Has anyone seen this article before? I think it's really interesting.
"Mothers as Managers" by Penelope Leach
The phrase ?controlled crying? epitomises an increasingly popular approach to parents? (especially mothers?) management of their infants. The approach owes much to the concept of ?sleep training? first formulated by Ferber1 a generation ago. If parents are asked to pinpoint the very worst part of raising a baby through the first year, more of them pick lack of sleep than anything else. The delayed-response method, which is often referred to among parents as "Ferberizing" aims to train babies from four to six months of age to go to sleep without adult soothing and to go through the night without attention.
Ferber?s approach has always been counterbalanced by authorities, such as Sears2, who argue for ?attachment parenting? with attention available to infants by night as well as by day, and, often, for co-sleeping or ?family beds?. When parents experience ?sleeping problems? extreme versions of each of these opposite approaches attract some as passionate advocates. (See Appendix 1 ?Approaches to infant sleep?)
Now, though, Ferberesque arguments and techniques are being generalised from problem solving to ordinary practice and from the middle of an infant?s first year to the whole of it. This of course means that they are being generalised from sleeping patterns to all behaviours. In the newborn period ?there is no such thing as a baby? (as Winnicott told us) and there is no such thing as a ?sleeping problem? either ? at least not one that belongs to the infant. Sleep and wakefulness, feeding and other physical functions, play and neuro-muscular and brain development are all interlinked and moderated by the relationship between infant and mothering person.
So instead of being part of a temporary approach to entrenched sleeping difficulties, ?controlled crying? is being presented as central to an overall strategy for mothers? avoidance and/or management of all the difficulties and conflicts that may arise in caring for babies. The phrase ?controlled crying? has slipped into child care advice, both in print and on the Net, and with it the notion that mothers can control every aspect of their babies? lives and should strive to do so as both they themselves and the infants will be happier if they do. Astonishingly detailed and prescriptive plans for the exercise of such maternal control, manipulation and management are reaching a wide public. A typical example of the routine advised for a baby of three to four months usually starts like this:
7.00am Baby should be awake, fed and nappy changed
7.30am Wash and dress baby
9.00am Settle baby to sleep for no longer than 45 minutes, loosely wrapped and in the dark with the door shut
These routines are prescriptive. Parent?s queries about how to ensure that the baby?s longest sleep period is by night rather than in the day often includes instructions not to talk or make eye contact with the baby after the last feed at 10pm until the next feed at 7am. Advice also often includes total blackout on all windows and limiting protein foods, vegetables and fruit after lunchtime so as to lessen the likelihood of an early morning bowel movement, as well as ?controlled crying? for those who wake all the same.
Why do many mothers, including older and better-educated women, welcome this Truby King-like advice?
Successive surveys, culminating in the recently reported results of the Lever Faberge Family Report 2003 3, suggest that as well as finding the transition to motherhood demanding and difficult, many women are finding the ongoing actuality of mothering disappointing. There are increasing numbers of women deciding not to have children and increasing numbers striving to overcome involuntary childlessness, but among those who do have a child or children there are increasing numbers who are ready to acknowledge that being a mother has unexpectedly distressing and lasting effects on previous adult-only lifestyles and careers.
In this social context any set of strategies that empowers women to control infants? behaviour and limit their demands will be attractive to many, especially if they are convinced that the system is good for their babies: that using it makes them better mothers. The message ?You are in charge; you know best what is good for your baby? may be especially appealing to those women who are least sure that they know anything about babies, and least able to allow themselves to be guided by what they feel. Authoritarianism is especially attractive to people who are at their most vulnerable. Many new mothers, bombarded with differing explanations and advice about babies have been heard to say ?I wish someone would just tell me what to do?. These instruction books do just that and their appeal is increased by the offered level of daily ? hourly - detail.
Once a woman has decided to adopt such a scheme, no judgment or decisions are required. Following each day?s routine is mindless, (though far from effortless) and assures her of the rightness of doing things she might otherwise have been uncertain about and had to work out for herself. The idea of closing the door on a baby and leaving him to cry, for example, can be both tempting and shameful. Good enough mothers can be tempted and may or may not find themselves ashamed. But if leaving the baby is part of ?settling him? in a prescribed way at a scheduled time in a day whose every moment is programmed to do what is right for him, a woman can feel like a good mother even whilst he cries, ignoring rather than hearing him. Constantly assuring mothers that this (and only this) is the right way to manage a baby (?follow my routines...?), such a programme insulates mothers from feeling neglectful or guilty and from finding their own ways.
Among many swings and fashions in childcare advice, why is this one important enough to merit a response from infant mental health professionals?
It is not so much the content of these very specific recommendations that uniquely merit a professional response, more their implications for the relationships between mothers and babies. Routines, even very detailed ones like those exemplified in Appendix Two, are not in themselves bad for babies. Most infants flourish with at least some predictability in their daily lives and if more makes a mother feel better able to cope, her baby may also benefit, as long as routines are not so rigid that his daily experiences are always the same and he has no chance to learn about the difference between sleeping with the door open or closed, or eating less or more than usual for lunch.
Controlled crying is not necessarily undesirable either, although the name has unpleasant connotations. Indeed leaving a baby to grumble in her cot for a few minutes when she is known to be tired and is clearly fighting sleep may be the very best way to help her let go and drop off. Even ?leaving a baby to cry? is not always as harsh as it sounds. Holding back from the early-waker instead of hurrying to him at the first murmur, for example, may actually increase his sense of security (as well as his ability to stay awake for a pleasant morning) by showing him that his parents are confident that he can manage on his own for a little while and that it is safe for him to do so. But there is a crucial difference between these examples of normally sensitive parenting and the alternative, highly routinised and externalised style of infant care. While the former is based on parents knowing their baby, noticing and striving to understand his or her cues, often putting themselves in those non-existent shoes and bearing the baby and the baby?s feelings in mind even when they refuse to meet his or her immediate demands, the latter is based on parents ?knowing best?.
Any increase in the popularity of rigid, instruction-manual child care is unwelcome to infant mental health professionals because it runs counter to the vast international literature concerning the unarguable importance of secure attachment; to the rapidly growing associated body of research demonstrating the importance of maternal sensitivity and responsivity, and to findings currently emerging from the fast-moving field of research into infant brain development. The security of an infant?s attachment to mother and the sensitivity of her care go together. Stress, including the stresses that lead to insecure attachment, damages an infant?s capacity to learn and may, in extreme instances, damage it forever. Whatever specific infant outcomes are studied ? from language development to resilience to sociable play ? the sensitivity and responsivity of their mothers explains more of the variance in most studies than any other variable.
Nobody can be sensitive to another person all the time; nobody can always be responsive. But the more responsive, loving experience a baby gets the more he will flourish today and the more resources he will have to cope with difficulties tomorrow. It is through this first love relationship that babies learn about themselves, other people and the world; experience emotions and learn to recognise and cope with them. And it is through this baby-love that they become capable of more grown-up kinds; capable, one far-distant day, of giving children of their own what they now need for themselves. As Alison Gopnik 4 puts it ?... for babies and young children care and teaching are inseparable. The very same actions that nurture babies give them the kinds of information they need... The scientific research says that we should do just what we do when we are with our babies ? talk, play, make funny faces, and pay attention.? Paying attention means a mother thinking with and for and through her baby, as well as about her cooling supper or beckoning bed; thinking about him and herself and how the two of them can turn the next challenge into pleasure, rather than about a set of instructions or the time.
Bearing a baby in mind in this way is not at all the same as total indulgence. Indeed parents who are having problems with babies past the newborn stage demanding to be fed every hour or to be held constantly, often need to be firmer without being less loving. However most of the parents who are adopting these external-control methods are not doing so to deal with real problems in the here-and-now but with feared problems in a fraught future. Anxious lest babies take over their lives and control them, they gladly adopt programmes that allow them to manage and control the babies? lives. Sadly they may thereby delay, even perhaps distort, the relationship of mutual regard that enjoyable parenting relies on now and forever.
Newborn babies have a built-in drive to develop and practise every aspect of being human, yet each aspect of their growing up depends on their partnership with adults. If a parent holds herself aloof from her baby as a person, and from revelling in the physical pleasure in each other?s bodies, and in nursing at the breast or bottle, that underpins their adjustment to each other, seeing him instead as a programme and a project, she will not do all she can to keep him happy and busy and communicating with her. And of course the less busy and happy the baby is and the less he ?talk? to her, the less of a pleasure he will be.
The instruction manual approach gives parents a sense of adult control and separateness and supports their use of authority over the baby when what they most need is personal support while they risk submerging themselves in a relationship with him. It is misleading to parents to suggest that by rationing and routinising their attention to the baby they can conserve their adult autonomy because, however much they may resent the fact, their happiness and the baby?s are inextricably entangled. A mother may resent her baby?s crying; resent, even reject, the fact that he needs her - again. But ignoring (?controlling?) the crying does not only condemn the baby to cry unanswered but also condemns the mother to listen to him crying. So being sensitive to a baby?s needs, tuning in to him, treating him as he seems to ask to be treated, is not only better for the baby but also better for the mother and for their relationship. Being responsive to a baby soon grows into mutual responsiveness between child and parent.
Infants are not out to ?get at? parents. Watching and listening to babies and responding positively to them whenever possible does not turn babies into bullies or parents into victims. On the contrary, it leads, naturally and without prior planning or particular rules, to negotiation between adults and infants and thence to the reciprocity on which all intimate relationships eventually depend. It is by negotiation (rather than by rules) that a parent arrives at the appropriate period of grace between this particular baby waking up and an adult arriving at the cot side. It is by negotiation that a mother can gradually stretch the time between feeds, or persuade her baby to accept her face and voice for reassurance when something startles him, instead of instant breast. It is through months of these reiterated mini-negotiations that a baby learns that mother is not him but someone separate. Someone who thinks about his needs and can be trusted, but who also has needs of her own. These lessons are the foundations of mutual regard. Laid in the first six months, they will support the mother-child relationship not only through infancy and as an alternative to rigidly programmed parental control, but through the toddler?s confused and confusing developmental drive for autonomy and the child?s increasing passion for peers, and into adolescence. And by then mutual regard is the only hope because power-tactics no longer work at all.
Penelope Leach PhD
Hon. Senior Research Fellow
Tavistock Clinic, London NW3 5BA
References
- Ferber, R. ( 1985) Solve Your Child?s Sleep Problems. London. Dorling Kindersley
- Sears, W. Sears, M. (2003) The Baby Book . Little Brown & Company
- Stanley, K. Edward, L. Hatch, B. (2003)_The Family Report: Choosing Happiness? London, IPPR
4 Gopnik, A. Meltzoff, A. Kuhl, P. (1999) How Babies Think London. Weidenfeld & Nicolson