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]

Message withdrawn

Of course babies interact with their environment. That is NOT what the word manipulative means. As Pruners says, it implies dishonesty, deceit and a determination to use unfair methods to get the result you want and sod anyone else.

Shrinking, sounds like you adapted the book to suit you. Thing is, in the original, the author doesn't say 'only leave them for 10 minutes', she gave an approved case study of a couple she worked for where she insisted they left their baby for hours, listening to him scream while tears ran down their faces. I gather it has been revised since, thank heavens.

Of course not all mother who use these books are insecure as people. But anyone with a new baby who is going through a life-changing experience and sleep deprived is an easy target for gurus. And many new mothers are insecure about their judgement - today few of us have our own families at the end of the street and many won't have much experience with newborn babies.

Anyone using the word 'manipulative' in the context of how you raise your baby does intend a negative description.

I clearly remember my mother and my DBs MIL having a long and self-congratulatory conversation about how they never 'gave in' to their babies. As long as they were clean and fed and winded they didn't need anything else and it was OK to leave them to cry. Eventually they went to sleep. Well of course. Crying endlessly is exhausting work And DB and I slept through from a very early age. So my mum was right in the sense that she got - peaceful nights and obedient children. But I have a feeling that rearing children is about more than crowd control.

My mum hated Dr Spock - she thought it was much too child-centered . She loved routines. Maybe that's why I reacted so strongly against them.

I seem to remember hearing an extract on R4 from a 17th book on raising children that recommended regular beatings. For no specific punishment, just because it made for amenable children.

Agree that it is not at all helpful to describe a baby's behaviour as "manipulative".

Babies, like absolutely everyone else, need to ensure their basic needs (for sleep, food, affection, warmth, cleanliness etc) are met. Since they cannot do much for themselves they do what they can to ensure that their caregivers do what they require. That is not manipulation.

If a caregiver responds adequately to a baby's request, the baby will learn to trust the caregiver and a loving, trusting bond will grow between the two such that that baby is happy.

The person I mentioned earlier is in exactly the situation you describe. In a foreign country, OH out at work all day, home alone with small child. She has become obsessed with AP and her online AP friends. Genuinely it's a crutch for her. I'm glad she's found something but I'm not sure it's doing any of them much good because she's determined to view it as "the solution" and "the only way" so it has become as dogmatic and insistent as the other end of the spectrum.

Message withdrawn

I asked my mother if she ever read any baby books. She didn't have anyone to ask about how to look after me - got p/g in her final year at uni (it was the 60s ) so didn't know anyone else with small babies and her mother had died the year before.

She said no, didn't occur to her, she just did what came naturally. Influenced by her understanding of primates as she'd just finished her degree in zoology. From her description sounds a bit like what is now called attachment parenting. Although I'm not sure many attachment parents grow their hair long so their babies can cling onto it like little chimps!

"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.'"

So despite the baby clearly communicating what he needs is attention, the mother decides to mistrust what the baby says because mother wishes the baby to do something else. (Kathy, For you to respond to another day ;) )

shrinkingsagpuss, So your first child fell by chance into a GF routine and your second child didn't. I honestly think that routines only work for the children who naturally fall into it on their own.

My own child is responded to on demand since birth yet still has created her own flexible routine.

Sleeping though the night or any other developmental marker is not the sign of a good routine but simply what that child would do anyway given half a chance.

My mother also had no experience of babies and often said that she got very upset when she was told by her cousin to "trust her insticts" as she didn't have any! She had literally never spent any time with babies and was all at sea. She did use some routines I think but I know she used Dr Spock so I think he may have set out some basic routines in the early versions?

Anyway, I always come back to the same point. I don't see my parents' and grandparents' generation being generally less happy and generally less secure than the present generation. If anything the reverse if the mental health stats are anything to go by. And I'm sure they were all brought up by parents (loving or not) who did things the old fashioned way.

Message withdrawn

Message withdrawn

Actually, Margo, housewives in the 50s took a whole shedload of valium. It was incredibly common. As I guess SSRIs are now.

"I don't see my parents' and grandparents' generation being generally less happy and generally less secure than the present generation."

FWIW, here in Paris I do think that the "older generation" is pretty miserable. All the older people we know are stuck in rule-bound existences and have very little perspective on the external structures that have restricted their lives and thought-processes.

Happily, the younger generation is freeing itself of the constraints of the past.

I followed neither AP nor a routine- ds1 just cried all the time, to the extent that I got PND because I just felt I couldn't do anything for him.

On the whole (having been lectured endlessly by women from both 'camps') I have found the AP 'school' to be far MORE rigid and demanding than routine. I have been told that basically it was my fault that ds1 cried all the time because I should have strapped him to my body 24 hours a day. I couldn't do that: he cried in my ear whenever I sat down.

I was exhausted. I wanted space desperately, a part of my body back. For that, I was made to feel unnatural and unloving by AP mothers -and also to feel that I was bringing up an emotionally damaged, miserable monster who would not be able to relate to others. It now appears that nothing could be further from the truth, but for years I feared this.At 7 months I was writing ds1 suicide notes telling him I was sorry that I couldn't be the mother he needed and that he'd be better off without me.

Routines work for some people and babies. 'Natural' methods are a sort of cobbling together of tribal 'wisdom' and cod evolutionary theory. They may work for some people and seem 'natural' to them, but the conviction that they represent the only right way is disturbing and (to my mind) actually collaborates in the oppressive culture of mother-blaming that abounds in the West. AP parents rarely seem to indict fathers for 'failure to respond' to their babies.

The reason the mental health stats show a higher incidence of mental ill-health these days is that in previous decades it was extremely difficult to admit to anything less than a full-fledged psychotic episode.

I had no bloody instincts whatsoever, btw. Was totally flummoxed and bothered by my first baby.

Message withdrawn

I loved the "back to nature" aspect of pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding. I adore the way that having a baby allowed me to find my inner animal and actually ignore much of industrial society. It felt totally right for me to stay at home with my baby looking after her - I had no desire whatsoever to go to a big city, take a plane, have my hair coloured etc etc for ages after having a baby.

That, for me, is what "attachment parenting" is about - putting my baby and my own basic physical and emotional needs first.

Actually I think cod evolutionary theory is right (cue cod arriving on this thread...)

A lot of evolutionary anthropology is extremely conservative and reactionary and frankly, I don't set a lot of store by it (men are hunters and gathers therefore must be out and about so it's natural for them to go to work and sow their seed widely . Women on the other hand are nurturers and carers who are naturally monogamous and do better sitting in the cave tending the babies and waiting for men to come home. I exaggerate but this is what a lot of it amounts to).

Oh and I don't know of many societies where babies don't cry but I do know of many where women are effectively enslaved to the family structure.

Message withdrawn

It's one of my pet peeves actually. The use of evolutionary anthropology to justify various bits of nonsense in current society - typically women's roles. Remember the piece recently about how evolutionary scientists have discovered that the reason women prefer pink is that they spent days sorting berries in dimly lit caves? Honestly.

Yes, one of my pet peeves is the way we cite 'traditional societies' where ahem women tend to do things like die in childbirth and spend their lives subjugated to blokes.

lolmargo
i was reading it!

Exactly motherinferior. There's a sort of liberal angsty thing about these societies where most women's lives are reduced to little more than slavery but we somehow have to say that they're just doing things so much better than we are and oh, if only we were more in touch with ourselves we too could live happier, more authentic lives.

Not this thread, btw. Just a general peeve.

I get very annoyed with the "traditional societies" arguments too - but I am a great believer in many of the biological arguments for behaviour.

The trouble with using the "traditional societies" POV is that traditional societies are/were not "in a state of nature" - they have cultures, too, with all kinds of adaptations to environment that may or may not be appropriate to our environment.

For example, when you live in a cold northerly climate in a nuclear family where you have to do lots of varied tasks, strapping your baby to your back and carrying on with daily life is totally inappropriate. You just have to be able to put your baby down in order to live.