I think if people knew the mad, bonkers roots of strict routine-based parenting they would run a mile instead of buying more books about it.

[pruners]

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I didn't dismiss it. I just think it's very easy to think that it's all done so much better elsewhere and I really don't believe that babies are brought up any better elsewhere in the world.

We have a different sort of society and trying to import ways of living from such a different society into ours doesn't necessarily work.

If you can take your baby to work then it makes sense to carry them with you all the time. If you live in the West, where typically, you can't, it makes less sense because the baby might only feel secure in the sling on your back and they are not always going to be able to be there.

Likewise, many developing world cultures live in extended families and that's probably good for security and family based childcare but frankly pretty crap for the women (and girl babies) who end up responsible for looking after their in laws. You only have to look at the ways women are treated in some of these societies to wonder if individual women are in fact sacrificed on the altar of family and child rearing.

Perhaps our entire work-based society is wrong but I personally am not going to change it and in the interim, I am going to have to do the best I can in THIS society.

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"doesn't mean that babies don't need a lot of physical contact, or that responsive breastfeeding isn't still the best way to feed a child etc etc"

Totally agree. And guess what I did for my daughter? Both of the above. I just don't really want to insist that routines are rubbish and that attachment parenting or whatever is the only way to go.

All I can say of all the parents I know well, is that they all love their babies dearly and are doing their best whichever route they try.

I'm a 'go with the flow' person, and breastfed on demand. But, I do believe in sleep routines for both adults and children. I don't think it's any coincidence that I have a 19mth old and a nearly-three year old who both sleep 8pm-8am (unless ill).

I'm a 'go with the flow' person, and breastfed on demand. But, I do believe in sleep routines for both adults and children. I don't think it's any coincidence that I have a 19mth old and a nearly-three year old who both sleep 8pm-8am (unless ill).

I am reading 'What Mothers Do...especially when it looks like nothing' by Naomi Stadlen, which is a wonderful book, I keep crying at bits which remind me of how wonderful and tiring the newborn days were.

One of the earlier chapters looks at when a new mother decides which parenting road to take with her newborn baby, Naomi thinks this depends on how the mother perceives the baby.

"Her basic choice is either to see her baby as good, in which case she trust him, or alternatively to see him as the product of evil human nature, or of original sin, which requires her to train him."

She goes on to suggest that mothers who trust their babies go with the flow and respond to the babies cries in a more non routine and attached way. The mothers who have a need to train their babies, look more to routines and sleep training to achieve that goal.

I can relate to that. As a new, young mother with little contact with families with babies, I didn't trust my ds - or myself- which is why I ended up getting routine books. With my second baby I did trust her (and myself). She is less regular with her night wakings, but on balance, a better sleeper.
I used to get upset when people asked me if mine was a good baby (God, I was oversensitive) because he didn't sleep through and used to cry in public I thought others thought he was 'bad'.

When people asked if DD was a good baby, I said of course she is. Babies can't be bad, even when she cries she is good. Then they would look at me as if I was mad

"Her basic choice is either to see her baby as good, in which case she trust him, or alternatively to see him as the product of evil human nature, or of original sin, which requires her to train him."

Right, because it's totally black and white.

Either you think your baby is evil and that is because you are really evil and you want to control it because some MEN in the past have somehow infiltrated your mind

OR

You are a natural-born earth mother and you will nurture your baby because you are a good person and you will do things the natural, womanly way in tune with nature and the earth

Such prescriptive, bossy demands that women must utterly eschew any kind of routine is just as foolish and hectoring of new mothers as any routine-recommending book.

I'm due in 2 days. I've read some books about childcare but mostly I have spoken to my mother and drawn on the experience of her and the other mothers in my family. And guess what? Amazingly enough, they didn't all do things the same way and don't all recommend doing the same things

But I'm lucky I come from a large, extended family full of babies and children and I'm still expecting to be overwhelmed and surprised by being a mother for the first time.

As crude a tool as a routine book may seem, they do offer some very concrete advice as to how to do things at a time when you are likely to be feeling totally at sea. Women don't choose them because they think their babies are evil, they choose them because they doubt themselves and they appear to offer certainties and practical things you can actually do.

So some people read some books and believe what they say, other people read other books that say different things and believe what they say. Most people just use whatever works for them and don't particularly give a shit what the sociological roots are as long as baby and mother are happy. No right or wrong way, just what works for you. And I say this as one of those parents you don't think exists, Pruners, someone who used a routine and is very happy and has a very happy baby and a very happy family life, and is very very bored with people speculating that people like me are somehow weird. There are, incidentally, more people out there like me than you think.

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Good post Skidoodle. There is a lot of good stuff in the Stadlen book that no other books seem to say, but she is also far too condemnatory in places of other ways of doing things.

Maybe the way it is phrased is more judgemental than needed but the underlying issue is still correct. Either you believe that your baby is truthful when he/she requests food, attention so you meet the baby's needs without question OR you decide your baby is being deceptive and manipulative in their requests and you either refuse or modify your response and train them to a reasonable standard.

No, you can believe your baby is being truthful when he says he would like something without thinking it is necessarily right for him to have it.

"No, you can believe your baby is being truthful when he says he would like something without thinking it is necessarily right for him to have it."

What could a baby truthfully want, which you feel is reasonable to refuse as it is not 'right' for him to have it ?

Like what ? Food, attention, clean nappy.

I thought Skidoodle's post: 'Women don't choose them because they think their babies are evil, they choose them because they doubt themselves and they appear to offer certainties and practical things you can actually do' shows exactly how insidious these books are.

They are preying on women who are vulnerable, uncertain of themselves and who feel unprepared for the life-changing experience of motherhood. And instead of saying hey, here's an idea, try it if it suits you, they say 'THIS is the way to do it, you have to see your baby as bad (manipulative and demanding attention at inconvenient moments).'

Someone gave me Mums on Babies, the first MN book, when ds was a few months old and it was SUCH a revelation. Because unlike all those gurus who talk down to you, here were real mothers offering choices and saying 'this worked for me, might work for you'.

For instance, the logic if you were sleep training would be 'My baby wants my attention but it would be better for him to be left to go to sleep because it's important for him to have sleep.'

I have always been far more attachment- than routine- in my own parenting but I do think the attachment side can misrepresent the routine camp quite maliciously. I don't know anyone who sleep trains who thinks their baby is 'dishonest' or 'evil'.

I would love to have this debate properly BabiesEverywhere but sadly I can't post again today as I'm examining solidly all day from 9.00....

I don't know anyone who would openly say their baby is 'dishonest' but people do talk about babies being 'manipulative' which amounts to the same thing.

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I followed a routine, THE GF routine for DS, it worked a treat. I was very depressed, and for me, it was a way of regaining sanity when no h/p would listen to me. As a result I was able to sleep, and eat regularly, and DS is one of the liveliest, well loved, happiest babies I know. All my older firends whose children are my age know the routines I followed, and not one of the critisized - they all ahd children who woke regularly at night through til 3 or 4. Mine didn't. I feel thoroughly vindicated.

Not once did I leave him to cry for an hour, 10 minutes was the max I ever did, DH and I together, listening to his cries and recognising that he was calming down and needed to be left.

I did get stressed if the routine "failed" for some reason, but I think that was more about me being depressed. The routine frequently fails with DD, who has other ideas and no intentions of following GF, no matter how hard I try. But she is still calm, sleeps well, plays well, and has some routine in her little life.

These books are not ALL the Devils spawn. Mothers who follow them are not ALL naive, insecure, lacking in confidence. I did not follow a routine because I was depressed. I was depressed becuase I was a new mother, who'd lost her father, and terrified at losing my "old" life.

It is possible to follow a routine without being psychologically damaging, without contolled crying, without leaving your baby hungry, or removing eye contact, it just takes common sense.

Be careful about using the word manipulative. Babies learn to manipulate their environment. They leanr to smile so you will smile back, they put their arms out to be picked up, they leanr to throw toys, so you will give it back and engage. This is what life is about - mainpulation. All babies do it eventually. Saying babies are not manipulative is rubbish

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On this theme - I had a moment of personal triumph this week when I got my daughter's (3.3) first school report (she has been at French école maternelle since September).

Parisian parenting is much more rule and routine-based than I am and many French acquaintances looked on in horror at the uncontrolled way I brought up our daughter and predicted a terrible time for her at school - they really believed she would have a hard time accepting the teacher's authority and respecting others because I wasn't always telling her what to do, punishing her etc

Well? She had extremely favourable comments on all the areas relating to the "Vivre Ensemble" ("Living Together") part of her report. I have never been called in to see the teacher about her behaviour, she has never had a punishment...

skidoodle's post is bang on.

Why the hell can't we stop polarising childrearing into good and bad. Sahms/Wohms. AP/routine. etc etc. You do what works for you and your family and most of us come out ok with reasonably ok children.

I say this as someone who has not followed a routine but I find the implied criticism of those who do (they don't trust their baby, they are not in touch with their baby's needs or they are weak and need artificial routines to support them) to be sanctimonious nonsense.

Obviously some of the more extreme routine people are fully paid up lunatics (the one on TV, I guess you know who I mean) but so are some people who go to the extremes of the other way (and I do know of one of these who is very unhappy and using all the strictures of AP as a support framework to prop herself up in the same way that people who use routines are accused of having to use artificial means which conflict with their "natural" relationship with their baby).

Most of us are somewhere in the middle and muddling through.

Each side is just as judgemental as the other. I tell you what would be a good book - what is it about modern motherhood that makes people so insistent about it and refuse to see any sense in another view?

the oxford english dictionary gives several definitions of "manipulate" - 50% positive, 50% negative, so it is our choice to understand maniuplation as negative. I re state my point. babiesDO manipulate their environment, it is a highly clever thing to do.

I'd be more worried if my baby didn't.

would love to continue this, but have an HR appt to discuss return to work at 10, so have to run (shit.. is that the time?!!)