Becoming a Father

A glance at "baby science"

As some of you know, my daughter was born a few weeks ago (it explains much of my absence on this blog).

During this period, like many new parents, I’ve started looking into the 'science of babies parenting' and, as I suspected, there is a lot of 'scientific advice' that seems rooted in institutional dogma—often influenced by money, politics, and outdated superstitions. One advice that I got (which I appreciated the most) is to not read too many baby books, because the baby also hasn’t read them.

As a curious person that likes to question “standard advice” I started to look into “baby science” with a bit of a critical eye and below are a few interesting articles/books that I found that I thought of sharing with my audience.

• A critical article on colic, and why it is a senseless “one size fits all syndrome”,

• A critical article on the “The Feeding Interval Obsession”,

• Why SIDS is due to unsafe sleep practices and no longer a mystery,

• Dr. James McKenna work on why infants are better of sleeping with their parents (like all mammals do?),

• Why “sleep training” is totally pointless and unproven pseudoscience,

• Epidemics and society by Frank Snowden, including the history of childhood diseases,

• Another book on the history of childhood disease, with official UK and US death statistics presented. A noteworthy claim is that we overestimate the influence of modern medicine and under appreciate the role that electricity played in advancing public health,

• BBC article on the Nestle formula milk scandal, as well as a video on the famous boycott, it explains why there are NGOs such as the La Leche League, who advocate for a worthy cause such as Breast Feeding,

• Multi-modal analysis of infant cry types characterization: Acoustics, body language and brain signals, the article classifies the type of infant crying.

  

I suppose I should end with the disclaimer that I'm not a medical professional, nor do I necessarily believe everything that's written.

I encourage my readers to always think for themselves.

Regards

Hügo