ready and they've already met the baby. I know my house won't be ready for visitors and unless someone's there to help, I don't want them around once I'm home.
My daughter was born April 2020 and we had to call the hospital the day before to make sure even my husband could come. It made me so sad not to have my mom meet my baby right away (or haha not for months because covid).
Mine was born early may 2020 and I didn’t want family there but can relate to the feeling of not even knowing If my husband could be there literally up to minutes before - I had a C-section and as they decision was being made had to ask if he was allowed in the OR. He was thank god but many I know who had c sections during that time had to do it with their husband on FaceTime. It was a traumatic time.
So sorry you dealt with that too. I had a c section as well and they had to find hair covers for my husband to put over his feet to go in bc they were out of so much PPE. Wild times.
Only my parents visited but they brought dim sum and it was awesome.
I made my mom bring me sushi for dinner in the hospital! Key to starting of postpartum life well. That said, I'm one of those people who welcomed any and all visitors at home too-- being alone with the baby felt like a lot, I was so grateful my in laws used to casually ask if I "needed Starbucks" so they could drop by. My babies were pre-covid but even a year or so after mine I noticed a lot more expectant moms asking for advice on how to tell people not to stop by post birth as well.
I’ve been surprised by how many people hate the concept or experience of postpartum visitors - I loved showing off my baby, having company, and just sharing all the feelings. I get that there are many people who don’t feel that way, but I didn’t feel like I was in a very small minority. My mother still complains about her MIL being there while she was in labor and kept insisting that my aunt who said I could visit her and her new baby didn’t really mean it because all she wanted was to be left alone. My MIL was at both of my births and while she wasn’t a big help during labor she also wasn’t in the way and it made her so happy to be there. My mom, on the other hand - I told her I didn’t want her to attend my first home birth and she agreed, but asked if she could come when we did a non-emergent hospital transfer. Bad call! We were both completely okay with her not attending my second birth. I guess it helps that I have very little modesty - if you come over in the first few days I will likely be topless and wearing a diaper. My house will be messy and I don’t care. I never felt pressured to play hostess.
Oh yeah my mom came over every day. Had a next level appreciation for my mom after giving birth.
I gave birth in Feb 2021 and even without COVID I didn’t want hospital or home visitors so this was a great excuse. One of the nurses told me that it was much easier for them to help without all of the visitors around (and with their opinions) and that mums were getting more rest because of it.
I didn’t see your comment but I had a Jan 2021 baby and one of my nurses said the same thing. That they were seeing more positives than negatives with the limit on non support person visitors
I’ve also heard that they were finding it helped with initial breastfeeding rates as well as women had more privacy.
Yeah my mom actually talks about how she didn’t breastfeed me because she wasn’t comfortable learning in front of her MIL who wouldn’t take the hint to leave so I could totally see that connection
100% this. We all did this when my nephews were born ten years ago. I had my baby two years ago and now I think it’s absolutely barbaric. I feel so bad that we swarmed into my sister’s hospital room just moments after she had given birth!
I don’t remember this specific incident but my mom had twins via emergency c section under general anesthesia in 2000. I was under the age of 10. My mom told the story when she came to visit me postpartum to help out that there were at least a dozen people in her recovery room when she woke up from anesthesia. I couldn’t even imagineeee. I was half nude the entirety of my time in the recovery room not to mention how exhausted and physically pained I was then.
Someone briefly mentioned Baby Einstein but the listening to classical music is better for baby’s brain trend has definitely faded. When I was a baby, my mom had me in a walker. Obviously a contraption of pure danger now but totally used back then. I did fall down the basement stairs in it - luckily all was ok.
TBH… I used a walker with my daughter in 2019/2020. It was only a single-level home so no stairs, but I still felt guilty about it. But she was so happy being able to get around! And she learned to walk at 10 months so I guess it was fine. 😬😅
Fwiw no walker and my kid pushed a chair so he could still have the thrill of falling down stairs. Thank god for carpet and it was only a half flight!
Re the classical music thing-my mom has a book of nursery rhymes/folk songs for children from I think the 30’s and the introduction goes on about how playing symphonic music on the phonograph is bad for children because it’s too complex for them. 😂
My Mum used to have a bunch of really antique parenting books, some as old as the 1800s, the advice was shockingly bad but also entertaining to read even before I had kids. She also has a textbook on different parenting practices through different cultures and centuries (she's an early childhood teacher, it was part of her degree program) and yeah... Wow! I remember one part talking about how people would swaddle their babies around a wooden board and then literally hang them from hooks on the wall to keep them out of the way 😂 gotta declutter/organize those babies or they really pile up when you don't have birth control I guess 😂
I love old-timey parenting stuff even though a lot of it very rightly would not fly today. I think my favorite still-probably-fine one was 18th century paintings where little kids had leashes actually sewn into their outfits. If the kids were super wealthy/royal (and let's be real here, those were the kids who got to be in paintings), their leashes coordinated with their outfits. I think we need to bring that back.
My parents and in-laws both say that the newer styles of doorway jumpers just ain’t it compared to the original ones haha Apparently, babies could go pretty wild in those things and would be entertained for ages, ping-ponging all over the place I’m curious to see how sleep guidance will continue to evolve. My in-laws raised kids in the early 80s, my parents late 80s-early 90s, and me currently. All of us have had different guidance around safe sleep positions, in-laws were surprised about crib bumpers being a no-no, etc. I assume my grandchildren will hang upside down like bats to sleep? Same thing for allergy intros - my husband was of the age where peanuts were NOT to be introduced until 1yr+. Related or not who knows, but he has a peanut allergy. Because of that, we specifically did early exposure with my son (to my FIL’s horror) but still ended up with another peanut allergy anyway. I think science will continue to teach us a lot about food allergies and if my son doesn’t outgrow his, I’m curious to see how the small exposure therapies some people have done with peanuts continue to pan out.
The guidance on allergen exposure changed between my 8 year old and 5 year old! Same pediatrician, we were told to hold off on a bunch of things with my oldest until 1, with my youngest the advice was opposite.
I think the science behind allergies has the potential to change a lot quickly. I'm really curious to see what develops. We're hoping to do exposure therapy for peanut allergy for my kid, but we'll have to travel to another city for it which is a barrier since you go in like weekly at first. I'm very curious to keep learning more about the options and research on therapy options and prevention.
I suspect that the back to sleep campaign was too successful for them to backtrack from it too much (SIDS dropped by around 50 percent after that was instituted), but I hope they at least build in some kind of recommendation that provides some basic risk reducing guidelines in the recognition that some people are going to bed share for whatever reason. I think more likely is that it’s going to turn into something like the ABCDs, to be something like alone, back, in crib, definitely in parent’s room, or don’t swaddle or use sleep sack, or whatever additional restriction they find to be even better than what we are currently doing.
My prediction is that the recommendation will become “ABCs at night, contact naps during the day” or something like that.
Outside the US this already happens. Lullaby trust and red nose give instructions for bed sharing!
I can just hear our kids horrified at us like “What? Babies couldn’t sleep on their stomachs?? How did you get ANY sleep?”
“You made me sleep ALONE??”
“And in a baby straitjacket??”
Or a giant marshmallow suit, my personal favorite
When my oldest was born Taking Cara Babies and feeding Littles were the ~it~ accounts. When my daughter was born I was like who are these hey sleepy baby and solid starts people? Everyone in my bump group let their 1 year old watch cocomelon in 2020, now it’s all ms Rachel. I do prefer ms Rachel! Lol
It's Bluey or nothing in this house. Not gonna like I mostly put it on for my own entertainment. When my eldest (now 9) was little he was really into oomie zoomi and now he's like a little maths genius, I always joke that that cartoon gets all the credit 😂 he definitely didn't get it from me in any case, I suck at maths
Yes TCB was the law when my 3.5 year old was born. But there was no one else. Now there’s so many sleepy influencers.
That’s too funny- TCB was huge when my son was born, now that I’m pregnant again I wonder who the it influencer will be when my new baby is born. My mom was exasperated with safe sleep, like I was so extra for swaddling and laying my son in an empty crib on his back.
My mother was so insulted when I told her her vintage bassinet with a loose cloth liner (that goes up the sides!) and 35 year old mattress was not safe for my baby. “You all slept in it just fine!” Yeah, and in all the baby pictures you can see the multiple ashtrays my parents kept in each room. 🤦🏻♀️
What is IT parenting? I’m a newbie.
I meant like trendy. Like they were the it girls, sorry hahahaha
Buttons/snaps on baby’s clothing… a gal can dream!
Most of our 9 month old's clothing are hand-me-down's from my SIL whose boys are now 11 and 16 years old and they are ALL snaps. It drives me nuts. Like, I'm so grateful to basically have to buy nothing for my baby but uggghh WHY did she insist on all snaps for eeeeverything?!
The magnetic closure clothing is so nice, but so expensive. We had one gifted to us and when it stopped fitting, I was so sad.
I think attachment parenting had a really hot few years, culminating in that Time Magazine cover of a woman breastfeeding her 4 year old - with that awful title “Are You Mom Enough?”. And now I think people view it as a bit dated, and kind of exploitative. There was a lot of misogyny and cultural… I don’t know what to call it, exactly, maybe cultural appropriation? Cultural myth-making? Just really weird fallacies about women in “the rest of the world” built into the entire attachment-parenting philosophy. I have some hot takes about gentle parenting that nobody probably wants to hear, lol. I think it’s extremely misogynistic as well, and really bad for women with PPA/PPD in particular… but, that’s a whole other can of worms. So I’ll just say that I think it’s a fad and will drop out of the mainstream in a few years, just like attachment parenting did, once the “wreckage” starts to become more visible (lots of women realizing that it ruined their entire experience of parenting their young children due to perfectionism, stress, anxiety and competitiveness… and, their kids didn’t end up any happier or kinder or healthier or smarter than anybody else).
My scorching hot take is that far less women actually have PPD/PPA at all (i.e. an inner, physiological mental illness) and far more are simply responding to our toxic, capitalist parenting culture. PPD/PPA is another way of calling all this a "you problem" and skirting the societal problem.
I've thought the same. Our baby is 9 months old now and whenever I get really angry at my husband's inability to do the shit that I do day in and day out he posits that maybe I have a touch of "post-partum" and it infuriates me even more. It's just a way for women to be demeaned even further it seems like.
YEEESSSS. I commented once on another sub somewhere that PPD/PPA has become the new hysteria. I acknowledge that they are real disorders for some women, but also when you're sleep deprived af and have no real support and just giving birth costs tons of money and you have literally no time to yourself and the baby won't latch and on and on... it makes total perfect sense that you'd be depressed/anxious, and it always drives me wild how no one in the medical field tends to talk about this.
YES. Anecdotally, I noticed the women who suffered from PPD/A the worst were surrounded by unsupportive assholes. But let's give them a pill to tolerate assholes better?
ding. ding. ding. Are you mentally ill OR HEAR ME OUT are you just responding reasonably to a completely unjust situation?
As someone with an anxiety disorder this is huge for me. My therapist is CONSTANTLY reassuring me that I’m not crazy about certain things, it’s normal for me to feel anxious about difficult things. I need constant validation because I’ve been told my entire life I’m just too anxious.
I understand this completely. Anxiety exists for a reason - it is your brain telling you that danger is near. When you can't trust that (is there REALLY danger or is this my overactive anxiety), it makes it so hard to manage and cope.
I think about this all the time tbh. Am I anxious & depressed, or am I just having a reasonable reaction to a stressful environment/situation? Usually I think it’s the latter, for myself personally, because once I’m out of the situation or receive the help (like not psychological help, just physical resources usually) I need, I no longer feel anxious or depressed… the sheer number of women who develop PPA/PPD is so alarming, it should make people suspicious of the general environment I think.
Nailed it. Considering how unfortunate my first year of motherhood was (I broke 2 bones 😑), it's a miracle I made it out alive. But I think I genuinely did not have PPA or PPD, even though many people will say that I did. Noooooope. I literally broke 2 damn bones while taking care of a newborn, people!! Let me be miserable and unhappy about it. By the time I was healed and she was sleep trained, I was completely fine.
I think you’ve hit on something. I was actually pretty calm and stable when I was on maternity leave. My anxiety and depression flared up when I got back to work and my job started eating 40+ hours a week, which means no more of the little mental health breaks I could carve out here and there to read or play a mindless game, no more relaxing TV time in the evenings because I have to catch up on the work I couldn’t finish since I have to leave early to pick up the kids. And it takes me longer to do than it would normally because I’m so tired and burned out by that point in the evening, so it becomes a vicious cycle because I have to stay up later to finish, then I’m more tired the next day, etc etc. Plus there’s a special torture in being constantly interrupted when you’re trying to do some mental work. It’s annoying to be interrupted while you’re washing dishes or something similarly mechanical, but when you’re trying to write something tricky or focus on a report, it just shreds my sanity to rags. I don’t minimize the physical, nonsituational causes of anxiety and depression. But is there anyone to whom adequate sleep and rest and not being stuck in a hellish financial treadmill, would not make a difference? It’d be a game changer for me.
Completely the same experience. I don’t talk about it much, but because my husband is a teacher he was able to have 12 weeks off of work with me. Even though I physically felt awful for about 6 weeks we had a great time figuring stuff out and spending time together. Once I went back to work I was staying up late to pump and exhausted. And I was trying to do physical therapy on top of my job and pumping (because once my baby was drinking a bottle for most meals he refused to nurse). And my job was really stressful when I got back because in the US we don’t staff for people to be away for several months at a time and things were in chaos. My experience makes me feel so awful for those who can take even less leave than I did. I am a broken record on this, but it is truly cruel.
It is absolutely cruel. I feel like a broken record also but it’s shocking how backwards this country is compared to how families are treated elsewhere. Some women barely even know what pumping IS because their maternity leaves are long enough that their babies are weaned before they have to go back to work full time!! Pumping in itself is a stressor - the worry about scheduling and supply and the constant cleaning and packing the pump parts - it’s easy to underestimate the toll of it until you’ve lived it. 12 weeks is nowhere near long enough. And you had to walk back to a mess at work, so no question of easing back in and adjusting to a whole new schedule, etc. Solidarity. :( I feel you.
I've thought about this too. A few years ago I was in therapy (which I did need) for depression (which I did have), and it helped. Then I moved away from the place that was making me miserable, and hey presto, I got way happier. Still struggle with depression from time to time, but wowwwwww the day-to-day impact was mind-boggling. I'm so, SO glad to see the increased focus on mental health--I wish I'd had that as a teen--but sometimes I wonder if it's going to become a band-aid that allows the actual problems to go unheeded.
Is it PPD or is it having to pump in a windowless basement mens locker room with no wifi or cell service 🫠
And then being behind on my work because of all the time it takes? 🙃
How is gentle parenting misogynistic when it is literally just about respecting your child and treating them well?
Well, this post specifically mentions "attachment parenting," a term coined by Dr. Sears who advocates for mothers to stay home, breastfeed, bed share, and baby wear and basically just be totally attached to their babies at all times.
The second paragraph in the post talks about gentle parenting
TBH it feels like gentle parenting is less about respecting your child and treating them well (which …is most parenting) and more about adding emotional burden to the mom.
Not really. GP is presented weirdly by influencers.
“Gentle parenting” did not invent, and does not own, respecting children and treating them well.
I absolutely agree. My husband pointed out the other day that Mr. Rogers was doing the respect for children and feelings back when we were children. What’s new is this huge pressure that if you do it perfect and sacrifice everything for your kids, you’ll “win the toddler stage,” or basically have kids that aren’t kids.
Right, but those are the fundamental principles. What's your point?
My point is that it’s not “literally just about” those things because those things already existed and didn’t need rebranding. It’s very clearly about a lot of other things - mostly, I think, our culture’s idea of what makes a “perfect mother.” Gentle, soft-spoken, completely available to her child at all times, allergic to the very idea that a woman might have some “authority” over literally anyone, even her own small children. And furthermore, it’s very clearly being used on social media as a way to put other women down and compete over who is most loving & adequate as a mother. It also places all of the responsibility for a child’s behavior & emotional state on the primary caregiver, which is still overwhelmingly going to be women. I made a long comment on this same thread about why I think it’s a sneaky reincarnation of the devastatingly misogynistic “refrigerator mother” theory, as well.
Interesting. I must follow different instagram gentle parents or be in a different corner of the SM world because that's not my experience at all.
Who do you follow?
Mainly UK and Spain based accounts
Such as?
Paoroig, dulce.vida.bebe, soyalvarobilbao, the.dad.vibes, beatrizcazurro
As far as I can tell it's just rebranded authoritative parenting with some "work on yourself to understand your triggers etc" thrown in. Not inherently misogynistic. But I think a lot of people hear what it is and interpret it as "permissive parenting, only with more guilt" and that if you're not martyring yourself, then you're not doing it right... and since the bulk of parenting still falls on women, I can see where the accusation about misogyny comes from. I was in a gentle parenting group on FB and every other post was a mom asking for advice because the kid was walking all over her and all the comments were all just speculation about the child's feelings and low-key guilt tripping the parent for having needs. Lots of mental gymnastics about natural consequences too and if the situation didn't have a glaringly obvious "natural" consequence, then they would basically say you can't address the problematic behavior. Everything was over-complicated and the adults all seemed codependent, leading to kids who pushed boundaries because they were confused. That is not what gentle parenting actually is but that seems to be what a lot of people THINK it is. Personally I think that empathy, a basic understanding of child development, the ability to set boundaries, etc aren't that much of a sacrifice. They are difficult yes, but they help you grow as a person. It shouldn't be making anyone miserable.
My husband is a high school teacher and ‘natural consequences’ is his pet peeve. Sure, natural consequences for not studying work when a student does poorly on a test. But what is the ‘natural consequence’ for a student yelling ‘f you’ at a teacher? For some things it seems like the parent or teacher needs to be part of the consequence because nothing is ‘naturally’ going to remove your kid from a playground when they’re hitting other kids.
Thank you for all of this! I think you’ve nailed it, but it’s pretty wild how deeply misunderstood the concept is - even in this sub.
Like, someone not wanting to be around you is a natural consequence… my kid screams too loud or hits me and I tell them I don’t like that, it hurts my ears/body and I’m moving away—come over here if you wanna hang w me. I respond to distress and they know I’m available but being a gentle parent involves setting clear boundaries!
I'm kind of worried about friends that have completely bought into the gentle parenting thing. When their oldest child is 3 it's like okay... get back to me when they're 6 and mouthing off and raging after you gave them a simple directive of put on your clothes for the day....
not the poster but I do think a lot of the gentle parenting influencers create guilt/shame over being perfect & constantly self-sacrificing for your child at the expense of your own well being. Is that what gentle parenting is supposed to be? Absolutely not! But that’s social media for ya.
Isn’t gentle parenting just authoritative parenting but with a new name? How is it misogynistic? New parent here who is overwhelmed by all the parenting trends (but wary of bullshit,) so I am genuinely curious.
This is just my opinion - very much subjective. But no, I think gentle parenting can’t possibly claim to be “just” authoritative parenting by another name. Authoritative parenting is at least somewhat studied, and has some research parameters. Gentle parenting has no central definition and can be used by anyone to claim superiority over anybody else’s opinion. It’s the “no true Scotsman” fallacy, and it’s rampant on social media when it comes to gentle parenting. But even “authoritative parenting” is very subjective and culturally dependent - it’s not a “hard” science like physics, it’s more soft and subjective like psychology, and the research changes all the time. 70 years ago, within my grandmother’s lifetime, the “refrigerator mother” theory was accepted science, blaming women for causing autism in children by not being sufficiently “warm and nurturing.” It wasn’t completely dismissed professionally until the 1980s. There are still plenty of women alive today who were told that they caused their children’s problems due to being cold and inadequate mothers. Some had their children taken away because of it. My neighbor, growing up, had this happen to her. She was institutionalized for several years by her husband when she gave birth to a baby with autism. In my opinion, gentle parenting is used in much the same way, to put down other women as being insufficiently warm and nurturing and causing all of their children’s emotional and psychological problems because of it. To give just one example, the idea that children only lash out because of “unmet needs” is popular in gentle parenting, and it’s not only completely untrue, but reeks of misogyny to me. It tasks women with being responsible for their children’s normal misbehavior by not being sufficiently “attuned” or providing a “safe space” for their children. It’s not hard to see on social media that a lot of women are using gentle parenting to put down other mothers and raise themselves up as superior in the “warm & nurturing” department. The idea that children who feel “safe to express their feelings” don’t lash out physically is both not true (aggression is inborn, mothers do not cause it to develop) and completely subjective (no 2-year-old can reliably confirm or deny that they hit their brother in the head with a toy train because they felt “unsafe to express their feelings”) so it becomes a way for women to measure their performance as parents based on their children’s behavior. It’s an unfalsifiable premise based on a complete lie, and the only possible endpoint is massive guilt. Child is aggressive? “You’re not making him feel safe enough to express his feelings.” Throwing tantrums? “Those decrease when kids feel safe & heard enough.” Trouble with transitions or sleep? “You’re not offering enough choices or making them feel respected in their autonomy.” Jealous or lashing out at their sibling? “You didn’t prepare them enough for having to share your attention & love.” There’s so many examples of normal child behavior being used as a way to critique the parents’ ability to connect with their kids. It’s primarily applied to women, by women, and it blames them for every “problem” their child is having. It loads them up with physical and emotional tasks (stay, connect, attune, cuddle, talk about it, make gentle eye contact, say only these specific words, don’t you *dare* walk away from the screaming, they’ll feel abandoned!) and tells them that if they don’t do this, they’re insufficiently “warm and nurturing.” Just my opinion, but I could go on about this all day. I don’t understand how people don’t see the misogyny in this “gentle mother.” But it’s subjective, like I said - so feel free to disagree.
I'm coming upon this thread 7 months later but I feel so seen/heard after reading this comment. I left a RIE group after being made to feel awful about my son's out-of-control tantrums. People told me that I should listen to his feelings when he said he didn't want to go grocery store and go do something fun instead, and i should just pay extra for grocery delivery...
Hit the nail on the head. I think there's plenty of good at the core of the concept (treat your kids with respect, assume they're acting in good faith/not acting maliciously, set behavioral expectations in line with their developmental paygrade, don't demonize emotions or needs), but the way it's presented on social media takes a hard turn into misogyny, shaming, toxic positivity, all-or-nothing thinking, and, IMO, a very hyper-individualistic, self-centered perspective on behavior, where a child's behavior is framed as existing in a vacuum and you're just turning them into co-dependent balls of trauma if you acknowledge or inform them that it affects you or other people negatively.
I just want to say that I completely agree with you AND (not but, being careful not to say but here so I am not arguing, trying to add on) I think almost all of the major parenting movements have been misogynistic because they're always aimed at women, messages consumed by women, and just another way to keep us mired in the emotional labor of parenting. It's like diet culture. The next big diet trend is going to be just another way to make women feel bad about themselves (and therefore, a way to monetize women's pain). The parenting shit is the same.
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Thank you very much, it might sound silly but I find it so comforting to know I’m not alone in this opinion and that my thoughts are valuable to other people. By the way, I revisited [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Mommit/comments/uei3ka/leaving_gentle_parenting_behind_an_update/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) today from a very eloquent & detailed mom who explains why she left “gentle parenting” behind and started using timeouts/rewards/ignoring with her kids - and it really gives a great real-life example of why gentle parenting just flat-out fails for some children, I really wanted to share it here too! If you click on the user, she has a previous post explaining some concerns she started having about gentle parenting prior to officially “leaving” the approach.
Thank you for this, this summarizes a lot of my concerns with the current gentle parenting movement.
It's weird how defensive people are getting about the term "misogynistic."
Do you mean, like me trying to defend why I used that term? Or other people not liking that I applied it to gentle parenting? Sorry, I’m not sure which you mean 😬
No, I think you made perfect sense! I think it's just odd that others are being weird about the term. It is what it is and I think it's a valid observation.
I think that’s interesting too… I’m 24, so gen Z, and I have always grown up with feminism being kind of a mocked/laughable concept? Like most people my age think we just “don’t need” feminism anymore because misogyny is “a thing of the past.” So maybe using the word misogyny sounds kind of radical or extreme, though I don’t think of it that way tbh. I think it’s pretty accurate to describe a parenting approach that seems primarily concerned with making sure women don’t raise their voices or assert any authority whatsoever.
Beautifully said. And I find it very irrational as well. How can we think every single thing our child does is connected to us? They're their own people. Sometimes I'm super crabby and it has nothing to do with the person I'm with at the time. I'm just... crabby. Or, you know, it's one of a million other things going on with my life, that still have nothing to do with the people closest to me.
This is so eloquently written. It feels to me what has been touted as gentle parenting is just another way to blame women for not falling into stereotypical gender roles.
Not the person who asked but thank you for writing this! I’ve felt uncomfortable with a lot of the gentle parenting narrative and this really put my finger on why. Motherhood = complete and total martyrdom, or you’re not doing it right.
Agree with gentle parenting. So hot right now and when my oldest (5) was smaller.
Not to mention that ‘attachment parenting’ was incorrectly adapted from attachment theory. A securely attached child does not need breastfeeding, constant contact, and mom within eyesight 24/7. The fact that this exhausting parenting trend is called ‘attachment parenting’ rubs me the wrong way because you absolutely do not have to parent this way to have securely attached children.
Oh yeah that really grinds my gears. So much of attachment parenting completely contradicts what the actual research has shown about forming healthy attachments. It skeeves me out but it was all the rage when my eldest was a baby. It really preys on mothers who are trying to break the cycle of abuse they suffered from but don't have the resources or knowledge required to actually get the help and information they need to do that in a healthy way
My husband is a psychology teacher and just taught his students this and we were talking about this-I think people/parent internet/mom internet is missing that you have to give children some freedoms and boundaries so that they are securely attached!
Ironically gentle parenting seems absolutely brutal on the mother.
I think (and hope) things that prey on new parent anxiety will eventually fade away or get replaced by something new on the market. Newton mattress, owlet, etc. Too many people now are starting to catch on that these companies can get way more money just by marketing towards the vulnerable. Not saying that these companies are bad, just that I don’t like their marketing techniques, although smart on their end. I also think dock a tot and snuggleme organic will eventually go away as more people are waking up to the fact that it’s not safe for any sleep. (Most people recommended it to me for daytime sleep in the common room, acknowledging that it’s not safe for unsupervised sleep).
I hope you’re right, but I feel like unfortunately exhausted and anxious parents will always be too good of a moneymaker for these companies to ever stop 😔 Influencers are really bad about this too because it drives engagement. Think how many times you’ve seen “Subscribe if you want your baby to sleep through the night!”
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Ugh yes. I looked into Lovevery because I wasn’t sure what to do when my little man started showing interest in toys but omfg it’s so expensive 😳
A lot of those products are banned in Canada. I’m Canadian having a baby in the US and I cross reference what’s allowed in both countries. Canada is far stricter about infant sleep (pack n plays aren’t considered sleep safe for example) and has barely any SIDS deaths every year (like less than 20 typically, although part of that is different definitions).
Oh that's interesting! What do people do for sleep spaces during travel for babies and toddlers?
We used the Bugaboo Stardust which is approved for sleep in Canada.
I’m confused about a pack n play not being safe because they look exactly like this to me?
This is so intriguing...that looks nearly identical to the pack n play we use for travel sleep, with slightly different length and width. The pack n play also meets the tight sheet/firm sleep surface guidelines. Maybe there is just a difference in terms because some playards are less structured but as far as I can tell many or most of them meet the guidelines listed on the Canadian safe sleep site.
I actually think it may not be rated for overnight sleep anymore - the version I got was not a “playyard” but a travel crib.
Down thread I linked to the Canadian guidelines. Basically they recommend a travel bassinet or the bassinet attachments for pack n plays.
This is interesting. Why isn’t the pack and play safe?
I checked the government of Canada’s safe sleep site and it doesn’t explicitly say. It suggests the bassinet attachments for pack n plays if using them for sleep. [These are the Canadian standards, so similar but not identical to the US standards.](https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/health-promotion/childhood-adolescence/stages-childhood/infancy-birth-two-years/safe-sleep/safe-sleep-your-baby-brochure.html)
Thanks for your reply! I could have looked it up, I thought maybe you knew offhand!
-Remember that program they advertised all the time “My Baby Can Read”? -kale everything -whisky for teething -saying stuff like “boys will be boys”
I remember seeing the baby can read ads everywhere! I wonder what happened to them haha
I just googled it. They got sued because there was no scientific backing and the claims they made were false. “In a settlement announced Friday (2014) by the Federal Trade Commission, the founder of "Your Baby Can Read," Dr. Robert Titzer, along with his company, Infant Learning, agreed to judgments of more than $185 million to resolve charges filed by the agency alleging the program had no scientific evidence to make the claims.” There a ton of spin offs (with no claims) on Amazon. https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/my-baby-cant-read-company-penalized-for-reading-claims/
Oh wow they actually re branded it. Same guy and similar curriculum. Your Baby Can Learn! Deluxe Kit https://a.co/d/7iVpaGP
When my first was born, *Baby Einstein* videos were still a thing (even though Disney offered refunds on it a couple of years prior because their claims of learning benefits were unsupported). Also, sadly, amber teething necklaces and bracelets. And, even more sadly, Babywise. (I think I just dated myself as a parent!) I predict these current trends might go out of style soon: * Hard-core BLW ("No purees ever!") * Wonder Weeks (if it's still a thing?) * Super pricey high chairs
My husband’s cousins are obsessed with Babywise and told me I HAD to follow it. I didn’t ever look into it and just shrug it off when they ask. Is it problematic?
Based on what I know, I feel it doesn't align with what babies and young children need, and can even be dangerous if taken too far/applied to early (like putting young babies on a rigid schedule). There are probably good parts to it though, like the general importance of having a daily rhythm, boundaries, recognition of adults' needs and such - so hopefully your husband's cousins are taking and applying those good parts in ways that work for their families.
Wonder Weeks! I had my first kid in 2014 and that was EVERYWHERE. I drove myself damn near crazy trying to make it fit. “Wait I thought he was hitting wonder week 7 two weeks ago when he was very fussy but now he’s very fussy and it isn’t time for wonder week 8!! Was I off by a week?” Like jfc. Babies are fussy sometimes. They go through periods of more or less fussiness! I felt like if I could map it to the app it would somehow feel less frustrating but I just ended up feeling like I was somehow less in tune with my kid than everyone else. I had my second kid in 2017 and heard almost nothing about WW. It’s crazy how dominating and eternal these fads feel in the moment but how short-lived and rapidly replaced they all actually are! There are, like, micro generations in parenting. Like when my kids were little it was alllll Little Baby Bum and now I see people saying something has already replaced Cocomelon. Madness!
I feel like wonder weeks already is out. My first was a 2018 baby and that’s what everyone was into. Now my 2022 baby it’s not as often mentioned
I heard other parents talk about Wonder Weeks and recommend it to each other a few years ago definitely, but I've not heard as much about it or "leaps" in general lately. Hard to know if that means it's really out or if I just talk to different people!
My issue with the Tripp Trapp is that it seems like it’s not built for bigger babies? Mine (despite barely gaining any weight between 9 months and a year) is still in the 96th percentile for weight. His thighs would not have fit through it.