Time Magazine Encourages "Tough Love" for Infants

The latest issue of Time, December 7, 2009, has a section called The Year in Health, A to Z.  B is for Babies, which says:

"When a baby has repeated problems falling asleep, Mom and Dad may need to show some tough love. Lingering with cranky babies too long or bringing them into the parents' bedroom can make them likelier to become poor sleepers, according to psychologist Jodi Mindell, who gathered data on nearly 30,000 kids up to 3 years old in 17 countries. "If you're rocked to sleep at bedtime, you're going to need that every time you wake up," she notes. Her advice: have children fall asleep 3 ft. away. "If they're slightly separated, they sleep much better," she says.

We know better.

In her editorial Who Wants to Sleep Alone? Peggy O'Mara writes, "At the root of this debate lie different and contradictory philosophies about what is in the best interests of the child. Some psychologists see bed sharing with children as aberrant in any form, while others see it as an important part of the attachment process. On each side are the usual prejudices and vested interests that can make that side appear "right" to its proponents, and the other side "wrong." Different studies show different results. And, finally, the important distinction between breastfeeding and bottle-feeding mothers in regard to bed sharing is not recognized.

"Because of our national superiority complex, we often believe that if something is true here in the US, it must be right everywhere. In the area of infant sleep, this couldn't be further from the truth. According to pediatric anthropologist Meredith Small, the US is unique in being the only nation in the world in which babies are routinely put in their own beds in their own rooms. Small reports on one study that showed that, in 67 percent of the world's cultures, children sleep in the company of others. In another survey of 172 societies, all infants in all cultures do some bed-sharing at night, even if only for a few hours."

Mothers and infants sleeping side by side is the evolved context of human infant sleep development, according to James McKenna. In his article, Breastfeeding & Bedsharing Still Useful (and Important) after All These Years, he writes, "Until very recent times, for all human beings, it constituted a prerequisite for infant survival; outside of the Western industrialized context, for the majority of contemporary people, it still does. Because the human infant's body continues to be adapted only to the mother's body, cosleeping with nighttime breastfeeding remains clinically significant and potentially lifesaving."

Email Time with your input and share some of this infant sleep wisdom. Hopefully we can get some letters published in their next issue.  letters@time.com

Informative and inspirational Mothering articles on sleep:

Who Wants to Sleep Alone?

The Complexity of Parent-Child Cosleeping: Researching Cultural Beliefs

Real Men Sleep with Their Kids

Sleep with Me: A Trans-cultural Look at the Power--and Protection--of Sharing a Bed

Not Designed to Sleep Alone

Pillow Talk