(this is from a 1999 issue of
Mothering when a similar incident
occurred)
The editor of Mothering magazine denounces a new warning against the family
bed as the drivel of government terrorists.
Editor's Note: On Wednesday the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission
issued a warning to parents and caregivers who sleep with their babies,
saying that the practice, known as co-sleeping, carries a high risk of
suffocation or strangulation. "Don't sleep with your baby or put the baby
down to sleep in an adult bed," said CPSC Chairwoman Ann Brown, citing an
average 64 deaths per year of babies in adult beds. Salon Mothers Who Think
asked Peggy O'Mara, editor of Mothering magazine and patron saint of the
family bed, to weigh in on the warning.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Peggy O'Mara
Sept. 30, 1999 | Usually I welcome the warnings of the Consumer Product
Safety Commission. I like to know about dangerous products. But, not this
time. This time the CPSC has come into my bedroom and I want them out. Since
when is co-sleeping a product? Who has the authority to tell me what to do
in the privacy of my own bedroom? What if this one-size-fits-all
prescription just doesn't fit my family? Am I to be terrorized by the CPSC
illustrations of strangled and smothered babies or am I going to stand up
and say, "Not me." "Not this time." "No thanks."
Interestingly enough the CPSC gives little detail about the alleged deaths
associated with babies in adult beds. Who are these parents who managed to
smother their babies? I've never heard about any of them and I've been
listening to parents for over 20 years. Is there any chance that these
parents were heavily drugged or drunk when this happened? Most of the
co-sleeping parents I talk to complain about not getting enough sleep, of
having a heightened, not a diminished, sense of awareness when their baby is
in bed with them.
Please! Give us parents more credit. Our job is hard enough without being
terrorized by worst-case scenarios. I am tired of having my perfectly normal
instincts co-opted by bureaucracies and institutions that focus on extremes
at the expense of normalcy. And I refuse to buy into a fear-based philosophy
for my parenting.
With all the important issues that the CPCS, the American Medical
Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics could focus on, why
bother with a "mother management" issue like co-sleeping? Is there some fear
of future liability if they don't "warn" the public of obscure deaths? Are
the crib manufacturers losing money? What's the big deal? Is it that medical
experts unfamiliar with the family bed don't know how to advise parents and
therefore want to make co-sleeping go away? Is it that old fear of intimacy,
once again?
Don't you think that if parents had been rolling over and suffocating their
babies that we would all have heard about it by now? Don't you think that we
would have told each other?
It's enough to make a parent crazy. Obviously this CPSC recommendation was
written by people who never get up in the night with babies. In 1997, the
AAP told us to breastfeed and then undermined its own recommendation by
telling us to put the baby back in his or her own crib after breastfeeding.
Maybe I'm just a lazy mother, but one of the big advantages of breastfeeding
is that you don't have to get up and take the baby down the hall. You have
the equipment built in.
One of the things that the CPSC scare tactics fail to mention is that in
practically all other cultures in the world, babies sleep with their
mothers. In her book, "Our Babies, Ourselves," pediatric anthropologist
Meredith Small tells us that the United States is unique in the way that it
treats its children during sleep. Only in industrialized Western countries,
such as the United States, Canada and some European countries, has sleep
become a private affair. Small cites one study of 186 non-industrial
societies; in none of these cultures do babies sleep in a separate place
before they are at least 1 year old. In another study of 172 societies, all
infants do some co-sleeping at night.
Are we to believe then that these other countries just don't know any
better? Do they have different beds, different mattresses? Do they use less
drugs, drink less alcohol? Couldn't we consider learning something from
these other cultures? As the most violent culture in the world, it seems to
me that we could use some more of the touch that reduces violence:
breastfeeding and co-sleeping.
I refuse to give up my authority as a parent to others, even if they have a
lot of degrees and credentials. No one knows my baby as well as I do. The
unique dyad that is my baby and I is incredibly and inherently wise. In 20
years from now I may have no memory of the CPSC recommendation. But I will
know my child and only we will live with the outcomes of my decisions. I do
not want the institutions of society to systemically break down my maternal
instincts. I do not want to rely on "experts" for the rest of my life. I
want to trust my own unique experience.
I say to the CPSC, the AMA and the AAP: "Don't ignore the validity of my
personal experience. My baby is hard-wired to expect my touch. She believes
that she and I are the same person, and wants to be with me all of the time.
Don't tell me that she is wrong and that you know better when you don't even
know her. Don't tell me that my instincts and the innocent longings of my
baby are wrong. I know better."
As a new parent I would be terrified by the information reported today by
the CPSC, and by the fact that the AMA researched it and the AAP concurs
with it. I can only be reassured by their pervasive attack. I've observed
that social change is a process that can take a long time. First, a new idea
is ignored. Next it is ridiculed. Then it is attacked. Finally, it is
assimilated. This attack must mean that co-sleeping is really catching on in
the United States. Good. It should be. It's a good idea! Parents are not
stupid. We don't share bad ideas with one another. Co-sleeping works.
Hundreds of thousands of generations and hundreds of societies attest to it.
Go home. Hold your baby. Do what comes naturally. You'll be better able to
live with the results of this trust than you will with the ominous fears
generated by anonymous individuals who are supposed to serve us. Twenty
years from now, when you look back on your life as the mom of a new baby,
you won't say, "Gee, I forgot to teach little Suzie to sleep. I wish I had
only listened to those experts." Believe me, you will say, "Gee, I wish I
had held my baby more."
salon.com | Sept. 30, 1999
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer
Peggy O'Mara has been the editor and publisher of Mothering magazine for 20
years. She is the mother of four grown children who are veterans of
breastfeeding and the family bed.
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