Each generation has its main whisper.
My mother and father had Benjamin Spock, the pediatrician who promoted the revolutionary idea that children should be appreciated and retained, not whipped or whipped. His historical book of 1946, “The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care”, became one of the best -selling books of the twentieth century.
When I became pregnant, I trusted “what to expect when you expect”, by Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel, who dominated the market for years after they first published in 1984. It began since it has fallen into some disorder of what several new Parents come as an alarmist approach, which leads the detractors to call it “about what to scare when you expect.”
After my daughter was born in 1992, I trusted T. Berry Brazelton, a deeply compassionate pediatrician whose “contact points” books popularized new ways of thinking about the development of children. Each leap of development, he wrote, is accompanied by a temporary regression.
Then Harvey Karp arrived, who wrote “The Happiest Baby of 2002 in the block.” His important contribution was the idea that the first three months of life are essentially the “fourth quarter”. He taught us to trigger the baby's comfort reflection with diapers, an ancient practice that helped to revive and making creepy sounds. He was also my daughter's first pediatrician, although when she published her best seller, my daughter was already 10 years old.
And now he is waiting for his own son.
Friends of my age who have become grandparents tell me that things have changed. Their children generally adopt a more structured approach for meals and bedtime, for example. And the whisper father for his generation of digital natives, collected with easy access to all human knowledge, is not a pediatrician, psychiatrist or doctor of any kind.
She is Emily Oster, economist at Brown University and mother of two children whose books “Waiting Better”, “Cun” and “The family firm” encourage parents to adopt a data -based approach for decision making. (Its popular website is parentdata).
Argued with the best and most relevant information on high quality studies, he argues, mothers and fathers can make their own decisions on issues such as breastfeeding, sleep training, bath training and, perhaps their most controversial position, Whether it is well to have an occasional glass of wine during pregnancy, as it did. (I had two glasses of wine the first night of Los Angeles riots, when I was four months pregnant, and my daughter has UC Berkeley and Yale titles).
I was glad to have a girl in part because I did not want to face the perspective of circumcision, which was going to be a controversial problem in my home. In “Cribsheet”, Oster describes its risks and benefits. While some friends told me that my concern for inflicting pain to a baby was ridiculous, Oster cites a 1997 study that shows babies who experience pain during circumcision have stronger pain responses to their shooting four or six months later. The data, in other words, confirmed my fears, although doctors now tend to recommend some type of pain blocker for the procedure.
“I wanted to address the pregnancy of the way I was accustomed in the rest of my life, as a person who loves the data,” Oster told me on Thursday. “I wrote 'waiting better' of that frustration.”
After his first child was born, for example, he made decisions about dinner as an economist. Was it more sense to cook from scratch, use a food preparation service or get food to take? “How does the cost of these elections compare with meal planning and preparation on my own?” She writes. And what was the value of its time or “opportunity cost”, as an economist would express it?
“This economic approach to decision making,” he writes, “does not make a decision for you, just tell you how to structure it.”
Dr. Karp once told me that becoming a father for the first time is like standing on a side of a high brick wall: you can only imagine What is on the other side? “With a first child,” writes Oster, “most of us are prepared to be a little surprised by the whole experience. After all, you have never done it before. Even me, a tremendously neurotic person, knew that things would arise that things that things arise than things that I didn't expect. “
According to his doctor's advice, for example, he put mittens to his little daughter, Penelope, so he would not scratch inadvertently. Then his mother told him that he would make sure Penelope never learned to use his hands.
Oster immersed himself in the investigation. Although he did not find studies on whether the mittens prevent babies from learning to use their hands, one found that in the last half century, there were only 20 reports of babies injured by mittens, just enough to work enough.
“I think there are many … older generation tips that I think is often very well intentioned and it is not always useful,” Oster told me. “I think part of the problem is really, and I say this with love, it is difficult to remember what it is to have a baby.”
Promoted by studies or not, each generation presents new parenting and prohibition practices.
“My mother said: 'Put the baby to sleep face down,” Oster said. “For data -based reasons, we don't do it anymore.”
It turns out that babies who sleep with the stomach have a greater risk of children's sudden death syndrome. The current expert advice is that babies should sleep on their backs with nothing more than a mattress and a leaf equipped in the cradle or cradle. The “bumpers” of the crib were prohibited in the United States in 2022 because babies can be trapped against them and suffocate. Sleeping together with your baby is also considered a non-no.
“Now it is absolutely something that will be told not to do,” said Oster, “and it is also something that a large part of people does and does not speak.”
Even so, says Oster, “what I try to be clear about is that the co-warning is not exempt from risks, and that it is even done as safe as possible, there are some low risks in line with the risks that people take all The days. No option in life has no risk, and must balance the risk against benefit. “
Thirty -two years ago, when I was pregnant with Chloe, my colleague of the Times, Bob Sipchen, father of three children, took me aside.
“Listen, ABCARIAN,” he said. “The only thing you should know is that no father thinks that no other father is doing a good job.”
I was so right. One of the great challenges of fatherhood is to learn to strengthen against the opinions and advice of all others.
This is where the parents of the parents enter: the best of them gives you the confidence to do the right thing for you.
Bluesky: @further.bsky.social. Rags: @rabcar
