Extreme Parenting

This post isn't about some odd reality show in which someone raises their child under bizarre and twisted circumstances. Instead it's about the books that have led me to wonder if it's possible for anyone to write a book which is balanced and moderate about parenting. As many of you know, Holly has foregone her previous sleep habits in favor of nightly pajama parties with her parents. She's generally not yelling, it's more like she's ready to party all night long. This led me to raid the local library for a variety of books with "baby" and "sleep" in the title. The woman who checked me out chuckled a little as she handed me back my stack of similarly titled books-- looking at my sleepy eyes and my cooing baby. Of the books I read, I found that they only agreed on one principle: that all the other books on the topic were dead wrong.

One book told me that co-sleeping with my baby would destroy my relationship with my spouse and lead to a needy, clingy child. The next told me that putting my child down in a bed alone would make me bitter towards my spouse and lead to a child who was fearful of sleep and poorly adjusted to the world. The next said that both of these books were wrong, but that if I'd already started co-sleeping or putting Holly down alone that I was forever bound to that process. Anything else would just destroy my relationship with my spouse and lead to a poorly adjusted child. Ahem. OK. So I'm exaggerating these books only slightly. In case you were wondering, here is a sampling of the books that I checked out:

• The Baby Sleep Book
• Secrets of the Baby Whisperer
• On Becoming Babywise
  

I didn't even bother with Ferber's book because the whole concept of "crying it out" scares me. I know people who have reached that point and I'm sympathetic, but I'm not sleep deprived enough to go down that road. I already own The No-Cry Sleep Solution and Good Nights. In addition to these sleep-oriented books, I've also read a whole stack of books. Some were loaned, some I purchased and some from the library. The Nursing Mother's Companion, Unconditional Parenting, several from the Sears parenting library, What to Expect the First Year and more. And it's from reading all of these books that I got the title of this post. It doesn't seem to be enough to simply have a parenting philosophy that you advocate for, but in order to write these books you have to argue that all the other books of the same topic are down-right wrong. Why is that?

Some of these books seem to either create or reinforce the notion that if you do the wrong thing, your child is doomed. When I was attending a group for mother's 2 weeks to 3 months old I heard some of these women say things like, "I nurse my daughter to sleep, which I know is ruining her. But it's the only way to get her to sleep!" I also read an article recently regarding the benefits of breastfeeding which has a sentence buried in one of the last paragraphs which (paraphrased) says that women who can't breastfeed because of their jobs shouldn't be made to feel guilty. I guess by default, women who chose not to breastfeed should? No! No! No!

So in celebration of Mother's Day, I'd like to celebrate moms by rejecting all this extreme parenting and instead support parents without judgment. I'd like to argue for a more balanced approach to parenting advice. I read all those books and from each of them I gained a little bit of information. But I'll also tell you that I disagreed with many of their recommendations. I wouldn't say they were wrong, only that I disagree and that I think some of these things won't work for us. I would tell that woman that if her heart is in the right place, I find it hard to imagine that she could "ruin" her child. I'd like to tell women who breastfeed they're supported as well as the women who don't. Women who stay home to care for their children deserve respect. But so do those of us who are back at work full time. All the parents I know are out there making decisions every moment of every day of what we feel like is best for our families. A wise woman I went kayaking with earlier this week pointed out that really, loving your child for who they are is all you really need to worry about. Happy Mother's Day!