Am I the only one who thinks baby led weaning is a stupid idea?

[chocablock]

www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/mar/14/familyandrelationships

It seems as if everyone is doing BLW apart from me. What happened to the tried and tested traditional mashing up your baby's food and feeding it to them with a spoon? OK maybe let them play around with their own spoon a bit to get into practise but basically make sure they eat the food!!!Is there anyone else who thinks blw is new fangled stupidity? Or am I just a voice in the wildreness and hopelessly old fashioned?? :)

really? i don't know much about medieval history but i am always surprised when people say that people didn't worry about their children back in the day. there's a good book... gad, what's it called, Perfect Babies or something like that, that uses baby manuals to illustrate some of the bonkers parenting that has gone on in the past. they've pretty much been a publishing sensation since the guttenberg bible, absolutely snapped up by a very willing audience. so the evidence for everyone having been super-relaxed in the past just really isn't there, i think.

Really? I didn't think the average woman could read in mediaeval times.

actually the guttenberg press only just squeaks into the period, but the point i was making (i felt quite clearly, so i assume you are just seizing an opportunity to be facetious) is that judging by the way that parenting pamphlets and books have flown off the shelves since they have become available, the idea that women historically have not worried about their children is quite bogus.

Ah, but Issy was specifically refering to mediaeval times when very few people (ie men) read anything other than Latin and women in fact were probably more concerned about surviving childbirth and getting their children past the age of 1 to worry about BLW.

Of course it is true that parenting pamphlets and books have been around since we became a literate society - but not in mediaeval times

Hope that didn't sound too facetious - the very nerve of me.

BLW is a load of rubbish. Next we'll be encouraging them to cook their own

Parenting has changed over the years, and not for the better imho.

and yet i wasn't referring to medieval times, i was referring more generally to times historic (having been perfectly clear that medieval history is not an area of specialisation for me) so your point was not relevant to what i had actually written.

i would, of course, be interested to know why Issy picked the medieval period in particular, as one where women wouldn't have 'worried about this too much'. i suspect it was shorthand for times historic, but would be interested in what made her choose that time if not.

I love the way that the anti-BLW threads on MN fall into two camps:

A. "What's with all this 'BLW' nonsense? I/my mother/my grandmother was doing this years ago and we didn't need some silly label attached to it. Surely it's just common sense and what people have always done? Blah blah grumble grumble..."

or

B. "What's with all this 'BLW' nonsense? I've never heard of anything so ridiculous/dangerous. The very idea of doing something like that would never have been countenanced by me/my mother/my grandmother and is quite obviously an entirely modern invention, blah blah grumble grumble..."

Well, that's sorted then. We both agree that in mediaeval times people didn't read and so weren't really aware of BLW (or 'parenting' in general). We both agree that people have read parenting pamphlets and books since we became generally literate - although whether or not they focused on BLW, again, I would doubt it, given the slightly more important issues of the day such as access to clean water, sanitation, infant and childhood mortality, poverty, health care and the like. Who knows though.

McPhee - agree.

it is rather contradictory, isn't it?

Very true HerdOfTinyElephants!

I just think this world is making up more and more ways to make parenting less of a 'chore'. Just wish everyone would stop being so damn precious. No kid has broken by being fed purees. Stop all this competitive parenting claptrap...the children couldn't give a damn. Just look after them as you were as children. Normally!

Disclaimer....pregnancy hormones raging

It's also become more of an industry now - so much marketing and money is thrown at 'parenting' that we have forgotten how to trust our own instincts and judgements.

i'm not sure why you are taking such a shitty attitude tbh maisie, but again if i can refer you to what i actually wrote, which wasn't actually about BLW.

'i am always surprised when people say that people didn't worry about their children back in the day. there's a good book... gad, what's it called, Perfect Babies or something like that, that uses baby manuals to illustrate some of the bonkers parenting that has gone on in the past. they've pretty much been a publishing sensation since the guttenberg bible, absolutely snapped up by a very willing audience. so the evidence for everyone having been super-relaxed in the past just really isn't there, i think.'

the book, btw, is here btw. i think you'd like it. not a huge amount on sanitation etc afair, acres on weaning and milk, of course, because everyone had to feed their children somehow or other.

btw pcphee, the whole thing of BLW is to make weaning less of a chore. it's just letting babies eat what you're eating, how hard can that be?

Dreambabies I think Aitch?

Ah ok. Sorry. Must read more carefully before jumping in

Exactly. I've been known to drop parenting books down the backs of shelves in shops. My mother never had a book fgs. Parents need to go back to basics and stop cashing in on useless shite!

I have a favourite saying which I annoying use a lot.......and will probably out me to any friends on here now . But....'kids are brought up in the amazonian rainforests fgs'. They don't have sodding plastic parenting!

that's the fella. it's great, i think. very interesting to see how it's always been an industry, that the bucolic 'natural' parenting style (rousseau et al) that we all assume was adopted by instinct alone were as much a construct as hi-tech space age jars of the 50s.

did your mother definitely nto have a book, mcphee? have you asked her? certainly in this century there has been one parenting publishing sensation after another... someone was buying them.

re amazonian forests, btw... you've read the continuum concept, i take it? very much a deliberate style of parenting there, regardless of the fact that they might not have a leaflet about it.

I'm not getting embroiled in the arguments of the thread but if anyone would like Gill Rapleys BLW book I am trying to clear my bookshelves of baby stuff (mine now past this age!), please pm me -chocablock, I'll take it as a no ! First come, first served.

She definitely didn't. She got her advice from her parents, and used her instinct. Something which I feel has been lost.

did any of them have books?

Like I said Aitch, it's just a saying. Basically meaning, stop being so damn precious. I say it to my friends all the time, and they still love me

I don't know about my grandparents aitch because they died when i was very young, but I will ask!