Tiger Tail Communications

Western Parenting or Best Parenting?

Website author Liz Harrop and her daughter, now 16 months old, and still breastfeeding and co-sleeping.

Modern western society does not advocate what is best for parents or what is best for baby. 'Experts' have given rise to unprecedented rates of cesarean sections, advised us to leave babies to cry themselves to sleep in their own room, be weaned onto solid food prior to 6 months and prefer pushchairs to carrying and holding.

Attachment parenting principles including for example extended breastfeeding, cue breastfeeding, safe co-sleeping with baby, and carrying baby in a sling or pack, are gaining in popularity as more of us decide that mother and father know best and not the manufacturers of cots and baby food.

Controlled crying is harmful

Controlled crying "is not consistent with what infants need for their optimal emotional and psychological health, and may have unintended negative consequences". See Australian Association for Infant Mental Health, Position Paper 1: Controlled Crying March 2004

Safe co-sleeping prevents infant deaths

Babies sleeping through the night in their own room is a western model created since the industrial revolution. It devalues the role of mothers, the needs of their babies and the support of the father and extended family, placing a premium on a forced independence.

Meanwhile, the huge benefits of safe co-sleeping with baby have been lost. Safe co-sleeping helps protect against Sudden Unexplained Death in Infancy (SUDI, also known as SIDS or Cot Death).

For more information on the benefits of safe co-sleeping see our printable Baby Co-Sleeping Fact Sheet

Breastfeeding exclusively and for longer

The World Health Organization recommends that infants be exclusively breastfed for the first six months and for breastfeeding to continue up to two years of age or beyond. See the World Health Organization infant feeding recommendation.

Babywearing fosters attachment

Many studies have looked at the benefits of babywearing, which include reduced crying and increased attachment. See The Baby Wearer for links to various studies.

Human Rights Instruments

By promoting the rights of the child, particularly in relation to health, human rights instruments explicitly and implicitly support breastfeeding. Because of its positive effects on the emotional and physical wellbeing of the child, and its efficacy in reducing infant deaths, safe co-sleeping could potentially be protected by some of these same provisions.

Popular culture likes independent babies sleeping in their own rooms, drinking milk from another species and food from glass jars at 4 months old, irrespective of the long term consequences. However, parents have a right to nurture their babies as biology intended - with intimate, loving and sustained contact that begins at the point of birth and lasts well beyond the first year of life.

Examples of relevant UN treaty articles:

Convention on the Rights of the Child

Article 3.2 "States Parties undertake to ensure the child such protection and care as is necessary for his or her well-being ... and, to this end, shall take all appropriate legislative and administrative measures."

Article 6.2 "States Parties shall ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of the child."

Article 17 "States Parties recognize the important function performed by the mass media and shall ensure that the child has access to information and material from a diversity of national and international sources, especially those aimed at the promotion of his or her social, spiritual and moral well-being and physical and mental health."

Article 24.2 e) "To ensure that all segments of society, in particular parents and children, are informed, have access to education and are supported in the use of basic knowledge of child health and nutrition, the advantages of breastfeeding ..."

International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

Article 12.1 "The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health."