Cruelty to babies on TV?

[DumDad]

Am I being unreasonable here? Last night on BBC2 Babies: Welcome to their wonderful world the presenters ( a doctor and a psychologist) persuaded parents to do a 'still face' to their under 1 yr child. The result was predictable, indeed it is well known, the child became distressed. This went on for two minutes and at least one of the kids was crying by the end.
Is this sort of thing acceptable? Surely the proper response to a child in distress is to comfort it, not to prolong the agony for the cameras. As well as the distress for the babies involved just imagine what message the BBC is sending out about it being OK to cause emotional distress to little ones.
I have written to the BBC to express my concern. Just wondered if anybody else felt uncomfortable about this.

Kids cry, shocker

A very good observation. However the point is that this is a case of professionals leading parents in to making them cry. In fact the parents were asked to amuse the child and then do something which was designed to upset them.
The BBC, a paediatrician and a psychologist doing that for the cameras. I don't think that knowing children cry in the course of normal circumstances lets them off the hook.

I didn’t see it so can’t comment on the program, but it doesn’t sound awful.
You are going to be upset by things from a young age, whether it’s your parents doing a still face or not having your banana cut up to your liking.

I doubt it would have a tremendous affect on the baby.

Don't be silly. It was a piece about how babies develop and communicate, and at the end of the 2 minutes the parent re-engaged with their child, cue happy kids.

This will happen loads of times as they grow up, no parent can spend 24 hrs totally devoted to their baby, it will happen many times in their life at home.

I have seen this done as an experiment before.

It is extremely distressing to watch and I don't know know the mother doesn't react.

However I don't think it counts as cruelty .

What's still face?

What's still face?

The mother talks to the baby, then she turns away and looks back with a completely blank expression. You see the different ways that they baby tries to get her attention. Then the baby ends up crying.
It's interesting but so upsetting.

Here is a youtube video of the experiment.

Apart from that test, the rest of the broadcast was very funny!

VisitorsEntrance found that fascinating! Very clever to see the baby go through all the usual methods of interaction first. Very sad to realise the effect that having an unresponsive parent growing up would have.

But I don't think the experiment is abuse.

I don't think it's abusive. It's a very interesting study, done in a very short time, with no harm done to the baby - it's just crying because it's frustrated, as all babies do. This kind of work needs to be done and replicated in order for us to learn more about babies and human interaction.