Here are things the tight-lipped, out of touch, nervous nellies at Consumer Reports disapprove of:
Co-sleeping:
Although sleeping with a baby in an adult bed is a common practice among some cultures, it can be dangerous.
Until there are safety standards in place for bedside basinettes, the safest place for your baby, they say, is in a crib. Oh, please. This is so very white, upper class American it's not even funny. More babies die in cribs every year than die in their parents beds, snuggled up in their parents arms.
If YOU feel you or your spouse sleep too heavily for your baby to sleep with you, that's one thing. That's a decision for parents to make. ALL of our babies slept with us. It's natural, normal, it's the way it's been done for thousands of years in cultures all over the globe. The crib is fairly recent and quite limited in sphere.
I'm telling you, these nanny types would love to make us submit breastmilk for testing.
Baby Bath Seats: Okay, I didn't use these much either- although as I grew older, one was a welcome relief to my bad back. But CR says you should never use one. Why? Because children have died. Why have they died? Because their parents walked away and left them in the seat in the bath unattended. The bath seat is not what caused those children to die. A parental error (for which those parents suffer more every day of their lives than anybody else can imagine) caused those fatal accidents. But CR thinks we are too stupid to respond well to any sort of publicity informing parents that the chairs are not a substitute for constant supervision.
But the thing that really amazes me is this:
Sling carriers
Over the past five years, at least four babies died and there have been many reports of serious injury associated with the use of sling-type carriers. The incidents include skull fractures, head injuries, contusions and abrasions. Most occurred when the child fell out of the sling. As slings grow in popularity, so do the number of serious injuries. No safety standards exist for slings. We think you should skip the sling and opt for other types of infant carriers, which have safer track records. (Image note: The CPSC recalled 100,000 Infantino slings in 2007.)
Four babies in five years? One baby per year is a tragedy for that family. I am not seeing the justification for ditching the sling, which is an item used by third world cultures the world over, as well as in many Asian countries. Slings have a proven track record. And thank-you, no, I have never carried a baby of mine at arm's length from me in a plastic bucket, and if I had babies, I sure wouldn't start.
In the book Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, the author notes the wealth of studies indicating that babies desperately need touch, and plenty of it, in order to thrive and survive- where is that in the Consumer Reports world of cold, hard, plastic, easy to clean, easy to measure, easy to quantify? It's nowhere. But the science is sound. Babies do better when they sleep with their parents, when they are held skin to skin, when they are cuddled up in parental arms:
"Despite these findings, even today touching is often viewed as an unavoidable part of the more important tasks of feeding and cleaning the baby. Seldom is it considered an essential need in itself without which a baby may never mature....
In general... the higher the social strata, the less parents touch their infants [I disagree with this point, by the way, I think there are a lot of folks low on the social strata who do not recognize infant touch as a need and strongly recommend the 'cry it out' route]... Perhaps we have reached the extreme in America, where mothers carry their babies at arms' length in plastic carriers and fathers spend an average of thirty seconds per day in tactile contact with their children."
He might have been describing the Consumer's Union approach to parenting.
They also object to crib bumpers and infant positioners, two items that may have some justification, but two out of five is a pretty pathetic track record.
Parenting is about far more than rearing children in a sterilized, hygienic, bubble wrapped microcosm of an OSHA lab. It's about relationships, warmth, love, affection, touch, closeness- and CR is in no position of authority to give anybody parenting advice, which is what this amounts to.
Keep in mind that these people defend the CPSIA as necessary, and we can see how much authority they ought to have in anybody's lives.
It's sad. They once were a useful organization performing a useful public service, but they've become a caricature. Pin It
