Andrea’s Weblog

A recent study published in Pediatrics identifies a link between maternal responsiveness and cognitive development. Babies through the age of 10 showed higher intellectual development the more attentive the mom is (picking the baby up when he cries, interacting with him as you wear him in a sling, etc.) and the more positive the parenting style.
In other parenting news, pediatrician Richard Ferber, famous (infamous?) for a cry-it-out method to get babies to sleep alone, coined Ferberizing, has decided that co-sleeping does not cause psycological harm. He has given mothers permission to “do what they feel is right”–even if that means co-sleeping.

Expert advice is always changing. In our grandmother’s generation, experts were telling women that formula was superior to breast milk. Not only did this create a use for whey (a waste by-product of the dairy industry), but it paved the way to getting women in the WWII workforce. (Good for womens lib–bad for babies.)
If expert advice is always changing, how are parents supposed to know what advice to follow? Well, it’s great that research seems to be more and more supportive of attachment parenting, because the AP philosophy is based a lot on the mother’s intuition. You don’t have to read a million books to know what to do when your baby cries, your intuition tells you to pick her up and hold her or nurse her. You are the expert on your baby. Forget Ferber.